Calling all salsa lovers! If you’re a true salsa fan, apart from knowing the dance steps like the back of your hand, there are a few events you must check out in the U.S. Whether they’re modern festivals or must-know knowledge, we’ve got you covered with the genre’s background to the popular salsa artists of today.

Here are three places to check out if you’re into the lively dance of salsa. I mean, who knows? Maybe apart from recreational salsa dancing, you too can become a professional dancer!

Miami Salsa Festival

The annual festival is back on July 8, this time with headlining artists: Willie Colón, Victor Manuelle, Jerry Rivera, Grupo Niche, India, Tito Nieves, Rey Ruiz, Luis Enrique, Fruko y sus Tesos, Los Adolescentes, Luis Figueroa and Raul Acosta y Oro Solido. If these names sound familiar, it’s your sign to head to Miami this weekend. The festival is taking place at the FTX Arena.

World Salsa Summit

For those interested in seeing competitions and workshops, here’s a place to visit. The World Salsa Summit’s decade anniversary is from Aug. 24 to Aug. 29 at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, Florida. Based on this summit alone, it appears that salsa dancing goes to the next level!

Online: Fania.com

For the salsa enthusiasts that rather explore through the digital screen, a website that caters specifically to New York-style salsa is Fania.com. 

Now, we know that the genre is rooted in Cuba and the Caribbean, but one of the first locations it became popular in was New York City due to the Cuban refugees. There’s so much history in this record label, including it being Celia Cruz’s. Moreover, since this specific record label Fania Records was born in New York, the website gives beginner lessons on how to dance New York-style salsa.

The label was “the brainchild of an unlikely partnership between an accomplished Caribbean musician from the Dominican Republic and a Brooklyn-born Italian-American who was a former police officer turned divorce lawyer,” the website explains. 

Johnny Pacheco and Gerald “Jerry” Masucci met in 1962 when the latter became the former’s divorce attorney. But they also shared a mutual love of Latin music (Masucci had worked in Cuba at one time). In 1964, they decided to start a record label that began as a small-time operation on the Big Apple’s mean streets but which would eventually become a global brand that conquered the world.”

Impressive, right? It remains one of the places that is attributed to when it comes to the genre, later creating Fania All-Stars.