These nights at La Tasca, Deansgate, Manchester are brand new salsa nights which will be held on a monthly basis, on the 3rd Friday of each month, and this was the launch night on the 17th August 2007 that I went to.
I was told that these events are organised by Club La Vida Loca, but are supported by two other Manchester based salsa companies, i.e. Mancuban and Latino Euphoria.The aim of these nights is to bring everyone together, teachers and students like, once a month to practice, swap new moves, and generally have a good time.They are also a good opportunity for the students to practice Rueda, which is taught on a regular basis in the Manchester area. (I believe that Club La Vida Loca have classes and dancing at La Tasca every Friday and Saturday night, but the monthly ones have an emphasis on Cuban style salsa and Rueda).
These nights are free of charge and start at 10.30pm.There are no classes, just informal dancing, which continues until 2am.
La Tasca Manchester is the same as all the other La Tasca’s nationwide with Spanish/Latin decoration and atmosphere to match, so they make a great environment for salsa nights.In Manchester the function room is downstairs, below street level, and has no outside ventilation and quite low ceilings.Despite this though, it has a great air conditioning system, so although you get hot from dancing, the room itself doesn’t get overly hot which is great.The dancefloor is good too which was also a bonus.
We arrived shortly before 11pm, so the evening had only just started and numbers were quite low.But as is the case with all salsa nights, the people soon started to arrive and it soon got busy.For the first part of the evening however, I’d say there was a 50/50 mix of dancers and ‘salsa tourists’ from the restaurant upstairs, which is a common problem when the event is free and the venue is also used by non-dancers.
Understandably (because the music is so great) the restaurant customers hear the music from downstairs, discover there is a free salsa night going on, and decide to go and check it out whilst they are there.Of course, the whole salsa scene would grind to a halt if there wasn’t a constant flow of new dancers getting involved, and its exactly nights like these that let the non-dancers see what ‘this salsa thing’ is all about, and then decide they want to learn properly, which can only be a good thing.I don’t mind the non-dancers getting on the dancefloor and having a go, but I do object when a small percentage of the over-zealous ones start flinging themselves around, and knocking into everyone around them.
Predictably though, before too long the non-dancers decided to call it a night and move onto the nearest nightclub, leaving the dancefloor to the rest of us salseros :o)As many salseros tend not to turn up until after midnight anyway, most of the dancers would have been unaffected by the non-dancers, and from about that time until the end, we all had free-run of the floor – which we made full use of!The music was good but as usual, the night ended all too soon.
The night didn’t seem to have been promoted that well, and many of the people from that area that I spoke to during the day, knew nothing about it.Despite this, there were still enough dancers and teachers to make it a good night, and for a launch night, which can sometimes be touch and go, it was a really good effort.
I think that with a bigger push on promoting the event, which will encourage more dancers to check it out, that this could turn into a great night.
