New York City’s favorite itinerant salsa street event, SALSA STORIES collaborates with new media artists to create light installations and augmented reality experiences.
New York, NY — SALSA STORIES is celebrating its second season and Hispanic Heritage Month with the premiere of Sound of Light, featuring light projections programmed to respond to dancers’ movements, as well as an augmented reality exhibition that draws from archival images mostly from Center for Puerto Rican Studies, allowing participants to see historic photos of event locations in situ. SALSA STORIES founder and cultural producer Bianka Widakay commissioned artists to create new media works. “For me, SALSA STORIES is more than just salsa dance block parties but a documentary project that activates the sites where salsa was born,” says Widakay. “I wanted to do something that would accentuate the environment, highlighting the buildings and importance of our chosen locations as incubators of the beautiful music and dance form what we know as salsa.” Widakay is a Brazilian-born filmmaker and Telly® Award–winning producer who launched SALSA STORIES in 2017 as a documentary project. She spent five years filming oral histories with key figures in New York City’s vibrant salsa scene. Today, SALSA STORIES is an immersive experience that brings her filmed interviews, a photo exhibition, as well as free dance classes, live music, and DJs to the very streets where the music and dance were born.
The large-scale interactive light installations use gaming technology to turn dancers’ real-time movements into watery figures that are projected onto surrounding buildings, including PS52 in the South Bronx where many salsa legends attended school, and the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center on the Lower East Side, an important hotbed for Puerto Rican and Latinx culture. The water motif represents the ocean and vessels that brought music across the ocean, from West Africa and Spain to the Caribbean and Americas and eventually to New York. The AR portion of Sound of Light features the work of designer Melissa Ulto, who has created video art and immersive installations. Viewers access the AR exhibit by downloading the free app Membit, or borrowing devices onsite.
Sound of Light is made possible with support from NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), which introduced Open Streets during the pandemic as strategies to activate streets and support artists. SALSA STORIES launched its public events in 2021, benefitting from the City’s invitation to individual artists, businesses, and community partners to bring culture and recreation to neighborhoods.
The documentary film component continues to collect personal stories, with an online platform that allows people to submit video and audio remembrances of their own salsa experiences, painting a colorful picture of the evolution of salsa.
To celebrate one year of successful events, SALSA STORIES is hosting a special Labor Day celebration (September 4), co-presented by the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center (Lower East Side),
featuring brass orquestra Hermanos de Leon, famously led by twin trombonists, and renowned DJ Babaloo, with free dance classes by Piel Canela Dancers.
ABOUT BIANKA WIDAKAY
The Salsa extravaganza started when Bianka was laid off from her job as a video editor early in the pandemic. The time off gave her the time to complete a documentary, which she started filming in 2017. Her original half-hour pilot turned into a TV series that now airs on local open-access cable channels CUNY TV and BronxNet. She is an avid salsa dancer and SALSA STORIES grew from her personal search for cultural identity.
ABOUT NYC DOT OPEN STREETS PROGRAM
The pandemic sparked a series of city-funded programs to engage artists and bring socially distanced outdoor programming to public streets. Working closely with grassroots organizations such as the Clemente Soto Velez, SALSA STORIES engages a diverse audience and combats misconceptions about public spaces in historically underprivileged neighborhoods, still stigmatized by stories of violence and crime from the 1970s. Salsa created community bonds in the context of disadvantage and displacement. SALSA STORIES casts these locations as cultural incubators, restoring old local street traditions such as shared music and dance parties, as a vital part of New York City’s cultural heritage. The locations selected for SALSA STORIES are deliberate, paying tribute to important locations (for example, Kelly Street in the South Bronx, in front of a public school where many iconic Salsa musicians attended).
By attracting more people to the neighborhoods’ streets and sidewalks, SALSA STORIES also advocates for increased accessibility to open spaces in historically underserved neighborhoods. Through documentation, site activations, and storytelling, SALSA STORIES highlights the vibrancy of locations and communities as they are—especially crucial in light of the exponential development and transformation of the city today. “These places are a living part of the stories, the incubators, the womb in which these art forms were conceived,” says Widakay. “The stories featured in the documentary are testaments to full and colorful lives, anchored in places worthy of valuing as they are. Both the interviewees and locations are the stars of the show.”
PARTNERS + GRANTS
SALSA STORIES is a partner with NYC DOT’s Open Streets and Public Space Programming, which connects public spaces citywide with local organizations to provide free events. SALSA STORIES has been awarded several grants, including the City Artists Corps, the Enfoco 2022 Media Arts WIP, Creatives Rebuild New York, Alfresco NYC, and the NYC Green Fund Grassroots Award by the City Parks Foundation.