Fire up your love for all things Latin during festival

For a region with a burgeoning appreciation of Latin music and dance, this weekend's Latin Fest at the Oceanfront is an opportunity to go all out. It's a big deal, said Marquita Bianca, a Virginia Beach Latin dance instructor, and something the Hispanic community as a whole goes to support.

The Latin music scene is definitely growing; five years ago, when I started dancing, we just had Tropicana. Now, there are a handful of local spots where salseros and salseras go to dance to salsa, merengue and bachata, all varying types of Latin music you'll hear on the beach this weekend. The bonus of the festival is that live bands are playing the music.

That's still the exception in Hampton Roads, where there are few local Latin bands, and the scene is dominated by DJs and dancing. With salsa addicts lamenting that there's still no spot devoted exclusively to Latin music in town, the crowd will be ready to show its love this weekend. Mike Hilton, program manager for BeachEvents, which puts on Latin Fest, said last year's attendance was close to 5,000. The 8-year-old party also is getting more notable and impressive acts, like Friday night headliner Locos Por Juana, which was nominated for a 2009 Grammy, and La Excelencia Orchestra, a New York group praised for its hard salsa sound. It plays Saturday night.

The Hispanic community is very passionate about their music, said Dave Bowling, sales director for Selecta 1050, an AM station that's the only one in this market to play Latin music 24/7. Listeners tend to spend some 20 to 24 hours a week tuning in, he said, which is on par with a national average for FM stations. Bowling, who ran a marketing company before moving to the station three years ago, helps book the fest's entertainment. Each year they try to bring a new twist, and this year's is that, instead of salsa, free lessons will be offered in Zumba, a zesty sort of hybrid of Latin and purely aerobic dances. One of the instructors is from Mambo Room, the year-old dance studio in Norfolk devoted to Latin, African and Caribbean dance. While Zumba is not a traditional Latin dance, that doesn't matter much to the people excited about the fest, which presents opportunities to dance to Latin music new and old.

Most people don't know the difference between salsa, merengue and bachata, said Sandra Sanchez, who co-owns Mambo Room and runs a Hispanic community Web site, SaborHR.com. Unless you're Latin, everything is salsa. And that's OK with her. It's not frustrating. I'm a salsaholic. Seven Cities Salsa, which promotes salsa nights and classes at local nightclubs, has seen a continued uptick in membership, and Latin Fest provides the perfect opportunity to show people how much fun they're having. At Avanti, said Adina Gaskin of Virginia Beach, who started the group two years ago as a pet project, it's to the point where you almost can't dance it's so crowded. We get so crowded in one place we need somewhere else to go. In December her Web site had 6,000 page views. Last month there were 20,000. Dancing, of course, has its benefits other than the social. I don't have to go to the gym. I just dance. You can't hear Latin music and not dance. And there are other benefits, even for people who may not fully get the breadth of what they're experiencing. It's a learning experience, Bowling said. It's a joy to see families come enjoy themselves - to watch an 80-year-old grandmother dance with her 6-year-old grandchildren. He might not get all of it, but he's welcomed and has a ball. They call me Bubba Gringo, he joked.