The Sweet Sound of Salsa

The cavernous Jack LaLanne spa has been miraculously transformed on a sedate stretch of the Miracle Mile. With the salsa braying in your ears, the bamboo chandeliers spinning above your head and the dancers swaying to the beat of the drums, you might even feel transported to pre-Castro Cuba. Only it’s illegal to light up a cigar.

“This place is about dance,” says Martin Fleischmann, impresario of the Conga Room, which opened in February and--in its Havana-circa-1950s ballroom--has played host to Jose Feliciano, Celia Cruz and Albita. With Fleischmann, it might have all been about waltz: He’s the 34-year-old son of the L.A. Philharmonic’s recently retired managing director, Ernest Fleischmann. Fleischmann the younger, for four years head of MCA’s classical department, began to promote Latin music shows at such venues as the Ford Theater and Luna Park about 10 years ago. “At that time in L.A.,” Fleischmann recalls, “it didn’t seem a great business move.”

But that was before the Derby was swinging and salsa joined jazz as standard L.A. dance-class fare. Fleischmann’s Conga partner, Brad Gluckstein, a dancer who traveled extensively in Cuba and South America, dreamed up the club’s idea; his journeys abroad inspired the club’s intensely color-saturated scheme. But capturing aerial shots of secret Russian missile bases might have been easier than squeaking past the Miracle Mile neighborhood coalition, which watched as Gluckstein himself was forced into an impromptu salsa show to prove that the club would be wholesome enough to face a Blockbuster across the street.

With backing from the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Jimmy Smits, Fleischmann remains philosophical on keeping the Conga ballroom filled to capacity, though he admits he and his partner have no club-owning experience. So where did their confidence come from? “Knowing that people would react to the music the same way we did.”