Review Hamburg Salsa Marathon
Hamburg marathon is the last days of each year ending with NYE, which was a wednesday this year so marathon started on saturday: five days made it a real marathon, you needed to think about how to maintain your energy. I liked that there was a 2-3 hour break between afternoon social and night party. Me as an afternoon lover I concentrated on afternoon socials.
Recently there is an explosion of salsa festivals in Hamburg, so this marathon is not to be mistaken with the Salsa Weekend in july (2nd edition), the Dance Congress in october, the Big3 SBK in january (1st edition) and there seem to be even more. Being asked about Hamburg scene a local girl answered: "Well, at least we got lots of festivals now".
This was my first marathon after two years of going to bigger festivals and getting tired of anonymous huge crowds. With 200 dancers it wasn't exactly small and at the upper limit of my tastes, but it was a more cozy family atmosphere where I could get repeated dances with the followers I liked and also had some talks. I liked the overall atmosphere.
Dance level was mixed from high to beginner, lots of great followers and I also saw some great leads. That said I also ran into newbie beginner followers, so with time I got pickier. It was far from the overwhelming homogenity of fantastic dancers at dancehouse events, but still lots of great dancers.
Music to my surprise was similar to the big mambo festivals : mainly salsa dura with a few romanticas in between (the only marathon I had been before years ago had a much slower, jazzy, experimental sound).
Good were: both locations, the free beverages and finger food, aircon, gender ratio, dancefloor never too crowded.
Problematic was sometimes the sound in both locations. One very experienced follower agreed with me and pointed out that romanticas sounded well while older guaguancos often sounded bad. Indeed after that conversation I experienced the same: one time the sound was really bad at the place where I was dancing (add a bad follower so it were hard minutes for me), after that a romantica song came up and the sound was good at the same place. I'm no DJ but I faintly remember having read that digital files can have very different quality depending where you get them from, so that might be a reason.
Each afternoon social ended with one hour chacha-only, and to my surprise it worked well: dancefloor stayed rather full, and the vibe was astonishing and exciting. I never saw a chacha-only floor before, I loved the vibe, music was great. Contrary to that the chacha experiment at Live2Mambo Budapest did not work, there I saw an empty floor because it was at an early hour and it was a separated smaller floor. Zeid, the L2M organizer, was here in Hamburg and saw it working better, so maybe he'll think about a new chacha concept for L2M.
Hamburg marathon is the last days of each year ending with NYE, which was a wednesday this year so marathon started on saturday: five days made it a real marathon, you needed to think about how to maintain your energy. I liked that there was a 2-3 hour break between afternoon social and night party. Me as an afternoon lover I concentrated on afternoon socials.
Recently there is an explosion of salsa festivals in Hamburg, so this marathon is not to be mistaken with the Salsa Weekend in july (2nd edition), the Dance Congress in october, the Big3 SBK in january (1st edition) and there seem to be even more. Being asked about Hamburg scene a local girl answered: "Well, at least we got lots of festivals now".
This was my first marathon after two years of going to bigger festivals and getting tired of anonymous huge crowds. With 200 dancers it wasn't exactly small and at the upper limit of my tastes, but it was a more cozy family atmosphere where I could get repeated dances with the followers I liked and also had some talks. I liked the overall atmosphere.
Dance level was mixed from high to beginner, lots of great followers and I also saw some great leads. That said I also ran into newbie beginner followers, so with time I got pickier. It was far from the overwhelming homogenity of fantastic dancers at dancehouse events, but still lots of great dancers.
Music to my surprise was similar to the big mambo festivals : mainly salsa dura with a few romanticas in between (the only marathon I had been before years ago had a much slower, jazzy, experimental sound).
Good were: both locations, the free beverages and finger food, aircon, gender ratio, dancefloor never too crowded.
Problematic was sometimes the sound in both locations. One very experienced follower agreed with me and pointed out that romanticas sounded well while older guaguancos often sounded bad. Indeed after that conversation I experienced the same: one time the sound was really bad at the place where I was dancing (add a bad follower so it were hard minutes for me), after that a romantica song came up and the sound was good at the same place. I'm no DJ but I faintly remember having read that digital files can have very different quality depending where you get them from, so that might be a reason.
Each afternoon social ended with one hour chacha-only, and to my surprise it worked well: dancefloor stayed rather full, and the vibe was astonishing and exciting. I never saw a chacha-only floor before, I loved the vibe, music was great. Contrary to that the chacha experiment at Live2Mambo Budapest did not work, there I saw an empty floor because it was at an early hour and it was a separated smaller floor. Zeid, the L2M organizer, was here in Hamburg and saw it working better, so maybe he'll think about a new chacha concept for L2M.
That's how bad it is, not only do we know the few good leads around, but also those who have the status but not necessarily the skills and better partners 
But nobody said life as a follow in a highly follow-heavy scene was supposed to be easy, right?
I thought I'm extreme with taking night buses but social dance during an airport stopover is another league.