Super Mario himself admits about his pattern oriented dancing, kind of acknowledging limitations. He is a nicer person and humble, making him likeable. He has also managed to stay relevant all these years. None of that means his dancing is at advanced level of other stars. He has a lot of name recognition, but if we strictly look at his dancing it is not in same tier as say Terry, ET Jr, and many of the current stars.
Festival and Travel Planner 2026
- Thread starter azana
- Start date
Agree. A good salsa social dancing is its own skill. People hardly recognize nor celebrate good social dancing. They get enamored by what they see on the stage and now on the social media. People are attracted to performative aspects of dancing. That puts more pressure on the leaders.
That’s I skipped “average” category if you noticed
I suspect 90% of dancers will differ too.
I will agree and disagree. Across partner dancing, irrespective of which partner dance people converge on the same thing - connection, musicality, responsiveness, smoothness, not being rough, etc. When it comes to social dancing, again irrespective of the whether salsa, swing, tango, kizomba, etc, people will give a pass to stars if they violate one of those things people converge on.
But I do agree people value differently who they like to dance with. It becomes the case of what they say is not what they practice.
In short what you are saying is that discussion about what constitutes excellence is silly. That’s true for most things in life. People hardly bother about excellence and put more premium on performative aspects, which is true whether it is politics, arts, science, business, or sports. However the society advances due to excellence of a few whether that is acknowledged or not. To take an example people were skeptical and hardly recognize the excellence of mRNA approach.
For decades, the scientific community treated mRNA (messenger RNA) like a fragile, high-maintenance relative of DNA. It was largely dismissed as too unstable and too inflammatory for practical use till Covid. But imagine if those few who did toiled away despite it, had given up. It is easy to recognize excellence in hindsight.
I was referring to mainly festivals. But it also applies to large socials which are a feature of metros with strong salsa dancing presence.
I watched it without sound for about 20 seconds. Yes I would put it into good social dancing. Reasons:
1. Follower is expressive
2. The leader is giving time and space to the follower to express. At least not getting in the way.
3. The connection looks good.
4. The leader looks light in his leading.
5. They complement each other.
I say looks because we can’t tell how it feels.
Without the sound too it looks like there is musicality in the dance (primary due to the follower). This dance is an example of leader is the frame and follower is the picture.
salsaholica
Changui
Finally somebody who comments about the video and answered the origoinal question. I am here to add that I saw this guy dancing at PISC 2025 and I remember him that after similar dance like the one in the Video he danced with an older lday, mabye around 60 years. He was very nice and the lady had a really nice time. I was very impressed since I did not expect this at all.
I disagree. A lot of people celebrate good social dancing. That's why marathons still continue to be a staple in the Salsa community (at least in Europe).
There is a lot of hero worship going on, but there is also a lot of good social dance worship going on as well.
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People push good social dancing on social media just as much as celebrity dancing. Salsa especially.
I recently tried searching videos of Bachata social dancing on Youtube. I couldn't find any. It's all demos and other curated videos.
How come there isn't a dedicated videographer filming random nobodies in Bachata?
Anyone else attending Bucharest Salsa revolution? If yes, do you find the floor good? It's marble and yesterday at the evening party suede soles became progressively more sticky, to the point where I barely could pivot, leave alone spin. Brushing didn't really help, just trying to understand whether I'm doing something wrong or the floor is off.
No shade to the orgs, I know they had to change the venue last moment (same building but different room)
No shade to the orgs, I know they had to change the venue last moment (same building but different room)
Yes. Let's dance. I agree wrt floor. Also sound not good. Orgs know about that.
Yay, let's dance! Not sure how to identify you, I'm one of a very few ladies at the festival wearing glasses
Yes, it's hard to find any social dance videos from celeb bachateros. The same in WCS. In Bachata videographers come filming at the end of a workshop, showing year long dance partners showing their signature moves. In WCS filming is in competition finals. Both have this spotlight dance culture, where they always get filmed dancing alone on the floor: more space to do fancy moves and both can concentrate on themselves. And then mostly cutted into a 20 seconds clip. That's more suitable for social media.
But for me that's the strong part of salsa: emphasis on social dance and videos of full songs. That's closer to real dancing.
I was one of the very few wearing flip-flops
Not sure what you mean by bolded. The WCS has strongest social dancing culture of all partner dances I have experienced. It is also most democratic in that anyone dances with anyone else.
The top level J&J dances have been always recorded and long before it became a social media thing to do so. Even then one thing that distinguishes them are that they are impromptu and totally improvised. For example compared to Tango, where the acclaimed tango dancers rarely change partners for performance (unless partnership breaksup). Tango performances aren’t wholly improvised.
Fancy moves done in J&J are also improvised from what I have witnessed. And they mostly fit the music better. Can’t say about the performances in other dances.
Salsa is an oddity in that so much social dancing gets video recorded. I consider that a negative about salsa culture of social dancing.
Being recorded on video is a great way to spot mistakes that would otherwise be ignored so I can't say that all this recording is bad. On the other hand it feeds into this whole culture of needing to be seen.
They call it spotlight dancing when one couple dances alone in the finals, as opposed to many couples sharing a dancefloor. In social media age many people get attracted to a dance by viewing videos, as opposed to the times when friends took you along to bar where salsa was danced. The approach and expectations are different when people see a couple dancing alone vs. seeing a video from a social dance floor.
Good salsa social dance is usually more visually appealing than stage performances. And easier to feel yourself being part of it.