Salsa congress
A Salsa congress is a multi-day dance festival featuring workshops, social dancing, performances and competitions focusing on Salsa dancing. The format was first pioneered at the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress in 1997. Since then salsa congresses have become popular in almost every country, including different cities in the US, all over Europe, parts of Asia, and countries in Latin America and Africa. There are many events that follow a similar format to salsa congresses, but go by other names such as "Salsa Festival" or "Salsa Summit". Puerto Rico Salsa Congress The first salsa congress in the world took place in Puerto Rico in 1997 promoted by Eli Irizarry. The number of people participating in this first edition was 375 coming from 19 different countries. In 1998 the number of participants was 550 from 23 countries, with 32 salsa companies performing and teaching and by 1999 there were 800 people from 34 countries with about 56 salsa companies taking part. In 2008 the finals of the World Salsa Open were hosted at the Puerto Rico Congress which concluded with Spain (Anita Santos and Adrián Rodríguez) winning the first position, Puerto Rico (Licelott Maldonado and Kelvin Hernández) as runner-up and Argentina (Fernando