'SALSA IS A SICKNESS. It's spicy and sexy,' warns dance instructor Franky Wong Ka-keung with a slight shudder. 'Once you try it, you'll fall in love. Then you'll be hooked.'
The tall, elegant dance instructor has been under salsa's spell since his student days in Canada. He was the first to promote the dance in Hong Kong, with workshops at the Fringe Club in 1997. Since then the dance has spread like a virus. Last year it was popular enough to warrant the city's first salsa congress. Fifty overseas enthusiasts flew in to join a crowd of 1,000 at Kowloon Bay's Hitec nightclub.
Next week the congress returns to inject some red-hot energy into our post-Lunar New Year chills. The 2nd Annual Hong Kong Salsa Congress kicks off on Wednesday with workshops, performances and dance parties aplenty. With locations scattered around Wan Chai, it threatens to send the district salsa-mad.
Co-organising the event for the second consecutive year, and luring dancing tourists from overseas, is a legendary name in the salsa world: Albert Torres. The New York-born Puerto Rican has become salsa's biggest promoter. For him, organising congresses around the globe is a calling. Like Wong, Torres says salsa is more than just a dance. Salsa, he says, saved his life.
Torres tells his story from his Los Angeles home where he's resting after having successfully organised Hawaii's first salsa congress - culminating in a 5,000-strong beach party on Waikiki. 'People want to call me the 'king of salsa',' says the 46-year- old. 'I prefer 'ambassador of salsa'. A goodwill ambassador who can see that this music is 100 per cent colour blind.'
Torres began his life as a disco and hustle dancer in New York, but reached a pinnacle as a salsa dancer in movies in the early 1990s. He was spotted by actor Antonio Banderas, Michael Peters (choreographer of Michael Jackson's Thriller video) and a gang of Hollywood directors one night in a small Latino club in Los Angeles.
'They walked in and said: 'We'd like you to work on a movie with us.' I said: 'Yeah? I've heard that these kinds of things happen in Hollywood. Here's my card.''