Not just standard practice - it's a legal requirement for licensed places (i.e. those allowed to sell alcohol) in England, Wales and Scotland to offer tap water.
When he first put out his little video on cutting back, the only reasons he mentioned were his fear of flying, the increasing hassle at airports and wanting to spend more time on London school. There was nothing there about any issues with filming.
Me the same. Maybe there is a culture difference between europe salsa and bay area salsa with all its techies?
Even the young salseros like Jacopo&Linda or Samuel&Lisa have only around 10k followers on insta, while bachata couples have > 100k. Salseros are not very active with it and the scene is also not so interested in it. Bachata and WCS are very much instagram dances, for good or for worse (they also attract non-dancers to watch or even follow them, while this hardly will happen with salsa).
I was talking only about the festival.
I have never noticed larger smartphone filming at EU festivals.I was talking only about the festival.
Video shooting at scale seen, got popularized from Europe
At music festivals or dance festivals do the pouches stay with you?
At SF SBK, my impression was many of these friends recording friends were out of towners. It must be their first festival or only festival of the year. Unlike Europe, in the USA for most people traveling to festivals is one off event. If repeated they might do it once in two years or so.
I certainly have. The worst offenders coming to mind are Berlin last year where I saw numerous lines of girls for 'celeb' leads where girls either had a friend waiting with them to record them or they'd ask the next in line (this year was actually also pretty bad in some corners, now that I think of it. You'd always walk into somebody's recording). Rome (Mambo Italiano) was also pretty bad in that regards: there was somebody filming something everywhere where you went pretty much at all times.
Ok, then celebs make the difference. At Stuttgart and Geneva festival there were no celebs, therefore no filming. But even at Dancehouse events or Magic I don't remember excessive filming nor long lines of girls waiting. A female friend of mine danced with Terry in Paris and I didn't film her because she hadn't asked for that. I don't see this excessive filming, but ok maybe at other festivals that might happen.
I often take out my phone to read the notice about those news moves I wanted to lead but have forgotten entering the venue. People might think I'm checking my messages, indeed I'm just struggling with my memory as most leads do.
That would be a good start. I think I might like specific 'filming hours' even moreMay be the festivals should have a designated area - if you want to be filmed, dance here. The rest who want to dance can stay away. Send all the celebrities to dance in designated area
I strongly disagree. I know plenty of people with 10+ more years of salsa experience who don't like what the recording culture is doing to the social scene. It's not about minding to be in a video per se for most, it's rather about the changed dynamics of the dance, about people oftentimes not dancing with each other as much as with the camera, the perceived necessity to dance ever flashier, even some 'aggressiveness' sometimes. So many of the things Mario mentioned in that video from Berlin, essentially... Also the cliquishness this phenomenon produces: you'll notice there're always certain pairings being filmed of a technically rather small group of regular congress goers. That increases the likelihood of these people dancing among each other most of the time, as this has obviously produced good results in the past and one would want to recreate 'good' results, right? In fact, the likelihood of me as a follower being rejected by a lead who doesn't know me in a recording-heavy setting is much higher than in a less social-media driven one. And it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the level. In fact, the average level of leads was considerably lower in Mambo Italiano than in Amsterdam and I don't think I received any rejections in A-Dam, but quite a few in Rome.