Interfusion Festival: Performances

Every night of the Interfusion Festival, there was a show so we could see performances of the different art forms brought together during that weekend.

One of the salsa groups. The girl in the middle was the best, I think! Image found here.

The Zafire Dance Company had outfits with some interesting fringe! Image found here.

Salsa: There were several groups who performed salsa routines (I'd say maybe even 10 performed throughout the weekend). One group was from Gaithersburg High School, and another women's group included two young girls into the routine. While I think it's great to get kids involved in dance, I'd rather watch experts perform. I was also surprised how many dancers didn't smile while they were dancing! I think they were concentrating so hard on the routine that they forgot to control their facial expressions, too. I wasn't blown away by these performances, but it was neat to see some of the moves and to think that with enough practice I could dance like that, too!

Click here for a video of ZaFire Dance Company.

Zouk: Jessica Lamdon and Henri Velandia (also known as Ry'el or Rio) from ZenZouk taught several of the zouk classes, and they also performed multiple times! They are really great together!

Click here for another Zouk video, but with different dancers.

Acroyoga: I couldn't find videos from the actual performances, but I can show some videos that feature the instructors who performed at the festival:

Jessalyn Leean Oxford and Glen Acro Saunders

Daniel Walsh and Jenny Mahler (click here for their actual performance at the festival)

Image found here.

And I couldn't find a video featuring Maya Kramer and Tad Merrell, but they performed several times during the festival. They were both really good, and I liked that he looked like he had just left the Ringling Brothers Circus with his curled-up mustache. I couldn't find videos of Jenna Cervantes or David Haws, either, but they were also fantastic (see photo below).

Image found here.

Image found here.

Belly dancing: Margarita Kleese taught the belly dancing workshops at the festival, and she also performed (the video below is from a belly dancing competition).

Image found here.

Hoola-hooping: Lea Short led the hula hooping workshops, and I really liked her energy! If you click the link above, you can find a video of her performance of her Facebook page.

Pole dancing: I didn't take any of the pole dancing workshops, but we did get to see Marion Crampe perform, and she was amazing! I never thought pole dancing could be so graceful and completely non-sexual. Bravo!

Like all performances, there were a few weak ones. BUT since the festival was all about positivity, I can't even bring myself to write all the mean things I normally would post in my blog. I will say this though: not many people attended the shows on Friday and Sunday nights. So I would suggest to the festival that they only do one performance on Saturday night. They saved the best routines for that night, and some were repeats on the other days anyway, so just show us the best of the best! I'd also make the show a little shorter; I understand that there are lots of different acts, but the shows lasted a little too long (especially when they started more than 30 minutes late!). People don't come to the festival for the shows; that's just an added bonus. So I wouldn't place as much emphasis on them (and like I said, a lot of people didn't even bother coming to the shows on Friday and Sunday, so they weren't putting emphasis on them either). But I did like how the shows were a nice culmination of the festival!