Sabor Latino, Portland's primo salsa dance group, brews its own wicked hot sauce. Above the cars and streetlights, the Viscount Ballroom's salsa night is like a stray piece of Cuba floating on a collision course toward los Estados Unidos .
Lights flash, couples move and the mist turns to steam, steam, steam.
An incredibly diverse slice of Portland's Latin dance scene shivers and shakes though the quick rhythms of the mambo, the uninhibited intensity of the salsa, a saucy cha-cha or two. Even the wallflowers gyrate their hips. Then DJ Mi Gente introduces Sabor Latino, and the floor clears. Portland's only performing salsa dance group, the eight members of Sabor Latino flip and spin through numbers both synchronized and freestyle. Suddenly, the ballroom-dancing contestants on PBS look like a bunch of squares walking a tightrope.