Why Columbus has Potential
This is going to be the first entry in the CapCity Salsa Blog that is not centered around the music and goings-on of a Vintage Salsa Night and so, we thought it would be appropriate to start with a minor Salsa health check-up. The same way you might go to the doctor in order to get a baseline assessment done, we’re going to start with a baseline assessment of the salsa scene here in Columbus.
Being a person who finds himself dedicated to salsa and traveling some distance in order to get his fix, we have had the distinct pleasure of dancing in other cities. The bulk of my experience is in, what you could call, the Eastern Midwest, that region bounded by Chicago, the Great Lakes, the Eastern Seaboard, and the South. I’ll start off my assessment with one of the few things that Columbus does not have in its favor, and that is that with few exceptions, almost all other significant cities in the Eastern Midwest are close enough to a major Congress-Throwing salsa city to make a Saturday night out of it. For the most part, Columbus is just far enough away from everywhere that it is a regional player. At CapCity Salsa, (now this may be cheesy, but work with us), we have a dream that Columbus can one day be one of those cities that people will come do weekend trips to. We dream that one day, Columbus will be a major Congress-Throwing salsa city. While we may not be close to any current major cities, we are within a 4 hour drive of over 15 metropolitan statistical areas. If that isn’t potential, then I don’t know what is.
Another, and this one is major, issue that Columbus really has going for it is that it has a genuine salsa community. There are people that dance different styles, but no one claims the throne of “Right” and refuses to learn. There are different teachers and studios, but there is no animosity. There are people from different backgrounds, but no one is left out. I read a speech once attempting the difficult task of defining community and the speaker did one of the better jobs that I’ve seen. By his method, a community is a group of people that have two things in common: shared experience and shared purpose. Shared experience is simple, from the most micro element of a couple dancing together to the larger element of a salsa night even up to the overlap in musical selection heard by salsa dancers around the world. The Columbus dancers, irrefutably, have shared experience. Shared purpose can be a little bit trickier, however. Some people are out just to have some drinks and listen to the music, while others are out to spend time with their friends (and coincidentally they do that while dancing). Some people are looking for love while others are just trying to blow off steam and there is that weird guy in the corner dancing by himself that just loves the feeling of moving to the music. However, we believe that everyone shares the purpose of enjoying their experience dancing, whatever ends they seek from it. It is because we share these experiences and these purposes and are accepting of differences that we are a true community… and that is what gives us potential.
The last reason that Columbus has potential is that it has passion. At least three times in 2009 alone, Columbus has shown up in another City in droves. Whether it was the February Baila Duro where we had 17 people, or the October Baila Duro Extreme where we had 18, or the tons of people that made it down for the Cincinnati Salsa Festival or the thousands of people that showed up for Spanish Harlem Orchestra at the Festival Latino. Columbus loves salsa. Let’s draw from a seemingly unrelated event… the Dublin Irish Festival this year brought in Salsa Celtica! There is so much love for salsa in Columbus that they can’t keep it out of non-salsa or non-latin events! The reason that we say Columbus has incredible potential is that people are only beginning to put together that this wonderful sound they can’t get enough of is called salsa and that the only thing better than listening to salsa is dancing to it.
We believe Columbus has vast, vast potential and so we would like to send a message to everyone listening out in cyberspace. The gist is… get out of town and dance. Columbus is a single cell in the vast international body of salsa and it is local dancers that go out of town that keep us connected. The lifeblood of salsa dancing is those shared experiences, don’t deprive everyone else of experiencing you!
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