Christmas in Cali, Colombia

This year, we are lucky to have the opportunity to visit one of the most spectacular events on the Latin American continent or possibly the entire World. La Feria de Cali is Colombia's biggest celebration of the region's cultural identity. 

Between Christmas and New Year, the 67th La Feria will host the most famous Salsa musicians in the World, including Willie Colón, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Oscar D'León, Víctor Manuelle, El Gran Combo, and Grupo Niche.

Four-week "Improve Your Dancing" Course

We have exciting news!

Monika and I have finally acquired an appropriate space in Edinburgh city centre for a four-week dancing course aimed at dancers of all levels. The course starts on the 5th of November, 2023, for four consecutive Sundays, at 6 p.m.

With over ten years of experience in social dancing, teaching and performing, we can provide the necessary guidance to improve your skills or take them to the next level.

Alba Flamenca is relatively small, but it has a great dance floor and excellent mirrors. There will be limited availability due to the venue's size. We would also like to keep the class small enough to cater for everyone's needs equally and fairly.

Beginners, Improvers, and Intermediate-level dancers will come together in this course for the first time intentionally. We designed our course this way because all these levels require dancers to adhere to the same principles, although at different depths. We will gather information from our attendees before the course starts to determine the convergence points between all topics presented and prepare the appropriate course materials for each class. You can pick an area you would like to improve, and we will ensure you receive the guidance you need.

You can attend in one of two ways:

1. Sign up for the entire course and benefit from four hours (one hour per week) of dedicated instructions to work on your chosen area. In this case, attendees receive a 30% discount, so the price is £20.
2. Sign up for one-hour classes, and we will guide you to find the answers to your questions. This option will cost £7 each.

In both cases, we will ask you to complete a very short questionnaire before the course starts so we can take time to understand what everyone wants to work on. This way, we can prepare the lessons optimally for everyone's benefit. You can sign up and fill out the questionnaire until the 3rd of November.

I'd like to Register Now Applications are now closed. If you need information about other courses we might teach, please follow our Facebook page.

Héctor Lavoe

Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez, a.k.a Héctor Lavoe was born in Puerto Rico just after the end of WWII. He studied musical arts here before he moved to New York at age sixteen. His talent as a singer got recognised quickly, and he sang with some well-known bands, including one by Johnny Pacheco, before he signed up with Willie Colón's band as a vocalist a few years later. His fame only indeed materialised when he decided to start his own band and recorded many famous hit songs, such as "El Cantante", "Periódico De Ayer", "El Día De Mi Suerte", and many more. 

Photo: rpp.pe

His stage name Lavoe comes from "La Voz" ("The Voice"), which his manager made him adopt. His stage name was well deserved as many regarded him as one of the best Salsa singers of all time due to his unique, clear voice, impeccable diction, and charismatic stage presence.

Towards the late 70s, Lavoe was battling with drug addiction, which period of his life was turned into one of the best movies made about this piece of Salsa history, called "El Cantante", featuring Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez as Hector and his wife, Nilda. The movie tells his story till his death in 1993 at age 46.

The movie trailer:

Anita Santos Rubin

Anita Santos Rubin is a six times world salsa champion, one of the most recognisable and respected female dancers today. 

Like many dancers of similar standing, she trained in various styles of ballet, which has likely affected her becoming one of the most graceful and expressive dancers of our time.

She was born in Brazil to a humble family but won a scholarship to prestigious school in London at a young age. She later settled in Spain, where she operates her dancing school called U!Dance in Barcelona. Anita also provides live classes worldwide online using her website anitasantosrubin.com, where you can sign up for as little as 50 Euros per month to learn from the best of the best!

Check out one of my favourites of her performances that I was fortunate enough to witness myself at the Teeside Salsa Festival in 2015.

Tito Rodríguez

Pablo Rodríguez Lozada a.k.a "El Inolvidable", is another iconic Puerto Rican musician on our list. He moved to New York during WWII with his brother Johnny and quickly established himself in the developing Latin Music scene as brilliant percussionist and singer.

