The Mayan Competition Semi-Finals are finished!!! and Yes! we did pass!!! We did a ninja routine... You'll be able to check it out on the Mayan webpage soon. We felt like real ninjas ;) and very good! Until the last part... where we kinda messed up?? Kind of??? But we are still very very very happy to be able to do the finals! We will do our best again! Thank you for your support! Finals are on the 17th of May!

April 19th, there was the Salsa Brava Social in Bellflower. I just kind of stopped by to check it out, unfortunately I have a sprained ankle! So, I got a glimpse of the packed studio! The class was full of people, and there were many to enjoy the dancing afterwards. Next month, we don't have the social due to the West Coast Salsa Congress, but we will have one in June. Stay tuned!

I also checked out the Mayan Amateur Semi-Final Competitions. This was amazing too. Everyone had their original routines, it was very fun to watch what they all came up with. Very creative, and very energetic! Was this amateur or what?! Hopefully, next week Steven and I will have something to show too!

We celebrated Luis' Birthday Party at the Dave & Busters. Dave & Busters is an entertainement restaurant with games, pool and shows, etc. We got together for a Friday night dinner and wished him a happy birthday! As usual we enjoyed the games, car racing, basketball shooting, gun shooting, and lots of others! In the end, we exchanged all our tickets to some prizes for Luis! I hope you enjoyed the party!

I will be dancing Tango on the Maria Laria Show on Channel 62 in May. I am not exacty sure when it will be on air but I will post it as soon as I have the info! The show is on Wednesdays from 3:00pm. This show is an introduction of the sensual dances. There will be salsa, quebradita, reggae, cumbia, belly dancing, samba, and our tango. I am dancing with my friend Manolo, please check it out!

I am teaching the Basic Class for Salsa Brava at the Newport Beach Studio "Avante Garde" from 7-8 on Thursdays. If there are people interested in starting salsa, please let them know! Luis has a beginner class at the same time, and afterwards there is an intermediate class with both Luis and Joby there. It is a nice settled stuido in a very nice neigborhood. Please come visit the class when you have time! Info will be coming up on my classes page soon.

There is an MCI commercial with some dancing coming up. It was supposed to be a salsa dancing commercial, which ended up being slow social dancing?? But many people from the salsa scene are in the shot. I will probably be seen sitting at the tables chatting and enjoying the dinner party.... so if that comes out, check it out!

The 2003 Club Mayan Competitions prelimiary video clips are up on the web at www.clubmayan.com. Please check-it out! I think you might be able to tell that Steven and I practiced only 3 hours or so before the competition...??? or not? But please vote us 10 points for internet votes with your eyes shut! (wink,wink) We hopefully will have something to show at the semi-finals on April 26th!

The Salsa Brava Social on March 22nd was a great success with over 70 people in the studio of Bellflower. Many dancers of all levels were there to enjoy the casual party. Unfortunately, I was not there, but I plan to be at the next one on April 19th. So be there to enjoy too!!! More info on the Salsa Brava webpage. www.salsabrava.org

The Spirit of Dance event at the Hollywood Paladium was a very nice event. It was hosted by Salsabor y Cache. The space was very classy with a nice wooden floor and high ceilings. The dance performances were great. Puerto Rico groups and many others, of course Salsa Brava too!!! Jose Canario was there with his band with great music! We look forward to another great event like that!

I went to see the John Leguizam Sexaholix Comedy Show at the Ahmanson Theatre at downtown Los Angeles. This was going on for 2 weeks or so. It was the funniest show I've ever seen. There was laughter the whole time through out the show. John Leguizamo is the Puerto Rican actor (not Mexican!!!), who's done many movies etc. One of the recent ones is Empire. He was the lead actor in this movie. I had seen this movie so I was very excited to see the real live show! Well, I was not disappointed at all! He had dancing and some singing?? and the talking, he is a true entertainer! I was pulled out of the crowd to dance a little salsa with him in the aisle. Just a little thing, but that was alot of fun! He has so much aura in his personality! It was a show to remember!

I went to the Bill Viola exhibition at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It was one of the most interesting exhibitions to see. His pieces were using flat screens with a very very slow playing of a film of real live people changing expressions or positions. It's difficult to explain... but if you look at the pieces, you would think that they were still portraits. The lighting used almost made it look like they were paintings. But then, if you stood there for a couple of minutes, you realize that the people in that frame are slowly changing expressions. There are pieces where there were a couple of people, which was very interesting too. You see the interaction between the people and the change of time. I realized the beauty of performing arts when I saw this exhibition. The beauty of expressions and the beauty of interaction. Because it is done in such slow motion, you are able to understand and see the movements and change. I really recommend this exhibition if you are doing performing arts. I would say this is definetely an exhibition with understanding of media art and the performing arts.

