Why bother with expensive media (that malfunction) when you can get bootlegs for cheap?

I didn’t go to Cherating for the Malaysian Salsa Festival. After watching a DVD of the three-day event, I’m not so sure that I regret not going.

Sure, I missed the opportunity for attending workshops held by international instructors but I’ve got that to look forward to in the upcoming Singapore International Salsa Festival in October.

No, I don’t miss having to cringe watching one of the Malaysian salsa team performers opening the first night of performances. And frankly, I don’t miss having to duck my head and feel horrified that I am Malaysian and that these people up on stage are representing Malaysia while trying to disguise and recover from some major botched moves or trying to stay balanced on their feet after a flip. I don’t mind not having to associate myself with them because they were so ambitious they lost sight of giving a world-class performance rather than incorporate a difficult routine just to show off their salsa skills. There is little to display and be proud of when the moves are not committed to memory nor honed to perfection.

I watched the recording of the opening act with a growing sense of dread. If the Lazyboy could have ensconced me further in its plush leather arms, I would have sunken all the way in and never surfaced. The face-paint was gaudy, the costumes were not well-designed (big strips of cloth flying around at the seams of the pants don’t count for sexy) and the moves were all but shocking. The choreography was too ambitious, forgoing perfection and well-timed execution for ambition. The team started out shaky at best, and deteriorated rapidly from their first foot forward. The timing and coordination looked sketchy and somewhere towards the last third of the performance, the mainstage couple botched up in a major way and could not recover from their mistake. They looked totally off compared to the other two couples flanking them. Not only that, the performers looked like they had run out of steam! Somewhere from the middle of the routine, I could tell that they were losing their energy and their stamina. That became glaringly evident towards the end and right at the finale of the routine where the men went on bended knee so that their partners could flip forward and onto the backs of the men. The main couple were the most glaringly lacking: the woman all but flopped onto the back of her partner (I swear if I was there, I would have heard an audible sigh of relief escape from her after the execution of that move) and when he flipped her over to land on her feet, she very nearly landed in a heap when she stumbled, lost her balance and her footing from sheer exhaustion.

All I could think was, “I’m so glad that I’m not there to witness the performance first hand. It’s so sad that this is the state of our salsa standards.”

As I watched on, I realized that the same names and the same faces from the Malaysian salsa scene kept appearing and reappearing. Was it me or just my imagination? Just how many times do I have to see the same team and the same faces perform again and again? Watching the procession of Malaysian performers, it would seem we have a dearth of different performers and different styles. Which is entirely untrue. And mind-boggling when you consider one of the biggest schools in KL wasn’t on the performer’s list.

Slip into the mix a repertoire fit for the bedroom, a so-called exotic dance. Scantily-clad in panties or rather, panty-like bottoms, transparent white top with colourful bikini bras for visual interest, the girls were all but performing a striptease to the audience. Hardly salsa. I heard the drool from the front row VIPs could have watered the entire grounds of Cherating.

To cap it all off, the DVD produced was of such poor quality that we could not view the remaining half of the performances. That would amount to at least another 10 performances. And when Sam told me how much he had to pay for the DVD, I swear his neighbours from five floors below and five floors above as well as all around his apartment unit were jolted out of their bedtime slumber by my indignant exclamations (it was past midnight on the first night of the working week).

It started off casually enough:

“Did you say you paid RM1.50 for the DVD?”

“You paid HOW MUCH for the DVD??!!!!!”

“WHHHHAAAAAAATTTTT??!!!!!”

“WHAT THE FFFFKING CRAP IS THIS??!!! HOW CAN THEY CHARGE YOU SO BLURDY MUCH FOR SUCH SHODDY WORK??!!!!”

“Why couldn’t they have not sold it right after the festival but instead spend some time on it to edit it properly and then sell a good copy??!!”

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU PAID RM150 FOR THE FREAKING DVD!!!!!”

“WHAT THE HELL DO THEY THINK THEY’RE DOING??!! HOW CAN THEY CHARGE YOU SO MUCH??!!!”

“I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!!! ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS??!!!! THE BLURDY THING DOESN’T EVEN WORK!!!”

“You should just pay me some money and I’ll go down to JB and get you some good quality pirated stuff.”

“RM150 FOR THIS CRAP???!!!!”

“OMIGAAAWWWDDD!!!!”


Heaven help the rest of the world when I am in nutcase mode.

After having to sit through the sheer agony of watching some of the performances (not all the performances were that bad, the international acts were a pleasant distraction from the majority of the local performances), it was a somewhat fitting end to the whole indignity of the night.

RM150 for a shoddy recording of a world-class event short of painful.