Photo latinjazznet.com

A few years later Tito Rodriguez organised his own band, the Los Diablos Del Mambo but later changed it to just Tito Rodriguez Orchestra. His first hit, "Bésame La Bembita" was released amids the Mambo and ChaChaChá and earned him honours for developing his unique style of singing. Over the years, Tito and his orchestra played in the famous Palladium Ballroom, alongside Machito and Tito Puente.

Hi extensive discography overarches many different styles of Latin music, but some of them are still very popular and can be heard at Salsa events around the world:

El Agua De Belén

Celoso

Estoy Como Nunca

Bilongo

... and many others!

Tito Puente

Ernesto Antonio Puente Jr. aka Tito Puente, one of the key figures of Salsa history. Tito Puente was born and raised in the Spanish Harlem, in New York City to a Puerto Rican family. His musical talent was already apparent at seven, so his mother signed him up for piano lessons. At age ten he switched to percussion inspired by the ever so popular Jazz genre of his time.

Photo credit: i.ytmig.com

Tito Puente’s career took off when he joined Machito’s band as a drummer. Shortly after, with WWII expanding, he was drafted into the Army and served in nine battles aboard an escort carrier. His service in the Navy provided him with the means for getting a formal education in the Juilliard School Of Music.
Over the 1950s and 60s Tito Puente played a key role in the Latin Music revolution that hit the clubs of New York. One of his most famous early cha-cha songs “Oye Cómo Va” is still widely played in Salsa clubs, more than 50 years after its first release and has been sung by many, including Celia Cruz and Carlos Santana. 

He has received many awards and countless recognition for his work, including the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal from The Smithsonian in 1993 and following his death, he was also awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Tito Puente was featured in iconic documentaries about Latin music and history, such as Calle 54 and the series of La Epoca.

Read more about Tito Puente here.

Oliver Pineda

Oliver Pineda is an Australian-born Chilean. He started dancing in his early teens, and over the next 30 years, he won Salsa World Champions ten times! He has taught millions of people and inspired many more.

Photo by Oliver Pineda Dance

His connection to the music, as a respected percussionist, and his decade-long technical training in the competitive dance sport and ballroom arena, elevated him to be among the world's most well-known dancers and respected instructors.

Watch one of my all time favourite performances of Oliver Pineda.

Read more about Oliver Pineda at https://www.oliverpineda.dance/about.

Franklin Diaz

Despite his incredible success, little public information about Franklin Diaz's life is available. We could only find out that he was born in the Dominican Republic and started educating himself in dancing as a child. His musical family background and culture exposed him to rhythm, sound and movement at this early age. He continued to study on this path into adulthood, and as a result, the world recognises him as one of the all-time greatest today. 

Photo from Facebook

Beyond his obvious talent in Salsa, he is also well-versed in many other styles, including ballet and flamenco. Over the years, he has trained with the biggest names and shared the world stage with many equally illustrious performers such as Jose Molina, Nelida Tirado, Jose Maya, Alfonso Losa (Flamenco), Victor Pacheco, and Eddie Torres. Dance enthusiasts and his peers around the globe admire his energetic and unique style that appears to his audience as if his body had become one with the music.

Watch one of my favourite performances of his is an excellent display of his style and talent.

Tito Nieves

Humberto "Tito" Nieves is one of the most notable Salsa singers ever. He was born in Puerto Rico, but, like most icons in the golden era of Salsa, he started his carrier in New York after he moved there with his parents still as a child.

In the seventies, he developed his music alongside other legendary musicians, such as Héctor Lavoe, until he released his first solo album in 1986. He was one of the first Latin singers who started singing in English, delivering a massive hit called "I Like It Like That". After releasing several successful albums, he is soon known as "El Pavarotti De La Salsa". He continues to succeed today, collaborating with iconic musicians such as Marc Anthony and Victor Manuelle.

Tito Nieves's style is easy to dance to. He uses the classic salsa instruments led by a precise conga rhythm, and the songs usually fit the salsa-on-2 step patterns better.

