On Sunday 8 September 2019 we gave a salsa demonstration at the harvest festival of the Nederlandse Wijnbouwcentrum in Groesbeek. It was amazing!
An unusual combination really, a salsa show at a wine harvest festival. So how did this come about? This harvest festival had of course been planned for a long time, since it is an annual event. The organisers had also already hired a Latin jazz band to put on a live performance. Through an acquaintance we got in touch with the organisers. We both felt this would be a good fit, and we were right: it was a great combination!
What did we show?
We performed 2 shows: ‘Callo’ and ‘Alegria’. Callo is the current show of our student team. This is a group of 8 dancers, but for this event we danced with half of the group. It was still super fun and the audience loved it. ‘Alegria’ is a salsa show created for the Salsa NK 2019. It is a couple show by André and Julia, with which they came 2nd at the NK.
After these two shows we danced one more song to show the difference between a salsa show and social dancing.
Dancing with ‘La Banda Caliente’
This was 1 of the 3 surprises for us. We knew of course that there would be a live band, but not that it would be this much fun. La Banda Caliente played wonderful songs and varied from Cha-Cha and Merengue to Salsa (and Mambo!). An absolute success!
The stalls
The organisers had set up various stalls outside by the vineyard. With different kinds of food and ‘bits and bobs’. We really liked this because we hadn’t expected it at all. It’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised when we go somewhere to dance. So that was surprise 2 of the 3!
The man with the vinyl records
Between the stalls there was a gentleman playing music from his old records. It looked really funny because he had hung his record players over an art easel (very unique). So we went to have a look, and he had a crate full of records. Suddenly we saw a record by Sonora Matancera (an old band from Cuba).
We immediately asked him if he would play that record for us. He did so with great pleasure. And there we were dancing, next to an art easel with 2 record players beside the vineyard! Something never to forget. Thank you very much, Nederlandse Wijnbouwcentrum in Groesbeek.
That was in short what our Sunday 8 September 2019 looked like. We hope you enjoyed our stories. Do you have an event and would you also like a salsa demonstration? Contact us right away!
Watapana Dance Company