The 2003 Club Mayan Competitions have started! Yesterday March 8th was the first week for the preliminaries. This year Steven Vargas from Salsa Brava and I have decided to compete together. Luckily yesterday there were only two couples in pro division we passed automatically to the Semi-Finals on April 26th. We didn't have much time to practice so we did our regular dancing this time, we will definetely try to get something ready for our semi-finals!!! Many thanks to the people who came to cheer for us, and please cheer for us in the semi-finals too!!

I went dancing Salsa in Paris, France!
I was on personal vacation to Paris, France for a couple of days. The weather was freezing, naturally compared to Los Angeles! I walked the city with my warm coat, gloves, and scarf but still..! The warm drinks in the cafes tasted extremely good after those walks. I visited the George Pomipidou Center where they had good exhibitions of the modern & contemporary art works. I also went to the museum of Picasso of which I love! I toured the Marais area with the cute stores, St Germain area with the stylish cafes and boutiques, Montmartre where you can have a whole glance of the city from the hill, and walked the side of the Seine River and not to forget the Champs Elysees. It's a beautiful city, always nice to go back, you always get that calm feeling of independency and artistic inspirations. This time of course, I went to a salsa club. Although, the subway system allowed me to go only once. This club is probably one of the major ones in Paris called "the Pachanga" located near the Montparnasse station in the south side of the city. I went on a Saturday night hoping to see a crowd of the paris dancers, the place was packed! With the short time I had, I was able to dance with a Venezuelan Jose and an Andre who learns LA style from Johnny Vazquez. It's interesting how it's a multinational dance anywhere in the world! According to Andre's information, the best dancers in Paris were at a place called Zenith for the El Grand Combo concert, which was a little disappointing that I missed that. But I did like the way everyone was relaxed and dancing in that club, even if it was so hot and crowded! I enjoyed the short visit, I hope I get to go again!

The Valentine Events were sucessful!
Friday Feb 14th at Sportsmens Lodge and Saturday Feb 15th Salsa Brava Valentines Party, we performed one of salsa brava's old routines, very well known. The Pachuco routine! We have our colorful costumes, girls looking all feminine and sexy, guys all slick with their hats and suits. One of my most favourite routines! We will also perform this at the Salseros Online Party on Feb 22nd, and also at the Salsabor y Cache Party on Mar 22nd. Please keep that in mind! For the LA congress we will be doing a Pachuco part 2! We just started working on it, and I am quite sure it is as superb as the one we already have!!

The Salsa Brava Valentines Party itself was a great success too. Thank you all for coming. The performances were all really exclusive! Seaons Stylist, Los Rumberos had some hot new routines. Salsabor y Cache with much sabor as usual. Son Bravisimo all the way from San Francisco with their moulin rouge routine. and others.... Thanx again for coming and supporting us!

Next month, we will again have our Salsa Brava social. It is on March 22nd. Last time, we played games, and just danced salsa, bachata, merengue, and had fun! If you just want to relax and have fun, that's the place to be!

Forever Tango Show was here in Los Angeles!
The shows were at the Wilshire Theatre until Feb 16th. Beautiful choreography, well known, with famous dancers. The orchestra in the back played beautiful music with much alma, the dancers were graceful and strong within. If you ever have the chance, I recommend for a glimpse of the deep tango world!

Many events are coming up!! This Saturday Jan 25th, there will be the first Salsa Brava Social. This is a casual party to relax and mingle with Salsa Brava members and dance with them. It will be held at the Bellflower Swing Time Dance Studio. A class from 8 and dancing from 9. Refreshments and food, music, and dancers will be there. Come and join us! For more info you can go to our website, or contact me anytime!

There is also a Valentine's Party on February 15th Saturday at the Hollywood Park Casino. We will have performers and sweet dancing...! We are planning to do one of our popular routines, the Pachuco! Look forward to it! We will also be performing at Albert Torres' Sportsmans Lodge Valentine's Party on the 14th.

On April 26th, our sister company "Son Bravisimo" will be having a party in their area San Francisco. We will also be there to perform. They will have workshops and other performances, if you have time, check that out too!!

