Sydney has its best Social Salseros! This past Wednesday, 13 of August, we witnessed some of the hottest social dancing in the scene!

It was a long road to find out Sydney’s Best Social Salsa Dancers! As part of the Best Social Dancing competition, the Salsa series had 2 heats and the finals. This time, the expectations were higher, the energy was unbelievable and Coolabar was packed all nights!

Heat 1 of the Salsa series brought a total of 6 couples plus one surprise show! (if you were there, you know what I’m talking about – thanks boys!). Heat 2 brought together a total of 7 couples! Yes, there were 13 couples that entered the competition! At the finals, we got 4 couples competing for the title.

It was a difficult task for our experienced judges since the level of the competition was very high, but at the end, Graeme Haney, Yarima Gavilan, Viktoria Szabo (replaced by El Moro on heat 2), Mauricio Hernadez, Jenny Qin (replaced by Clement Djaja on the Finals) and Pascal Denocour (replaced by Oliver Pineda on Heat 1) did a wonderful job!

At the night of finals, all 4 couples were called to the dance floor and they had a short warm up in front of an energetic audience. Then, each couple showcased their salsa skills. Since it is a social competition, it didn’t matter if the dancers when doing Cuban Salsa or Linear Salsa (on1 or on2) as long as they were having fun, displaying musicality and keeping with the timing.

And this was a very close competition! But one couple stood out from the rest: Santino Di Fede and Michiko Ban were crowned Sydney’s BEST SOCIAL SALSA Dancers. Congratulations Santino and Michiko, well done!

Huge congratulations to Armand & Genevieve, Antonio & Athena and Steven & Aya. All couples did wonderful!

At the end, the purpose of this competition was to bring back the dancers to the dance floor, and for sure it did happen! We all remembered why we started dancing (Zouk, Bachata or Salsa) and for sure, next year’s Sydney’s Best Social Dancer will be bigger and better!

Thanks all that participated on each one of the series! But wait, it is not over yet… I heard we are looking for the best SAMBA dancer now!