Who Can Be a Salsa Champion?

Downtown Los Angeles’ Club Mayan was packed to capacity last weekend, with about 2,000 people waiting for the contest to determine “The Hottest Salsa Dancers in L.A.” The club, known for its salsa bands and dancing, had been winnowing out the six finalist couples for weeks.

At 11 p.m. the Salsa competition was announced. The dance floor crowd jammed into the upper level dance-floor/stage area.

In three of the competing couples, the women were non-Latino--a cause for comment in the crowd.

Natalie Mavor, who is Anglo, and her partner, Colombian-born Steve Vasco, who have been dancing together professionally for two years, whirled to their interpretation of a Domingo Quinone song. The mostly Latino judges voted them the winners; when their names were announced, the audience booed.

Mavor was pleased by the prize, upset by the reaction:

“I have danced professionally for more than 15 years and not used to being booed for something that I am good at doing. Good dancing is good dancing; if you dance well you can do any style of dance. We won because we have good technique, good professional appearance and we have ease in our trick execution. This was a tough competition, there were a lot of good dancers out there and many of the other dancers had passionate fans in the audience cheering them on.

“To me Salsa is a man and a woman thing; it is passionate, playful and seductive. Steve and I dance to many Latin rhythms including rhumba, cha-cha and mambo. We dance because we love to dance.”