The legendary Scalalatina nights are long-standing, well organised gigs run by The Latin Collective – www.latincollectiveuk.com – and are some of the biggest gigs on the salsa calendar. They are held at Scala, Pentonville Road, Kings Cross, London.
There are 4 separate rooms to choose from Salsa Max / Viva Cuba / Brazilian Beach Bums / Urban Latino.
These nights are held only 4 times a year, on Bank Holiday Sundays from 9.30pm to 6am!!! Now that’s what I really call a party, and together with the fact that they only happen 4 times a year, is probably what makes them so special – they are more of an ‘event’ than a gig. These gigs attract dancers from all over the UK and are a real mixed bag of dance styles and ability – the atmosphere is always friendly and I have made many new friends there.
The venue itself is very easy to get to and is literally only a few hundred yards from Kings Cross train/tube station. If you can manage to stick it out until the end it is daylight by the time you leave, which makes it safe walking back to your transport. This is especially good if you are a solo, female traveller like me.
Incidentally, whilst on the subject of travelling, if you are travelling from outside London, you can get coach travel from as little as £1 each way if you book online, in advance with National Express – www.nationalexpress.com – these tickets are called ‘Fun Fares’. Coaches run 24 hours a day, every hour from most major cities to London, so if you are travelling long distances like me, you get bargain priced travel which also saves driving whilst over tired if you’ve managed to stay until the end. The security staff at the door will check your bags on arrival, and any food and/or drinks found in your bag will be removed. If however you need your food and drinks for the long journey home like me, they will give you a ticket to reclaim them at the end.
The entrance fee is £12 or £9 if you are a member or have printed out one of the emails that the Latin Collective sends out. Membership is free, and you can sign up once you are inside the venue. There is a cloakroom in the lobby/main bar area and the charge is £2 per item.
The venue is an old building, with rooms on different levels with lots of stairways, passages and corridors, almost like a rabbit warren, which gives it a unique character. There are 3 levels of salsa classes at the beginning of the evening and usually a lambada class too.
There are 4 separate rooms, each with its own style of music. The Main room plays all styles of salsa by at least 4 different DJ’s, although different types of latin music aren’t generally played. Occasionally cha cha cha is played, but I have never heard bachata or merengue there – personally I would welcome the odd merengue or bachata track, but not everyone wants or likes it.
There is also a Lambada room upstairs and a dedicated Cuban room downstairs by the main bar and lobby. The dancefloor in the Cuban room is small and it gets extremely hot in there, plus people also dance in front of the bar as there isn’t enough room on the dancefloor, which isn’t the best idea as many drinks get spilled here, and your dance shoes end up wet on the bottom, which makes dancing difficult.
This is one of the few venues that provides an area for Cuban music and dancers and as Cuban is my preferred style it gets two thumbs up from me. This room also has 2-3 different DJ’s.
At the Easter 2007 gig, the Cuban room had been moved upstairs to what had in the past been the Lambada room. For all us Cuban style dancers, this was a fantastic improvement – much bigger room and dancefloor, and not like a sweat box as in the smaller room. We all made full use of the bigger room, and the party was really rocking in there – Cuban style of course. If we are very lucky, this may be a permanent arrangement. This room has its own bar.
There is also a chill-out room which normally plays RnB type music and has glass walls that look out onto the Main salsa room. Again, this room also has its own bar. On the Easter night the RnB music was being played in what was the Cuban room. The dancefloors can be a little sticky in places, especially around the edges where drinks tend to get spilled, but they are far from the worst dancefloors I’ve ever seen, and to be honest it’s not enough of a problem to have a detrimental effect on the night.
These nights regularly attract up to 1200 dancers, so between midnight and 3am the main dancefloor can be very crowded, particularly in August which tends to be the busiest of the 4 events. The best thing to do during the busiest hours is to keep going on walkabouts - by 3am some dancers start to leave and the dancefloor gets less manic.
At each event there are always dance showcases, of all kinds of dance styles, and sometimes even dancewear fashion shows. The shows are generally well worth seeing and also provide welcome breaks throughout the night – when you have 8 or so hours of dancing ahead of you, believe me, you need every break you get.
There are 3 bars in the building so you never have too far to go for another drink – bar prices are a little on the expensive side, with soft drinks, water, beers, wines and spirits etc costing between £2.00-£4.00, but so long as you go prepared its not a problem. All in all these nights are fantastic – there truly is something for everyone. They attract anyone and everyone, all ages, styles and abilities. The many DJ’s play varied music and if you don’t like the music one particular DJ is playing, then you just go to another room to find something that suits you better.
You get hours and hours of dancing time, so great value for money, with some great shows thrown in for good measure. If you can manage to keep going until the end, then in my opinion the last 2-3 hours are the best – you’ve really warmed up, there is more space on the dancefloor, all the other rooms have shut down between 3 and 4am so everyone is in the main room, you’ve already had some great dances so you know who to go back to for more fab dances and I tend to find that some of the best music of the night is played during the last couple of hours.
I regularly travel 4+ hours to go to these events and it remains my favourite salsa venue. Check it out sometime - 1200 dancers can’t be wrong. This is a marathon of a night and the mother of all salsa gigs, so tips for going the distance are: get a good night’s sleep the night before, drink plenty of water, take frequent small breaks, pace yourself and whatever you do, don’t sit down for too long or you will never get up again. Some painkillers for the following day are a good idea too!