He has sung some of my all-time favourite songs, such as "De Mí Enamórate" or "Fabricando Fantasías" which he dedicated to his eldest son, who tragically died of bone cancer in 2004. 

Today, Tito Nieves is releasing a song called "Soy", featuring his fellow Puerto Rican salsa icon, Gilberto Santa Rosa.

Gilberto Santa Rosa

"El Caballero de la Salsa, " or Gilberto Santa Rosa Cortéz, was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He grew up listening to the great Salsa musicians of the 50s - 60s and was greatly influenced by the famous Puerto Rican salsa band El Gran Combo. He was only 12 years old when he performed on television and decided to make a career for himself as a singer.

Photo by J. Perez-Mesa

In the 80s, Santa Rosa was the first Salsa singer to give a concert at the Carnegie Hall Theatre in New York City. Using his unique talent in "Soneo", he delivered a four-minute improvised version of his famous song "Perdona Me", which was recorded and later released on the album dedicated to this performance. This improvised version became a piece he had to sing repeatedly due to its unpaired success.

Santa Rosa discovered Victor Manuelle, who was also destined to become a great Salsa singer during the 90s, alongside his only rivals, Marc Anthony and La India.

Releasing several notable hits, such as "Conteo regresivo", "No te vayas", "Que alguien me diga", and many more, Gilberto Santa Rosa held the record for the most number-one albums on the Billboard Tropical Albums chart in 2010. So far, he has sold more than three million records worldwide and won Grammy Awards six times.

Watch one of his performances that showcases everything that makes salsa and soneros tremendous and is one of my absolute favourites. 

You can read his full biography at allmusic.com.

Introduction

When you decide to learn something new and take the first steps towards acquiring that knowledge, you are already closer to success than most who have yet to make the same decision or are unaware they should. However, the journey to the unknown is usually full of challenges. As a result, some people give up before this journey becomes an adventure and lose the joy that discovering something new brings.

So the paradox presents itself: "I just wanna have fun, but first I must learn, which is not so much fun".

• the music; where we get familiar with the physical instruments and their roles in the music by trying to play them

• the relationship between movement and music; where we try to move with the tunes without the boundaries of rules

• the partner work; to learn to work with others and acquire the ability to "listen" and include others in our movement

• the rules of the dance, which gives us the standards that identify our movement with a genre

I believe, working this way, everyone can have more fun focusing on what they need to become better dancers without forcing the boundaries upon themselves too early.

Dancing for the last ten years, I have seen many people come and go. Yes, some were more enthusiastic, dedicated or talented than others, but one thing they all had in common: they all had taken that first step with which all voyage begins. Of course, as I said, this is only halfway to success, while the other half is affected by many things; some people get put off by others, and some by losing faith in themselves, but undeniably, the teachers are the most significant factor in deciding the fate of a new dancer.

Everyone has at least one goal with dancing: to enjoy. But on the other hand, genuinely having fun means the dancer can get lost in the music and express themselves without thinking much about the moves, the counts and the rules. To do this, moving spontanely on the rhythm must become natural to the brain and body. However, this does not happen overnight, nor it happens automatically.

Two types of people emerge from this dilemma: one that will carry on having fun without learning much, who never experiences the true joy of moving in harmony with the music, and the other, who will "suffer" through the initial stage of learning the "hard" things until they suddenly understand the true meaning behind the concept of dancing.

Sadly, too many teachers focus on the former group because teaching turn patterns will keep up the interest and the money flowing. They choose to do so because ironing out the details and helping people become genuine dancers would take much more effort, and it could also seem less rewarding to the student due to the hard work required.

Knowing all this, I want to try a new approach focusing on the dancers' abilities to understand the four building blocks of dancing:

In this space, beyond regular posts about music and dancing, I aim to organise and advertise regular classes for all levels, along with social dancing opportunities for us to enjoy.

Please send me a message, like our Facebook page, and join our community! Let's have fun!