SOME SALSANOR HISTORY
SalsaNor – 25 years of salsa in Norway
1999 – 2025
SalsaNor started its activities with dance courses in salsa, bachata and merengue in Sandnes municipality in the spring of 1999. When the organization was formally established as a voluntary membership association on 1 March 2001, it already had extensive operations in Sandnes, Stavanger and Sola with several hundred active dancers.
SSince then, alsaNor has grown from being a local association for the promotion of salsa and other Latin American dance and music based in North Jæren, to being a national cultural organizer in Norway, and a pioneering organization internationally in terms of our dance-related work with Rueda de Casino.
COURSE BUSINESS
The courses started in May 1999 at the Ganddal community centre in Sandnes, with the dances Merengue and Salsa on the program. 30 curious participants attended the first course, the local press was eager to tell about this new offer in Sandnes, and after only a few months the offer was expanded to one regular course evening in Sandnes, one in Stavanger at Nord-Jærens Sportsdanseklubbslokaler in Bikubå and one at Sola kulturhus. By the end of the year, around 1,000 people had participated in one or more dance courses, and the environment was international, positive and inclusive.
SOCIAL DANCE
In the wake of the courses, there was a need for social events to practice what was learned on the courses, and SalsaNor started regular evenings at the Cats nightclub in Sandnes, sometimes even with LIVE music. We organized dance school parties at Bikubå, and party nights with Caribbean food, Cuban films etc. at Sola Kulturhus, many of the events were family-friendly and both kids and grandparents joined in, in true Latin American style. We went on dance trips, arranged Ski & Salsa at Sauda Fjordhotell, and a weekend trip to the salsa scene in Gothenburg. And the community grew and grew, with a strong and stable group of volunteers acting as doormen, cake bakers and for participant registration.
FESTIVALS
The festival and congress concept was still in its infancy in Europe, and no one knew much about what was going on outside their own environment.
2002-2003-2004 Salsa Congress in Skien, Norway
When SalsaNor was the most active, organized association for salsa at the time, we were invited to various places in Norway to hold courses…. Oslo, Tromsø, Skien, Kristiansand, Bergen…even to Sweden. And in 2001, one of the enthusiasts in Skien took the initiative to collaborate on what would become the very first national salsa festival in Norway, with good support from Skien municipality.
The committee consisted of two representatives from SalsaNor, one from Grenland, and two from two different communities in Oslo.
Salsa Congress at Ibsenhuset in Skien was held three years in a row, with the National Salsa Championships, around 15 artists each year and salsa dancers from all over the country.
RUEDATREFFET
The professional work on rueda was already well underway. Systematizing the figures in the dance, defining execution, constantly searching for the correct naming of the figures. To ensure that our conclusions were as correct as possible, the idea of establishing a professional committee of competent rueda instructors was born, all preferably Cuban, to look at these things together.
The first meeting of such a committee was held in our course rooms in Bikubå on a Friday at the end of August 2002, with several instructors who were active in rueda in Norway, including Juan Carlos Ortega, Ricardo Martinez, Joar Svanemyr, Cristóbal Olivares and Reidun Svabø.
Since we were going to have so many instructors in Stavanger for the meeting, we also decided to offer rueda workshops with all of them, and social dancing in the evening. Almost 100 participants in Stavanger took part in classes and dancing at this gathering, which was given the name “Ruedatreffet”, and which would later become the international event SalsaNor Rueda Congress.
OTHER MILESTONES IN THE HISTORY OF SALSANOR
Started with annual Cubaturer
2005
First professional Cuban dancer on a fixed-term contract: Geldys Morales
2007
SalsaNor Trondheim is established and Norsk Ruedastandard YouTube
2009
New festival Calle Latina, today Oslo Caribbean Feeling
Artistnettverket: Congas.
2014
SalsaNor Oslo is established, and we now run courses in 3 cities:
Oslo, Trondheim and Stavanger.
First year we organize the World Cup in Rueda de Casino.
2015
SalsaNor moves into Sentralen in Oslo and for the first time has a formal office address and general manager.
2016
Launching Rueda.Casino – quality produced educational instructional video on Vimeo.
2018
20 year anniversary with a series of events in all SalsaNor cities, including a mini tour with Maykel Blanco y su Salsa Mayor
2019
A small cavalcade of images
