When my bus pulled into Cali at 3am in the morning, I was a bit nervous because of the reputation Cali has as a dangerous place. After 3 days in the city, I found people to be very charming in Cali, even more so than Bogota and other Ecuador.My three days there were filled with nothing but Salsa. By chance, while looking for a school to take some classes in Colombian style salsa with their famous super fast footwork, I saw Fundacion Escuela Baile Swing Latino in the directory! Wait, aren’t they the 3x world salsa champions, whose videos I have seen many times in Youtube? Lalo from Tony’s class was the first person who told me about them. I called the phone number, but no answer. I went to their listed address, but they had moved. Fortunately their new address was listed on the door. When I finally got there, a few people were standing outside. I didn’t recognize the director Luis Hernandez, nicknamed El Mulato, at the time.
He invited me into the house. And guess what’s on TV? Salsa! Apparently I had just missed the World Salsa Festival in Cali by about two weeks. His family was watching the performances of the other teams. I felt the energy in the house. I could tell that they eat, breathe, live salsa. Trophies lie around the house; posters of past salsa performances are on the walls. Pick a random saturday afternoon, and you see salsa performances on TV. This is the environment you are
in when you want to get to the top of anything. I was nothing short of amazed.
One of the performances from the salsa festival can be seen here. The small kid in the show is only 6 years old. They have combined Charlie Chaplin-Michael Jackson footwork into Salsa shines.
Catching a flight now to Miami and then Taiwan.