Song: “Aguanile” by Héctor Lavoe & Willie Colón
2020 was not an easy year to say the least, and it was an especially difficult time being a salsa dancer, with global lockdowns and restrictions virtually shutting down all dance studios and venues, no salsa congresses and festivals, and no social dancing.
But 2020 also brought with it opportunities as well. The pandemic allowed me to work from home full time for the first time, and my dance partner moved all her classes online, providing us with more time than ever to work on our dancing and our craft.
At the start of the pandemic many instructors started organizing “salsa challenges” to keep people dancing, and at first that kept us occupied, but evnetually we got tired of being stuck at home. So we started going outside to dance instead, and started recording little videos for Instagram on our phone.
As the pandemic wore on, we moved from using our phones to record to using my mirrorless camera (a Fuji X-T3) and a gimbal from stabilization. 9 months, 3 drones, and over a dozen videos later we’ve made it to the end of the year.
Looking back it’s amazing how much better our videos have become from those first few clips shot on an iPhone. The pandemic has helped us discover a passion for creating videos and given us the time to become better videographers, editors, and dancers.
As the year comes to a close and a new year dawns promsing an end to the pandemic, we look forward to traveling more and continuing to push our art in new directions.
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