What’s Wrong With Salsa Festivals

I attended many salsa festivals in the last two years, and I’m already getting bored. I’m starting to prefer smaller events in the usual time zone. Do you want to know why? Because of…

• poor organization. In Czech, we have a famous joke from one play (read something about our Greatest Czech, Cimrman!): He built a pub in the middle of a forest, but people were coming anyway. Organizers, be prepared to have people there. Put signs at proper places and have space for a queue at the registration desk.
• very dark rooms. So dark that followers have a problem to see hands. The worst combination is a dark room with powerful reflectors directed to the dancer’s eyes.
• hidden DJ. If I like the music, I want to tell that to the DJ and ask him what’s the name of the song. If I don’t like it, I want to be able to ask the DJ if he or she can change the mood. When the DJ is on stage very far from the edge without any access, it isn’t good.
• hidden DJ schedule. People have favorite DJs, and they don’t want to miss them. Trying hard to hide this information, so people have to come to the whole party is unwelcome. They will not go anyway.
• many photographers, or even cameramen. Look at some people dancing when no one takes pictures of them. They enjoy themselves. And then start taking pictures of them… Even when I try not to do that myself, it’s hard. And it’s worse and worse. Lately, I saw four cameras for just one couple! Another bad thing about cameras is light. It’s hard to dance when you don’t see well because of the light.
• surprises. I love surprises. Positive ones. Surprise when the party is interrupted in the middle of the best part because of some show or animation… is only about to kill the party. Not positive at all.
• no space at the busiest place. I still don’t get it, but many dancers prefer to dance in the most crowded place very close to the DJ. It’s always a place with the highest ratio of the best dancers around. It needs to have space there; putting to that place a bar, for example, is very… well, not clever.
• fancy drinks. Just don’t do that. Keep some standard ones. If you want some fancy drink, keep standard ones as well.
• pay bracelets. If you don’t have enough money, that solution is going to suck. It’s going to be slower than chips or even regular money. Trust me; I’m a computer programmer. To make an excellent system cost a lot of money.
• time zone. And the worse of all is that people like to come to the party at 2 am. Or 3 am, 4 am, sometimes even later. After shifting sleep just by one hour, one whole day is needed to adjust back to a normal day. I like myself, so I don’t want to do that. I don’t care that the best part of the party is at 5 am. I simply hate organizers not to manage to have a party at a normal hour.

And because of that I really hate to pay so much money (hello, Paris!). I wish organizers would care more. Anyway, I hope to see many awesome events with many awesome people!