Salsa set to heat up Hyde Park

Red-blooded Londoners are being encouraged to hot-foot it down to Hyde Park tonight for a festival of Latin music and salsa dancing.

Revellers by the Serpentine will be able to learn the world-famous lovers' dance with the help of Colombian salsa musicians and dancers, who will demonstrate the moves.

Organisers hope the path next to the lido will become a Mediterranean-style promenade as the sun sets and the beat gets under peoples' skin, encouraging them to grab the nearest person and entwine them in a salsa-inspired clinch.

"We want to bring a touch of the Latin to London - like the evening passeggiata that takes place in Rome and other big cities of the South," says Will Weston, Royal Parks chief executive. "We have a wonderful landscape, so why not enhance it with song and dance and performance art?"

Salsa dancer Monica Trujillo, 28, will be among the slinky movers showing Londoners how it is done tonight. Originally from Colombia, where she danced salsa from the age of five, she came to England five years ago to study performing arts.

"When I left Colombia I was thinking I wouldn't be able to dance salsa any more," she says. "I thought I had to say goodbye to it and I was really going to miss it. But then I came here and saw how popular salsa is and I started teaching it. I've just been so lucky to arrive at that time.

"People like it because you are dancing with someone else, and there aren't many dance forms now where you get to dance

together. Secondly, the quality of the music is excellent. Third, it isn't quite as erotic as something like lambada. People feel more comfortable with it.

"Anyone can be good at salsa. If you love the music and you enjoy dancing with someone else, nothing will stop you being great.

"As long as you have the patience not to give up. It takes time to get into because the rhythm is not continuous. It's quick, quick, slow. Quick, quick, slow. You need to feel the music. You can't fake it," she says.