News

Fernando Sosa, the director of Tropical Gem and one of the most well-known salsa dancers in the world, officially retired from the performance world today with a final performance at the Camana Club in Milan, Italy. The performance, fittingly titled “The Last Dance”, paid homage to Fernando Sosa and his many decades of performing, featuring …

The Las Vegas Super Congress, one of the largest salsa events held in the US, announced that they will be moving this year’s event to the Westgate Las Vegas Resort. The Las Vegas Salsa Congress, now in it’s 21st year, has been held every year at the Tropicana Hotel on the south end of the …

Salsa dancers across the country performed during NBA halftime shows in the past month as a part of Latin heritage celebrations organized by various NBA teams. In California, SJSU’s salsa dance team, Spartan Mambo, performed during the halftime show of the Golden State Warriors at the newly built Chase Center in San Francisco. The team …

The U.S. Mint has announced that Celia Cruz, the “Queen of Salsa”, will be featured on US quarters next year, as part of their American Women Quarters Program. The American Women Quarters Program is a four-year long program celebrating the accomplishments and achievements of women in the United States. Celia Cruz (who passed away in …

The World Latin Dance Cup (WLDC) announced today via a livestream that the 2023 World Latin Dance Cup competition will be held February 6-12, 2023 in Cartagena, Colombia. This will be the first return of the World Latin Dance Cup since December of 2019. The 2021 competition was held online due to the pandemic, and …

We’ve created our first NFT! NFTs or non-fungible tokens, if you’re not aware, are a way of creating unique digital assets that are stored on a blockchain. Rather than bits and bytes, which are infinitely replicable, NFTs allow for the creation of unique digital items which can be owned. For our first project we created …

The 2021 World Salsa Summit wrapped up this past weekend. Held in Miami, Florida, the World Salsa Summit was one of the first in-person salsa competitions to be held in-person (in contrast to the World Latin Dance Cup, which was held online). The competition was understandably smaller than in previous years, but still attracted top …

A group of organizers for the International Salsa Museum (ISM) held a press conference yesterday outside of the Kingsbridge Armory where they hope to open a museum dedicated to salsa music and dance. The ISM is a non-profit organization that seeks to “educate, increase the public’s awareness, and preserve Salsa music’s rich cultural history” through …

Update: The 2022 WLDC was cancelled, but dates for the 2023 World Latin Dance Cup have been announced. The World Latin Dance Cup announced on their Facebook page today that the competition will be returning in-person again from April 11-17, 2022. The 2021 competition was held completely virtually this year due to the pandemic, with …

The much anticipated musical In The Heights released this week in theaters, featuring several dance scenes featuring incredible salsa performances. The film is based on a stage stage musical of the same name, and is set in the predominantly Dominican Washington Heights neighborhood in New York City. In The Heights is directed by Jon M. …

Johnny Pacheco, considered by many to be the “godfather of salsa music” passed away today at age 85 from an undisclosed cause. Pacheco, originally from the Dominican Republic, moved to the Bronx in the 1940s where he developed his talent for music. Pacheco attended the Juilliard School in New York City, and started his own …

Omar Muñoz, the founder and director of the Omambo Dance Project, announced today that he has decided to end the team after 7 years in operation. Founded in 2013 in Los Angeles, Omambo Dance Project quickly grew to become one of the top competitive dance teams in the world. Omar drew on his experience as …

The 2021 World Latin Dance Cup Moves Online 2020 was a year that saw most salsa competitions cancelled due to the pandemic, and with widespread vaccination still on the horizon, the World Latin Dance Cup (WLDC) has announced that their 2021 competition will be held online. The 2021 WLDC will be a month-long online extravaganza, …

Day one of the 2019 World Latin Dance Cup has begun, and the live stream of the competition is now available to view on the WLDC Facebook page: WLDC 2019 Livestream If you don’t have access to Facebook, the competition is also being streamed live on the World Latin Dance Cup YouTube page. The stage …

The World Latin Dance Cup announced the dates today for the 2019 competition. This year’s WLDC (which is being moved to Medellín, Colombia) will be held from December 6th-15h, 2019. In keeping with previous years, the first two days will likely be qualifiers for competitors who have not yet qualified at other competitions, followed by …

The World Latin Dance Cup announced today that their competition this year will be moving to Medellín, Colombia, in an announcement they teased for the past 2 weeks. This year will mark the 10 year anniversary for the World Latin Dance Cup, which has had many homes over the years. The first competition was held …

Jonathan y Jorge, the same gender salsa duo currently competing in World of Dance, successfully defeated their competition during “Duels” today and qualified for the next round of the competition. After 3 weeks of qualifiers, the Duels pit dance couples against each other, with the winner of each duel moving onto the next round. Jonathan …

Following on the heels of Ricardo & Karen from last season, another salsa couple has made it onto NBC’s World of Dance reality competition show, and this time it’s a same gender duo. Jonathan Troncoso & Jorge Valcarcel are well known dancers in the competitive salsa scene, and they easily made it through the qualifying …

Two salsa dancers from the San Francisco Bay Area, John Narvaez and Andrew Cervantes, will be auditioning tonight on America’s Got Talent at 8pm PST on NBC. John Narvaez is the director of Salsamania Dance Company based in Alameda, and he and Andrew are 3-time winners of the World Latin Dance Cup in the Same …