The Latin Festival Madras 2021 was smaller but quite a memorable one as we tried to bring in all aspects of a festival. We had the pandemic edition spread over 4 weekends and one of the things we managed to pull through were the Performances. Each weekend we had a choreography ending with a show at that Sunday night.
Unfortunately and coincidently, Sneha & I fell sick on the same day and the Kizomba bootcamp had to be cancelled. But all other bootcamp shows went as per schedule!
Hip Hop
Kick starting with the first weekend was Hip Hop bootcamp and show. Mr. Dezee a.k.a Dinesh with a professional experience of over 15 years in teaching Hip Hop made the show look so good considering none of the performers are training in Hip Hop usually! You could see the fun and the high energy as each performer gave their best on the show night!
Salsa
The second weekend was supposed to be Kizomba and it got cancelled. That brings us to the show night for the 3rd weekend. In spite of the break in the weekend show, the enthusiasm of the dancers never went down. They took up the challenge of learning the routine in just 4 hours and performed like a pro. We had a total of 8 couples performing this show.
The choreography was created initially to teach an online Bootcamp for Tanzschule Conny & Dado by Julia & me in Graz for one of the Live Streaming sessions. Sneha assisted in teaching to the Festival Participants in Chennai for the Bootcamp.
The song is quite a favourite from a dear friend and DJ from Graz - DJ Lindo. It's called El Fantasma
Bachata
I enjoyed the song and came up with a fun shines for a class in 2019 and eventually ended up extending into a partner routine with Sneha for students to perform with us. We did a student showcase in 2019 for the summer special. Since it's a fun routine, we decided to redo it again for the bootcamp during the Festival. We had 6 women and 12 guys for the show and we had do a little tweaking to allow everyone to be a part of the show. And guess what, it worked!
Name of the song is Bailemos Despacio by Dani J
Team Show
Until 2 days before the show, we weren't sure of performing. I just wanted to try to remember this routine and we did rehearse a couple of times during the team training. With the team insisting, we decided to perform and we did a good job, esp. considering the limited time we rehearsed. I was glad, I didn't mess up the routine and it felt really good to be back on the stage! This is also my favourite routine to choreograph as it has a lot of fun & different elements. I personally look forward to perform many more times with the team at various festivals in the future.
Song: Iglesia Rumbera by La Maxima 79
The performances were a small part of the 4 weekends of the festival but the experience of being able to train and perform together was a lost feeling due to pandemic and this brought back that experience again. I am very grateful to all the performers who decided to take up the challenge and made the time so memorable, be it training or performing. I am looking forward to create more such memories with all the dancers. The festival did end with the 4 weekends of craziness but we all bonded so much like a happy little family.
until over next shows...
