Thanks to Tien, we have pictures from the Medley!

The ladies starting off the medley routine..

then the guys come in to funk it up.

Gil and Joey flying through the air.

Group shine.

Ending pose!

Doh! I look silly.

More Pictures!

Performing an all footwork and shine routine for five minutes is hard enough. Now try doing this with fifteen other dancers. Deadly.

I love mambo shines. Every since I first saw Frankie doing his “Welcome to the Party” routine, I have been obsessed with moving my feet faster and turning my body into a flexible rhythm machine.

I’m no Frankie, but this is one step (get it?) to mambo nirvana.

For more pictures, head on to: http://hamfats.ca/photos/ifs_green

Video

I have also included our shines routine which I have nick named affectionately as “The Swarm”. Hehe…

Performing is a funny business. The punch line usually involves long wait times punctuated with last minute frantic running and yelling. Since I usually have nothing to do backstage until performance time (besides drive my dance team members batshit about me complaining about nothing to do) I kill time by taking photos.

Shoes… one must always have their shoes prepared. And make sure everyone else in the room knows that your shoes are ready :)

Getting some shut eye before the big show. Me pretending I’m getting some shut eye.

Dance competitors waiting to perform at the Toronto Salsa Amateur Competition.

Chillin like villains.

Competitors anticipating the winning couple being called down.

Killing some time with some hoops.

The always impeccable Marlene.

Jason the latin talent of the IFS dance company.

Miss Lam doing her thing…

For more photos of this event, click on this link: http://hamfats.ca/photos/ifs-2009-circus-backstage.

As some of you might know, I dabble in various organizations to further my development as a dancer. The mambo dance team that I have had the fortunate opportunity to be a part of this this year is Caryl’s iFreestyle mambo training team.

This weekend, we had our first “SYTYCD-esque” challenge where we had to prepare our own solo choreography in which we fused a dance style with mambo shines. For my piece, I chose to fuse boogie soul together with NY cha cha to Joe Bataan’s song “Too Much Lovin’”. The following pictures below are from that event. My main source of inspiration was actually one of the main weaknesses of my own dancing – arms/hands styling. I wanted to force myself to actively put together routines showcases not just my fast footwork but also complimentary movement from my other limbs.

Sadly, being an avid photographer means that there are no pictures of me. Actually, that’s not so bad because I’m sure I look ridiculous.

Pictures