By Rachel Solotti
Warren & Donna Frost and their troupe of dancers will take South Island salsa dancing to the world at a major international conference in Sydney this weekend.
The pair, who run the city branch of Hot Tempo (now Latin Fire) in Armagh St, will head a troupe of 11 dancers, aged 20-45 years old, who will perform at the Sydney Salsa Congress held at the Sydney Olympic Park this weekend.
It is the fist time a South Island team has been invited to perform at the Congress, which is in its third year and is the Australian salsa industrys biggest event, with more than 2,000 spectators.
The Christchurch team, which consists of four men and seven women, will join a children’s salsa troupe from Wanganui and another adult’s team from Auckland.
The three teams were selected to represent New Zealand at a national Salsa Conference in Rotorua last Easter.
The teams will perform along with other international performers from as far away as South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States.
During the day, they will take part in workshops held by some of the world’s top salsa dancers, including four times world champions Oliver Pineda and Luda Kroitor from Australia, who also performed on Dancing with the Stars across the Tasman.
Donna Frost said the congress was a great chance to perform internationally and to learn from some of the world’s best salsa dancers.
“It’s a real celebrity session of Salsa,” she said.
She said getting a chance to perform on the international stage for the first time meant they could be asked to perform at other overseas congresses in the future.
It was also a huge achievement for the dancers, most of whom were untrained dancers.
“Eighty per cent have just done some salsa classes then we have trained them. Most troupes have all got trained ballet or jazz dancers” she said.