More Salsa Dance Problems in Germany Part 2

“The Truth Must Be Told”. The anonymous writers explained in the first part of this series of articles how they perceived the general Salsa scene in Germany. Now they explain the problems they have had with not getting fair chances, and their passion driving them to overcome these obstacles. The first part of this series can be read here. At the end, the anonymous pair explain their first unpleasant personal encounter with the manner in which mister Gervais - of the flopped Queen Salsa Festival Bremen 2010  – conducts his business.

Salsa Employer working against her own Staff

Anonymous said, “Somewhere last year we started to work at one of the local dance schools in our German town. A month later, we were put into the smallest room the school has to offer by the owner, although we had 40 students in our class. I saw that we were being played to loose clients and to not compete with the established dance style of the school, and we were not given any newcomers to look at our classes. Next thing the owner does: Moves our classes to another day, depleting our class of students. They all wrote in with letters asking for their great teachers, but the room was too small and we could not change our schedule again. Class size went down to 10 students. We thought to ourselves: we wanted to show a willing spirit of cooperation, but they are trying to get rid of our classes. We talked to the owner and tried to point out these problems to no avail. It was time to move on, without quitting.”

This is something that is happening right now all around the world. There are Salsa and Latin dance school owners who first decide to form an alliance or hire Salsa dance instructors in order for the school to grow exponentially. What they do not tell their new 'partners' is the following catch: they are not supposed to get bigger or more popular than their employers.

The following clip was made in 2008, and shows how Germans dance Social Salsa.

Established Congress organizers ignore cry for Help

“The month after we quit, we rented a huge dance studio with no students by our side, and we did not advertise to our existing students to abandon ship. We continued teaching them Salsa at our former employer's school. Imagine the guts it took to sign a 6 month contract to pay for this place without one student? In 15 days we picked up 15 or 16 dancers who saw us dancing and wanted to learn how to perform. To add to our plight we received no replies from other established Salsa Congress promoters, who we turned to for exposure.

Friendly Cash Contests and Shrewd German Flyer Policy

The anonymous Salsa Dance instructors did not let these trials and tribulations stop them. They explain how quite the contrary happened, “To be known - and to not be pigeon holed - we organized cash prize give-aways to local dancers, so that people would know us, hear about us, and start coming to our Salsa Socials.”

“In the month after our Salsa dancers contest, we took to the streets with posters and flyers, only to learn that Germany has very strict policies on where you are permitted to advertise. The cities make money by providing tabloids, tunnel, and city posters for the astronomical price of € 1,500 for 80 small poster spots. Our posters and signs were returned to us with the threat of a severe fine. At this point, after turning for help to others who have huge mailing lists and don't want to help or will only help for a fee, we decided its time to spend advertisement money on a small festival, where we can get to be known. We were hoping to gather lots of emails where our advertisement can be more personal and effective,” the secret Salsa artists concluded.

Our First Encounter with Gervais' dubious Salsa Business tactics

It is a known fact that party and festival organizers often glue their own posters on those of the competition. Anonymous explains, “We first saw Gervais Aguey's poster taking our original planned long holiday weekend dates on May 15, 2010. We took one look at his impressive line up and we decided to cancel our event and try to join him, after already entering negotiations with a pair of foreign international Salsa Dance instructors & performers . We apologized to them and said we rather be a positive force in our town, and asked Gervais for a coffee meeting,” they said.

In the next article: the very insightful email correspondence between Gervais and our anonymous Salsa entrepreneurs!