Salsa Brava has new class schedules, this year more structured and more levels. New locations. Check the class page out! Steven and I will be teaching at a salsa club on every two Wednesdays in downtown LA from February. More info to come...!

Chit-chat about non-salsa things for a change... So it is already 2003. I started it off performing a tango routine at a restaurant in Century City called the "Russian Roulette" right after midnight. They usually have Russian dancing shows, cabaret, tango, ballroom... We did a short routine with the song "Tanguera"..beautiful. Tango is also a beautiful dance. Which I plan to preceed slowly aside my salsa career..!

The other day I went to hear Jazz at the Jazz Bakery located in Century City. Benny Golson, the famous saxaphone player or maybe more known for his compositions had his quartet there. They played for 3hours... wow. Benny is already 73! which is amazing, he has so much energy and charisma, he talked about the stories in his past jazz life, and played his composed songs related to those events. The piano, bass, drums were wonderful too. The cozy atmosphere let us all chat together, it was a very relaxing and enjoying night of jazz!

The other night I went to UCLA Freud Theatre to watch a musical prenight dress rehearsal. The musical was an off broadway piece called "The 20th Century". The setting goes on on a train that used to run Chicago-NY in those days. The actors were amazingly humurous! They made you laugh all the way. The plot and story itself is not that exciting, I would say, but the way the whole show was put together was very interesting and it was an enjoyable show!

Competition Finals for the trip to Hawaii's Salsa Event "Paradise in Hawaii" on the 3rd at Sportsmans Lodge has finished. Unfortunately, Randy and I couldn't make it to Hawaii, but we had fun dancing and choreographing a Hawaiian routine! We used the "Hawai50" song? Does everyone know it? and we mixed a bit of everything, salsa, hip-hop(kind of), slow(kind of) and danced. The winners were Alex Caicedo & Liz Sanchez. They had a really strong sharp routine. They caught the audience and I'm sure everyone knew it was them! Congratulations! Runners up were Joel and Anna. They had a very smooth On2 style routine. Joel's smooth and slick dancing and Anna's beautiful arm moves and lines complimented each other. (Also, good luck to Joel who is leaving to Okinawa, Japan this month for the Marine.) Anyways, it was a fun competition, in spite the fact that everyone had to get their routine ready in a matter of a few weeks! Thank you for cheering for us! The Hawaii event is finishing today... I wonder how it went! Can't wait to hear their stories!

Competition Finals for the trip to Hawaii's Salsa Event "Paradise in Hawaii" is coming up on the 3rd at Sportsmans Lodge. Randy and I are still working on our routine!!! Are we going to finish on time? And on top of that I have a baaaaad cold with a fever, oh no! But please come and cheer for us on the 3rd, it is audience applause that chooses the winner. Please cheer for us and send us to Hawaii!!

Salsa Brava and Son Bravisimo(San Francisco) had our company home Christmas Party on the 14th. A cozy party with lots of chatting and eating, drinking! This year with more people since our new group in San Francisco, they came down all the way to celebrate with us!! It was pot luck and we had a Secret Santa present exchange, which is one of the best part of the party! Such creative presents and presentations, you could never get bored of this! And we all got special presents from Joby and Luis to finish it off. Christmas is a merry season!

Randy Newman and I competed at the Salsa Competition in Sagebrush on the 13th. It is the preliminaries for the finals on January 3rd at Sportsmans Lodge. We both got approval from our partners who are busy this winter holidays! We have the chance to go to Hawaii for the "Salsa in Paradise" event, which I really would love to go to! So we met up that day for the first time and just danced, nothing special, close competition and all three couples passed for the finals. If you still want to try out, the 20th is the last preliminaries!! We still don't have our routine, gotta dance gotta dance! Please cheer for us at the finals!!!

We had filming for the Salsa Movie with Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. Still unnamed movie. This was alot of fun! We had shooting for 4 days, about 15 hours every day!! We were cold and dusty from being at the set which was formerly a warehouse. And there was so much waiting, standing on concrete, our feet hurt and we were so tired! BUT!! It was still alot of fun, an interesting experience especially since it was my first time. The plot of the movie? is supposedly that Ben is in love with Jennifer who dances salsa, but he can't,... and somehow he tries to find a way to catch her heart??? I can't tell much, but it should be a cute comedy. Their acting expressions were great. My partner in the movie was Steven (salsa brava). There were some interesting scenes that we had to do, I had to whip my long black hair in Ben's face when Steven multiple spinned me, and I accidentaly stepped on his feet, kicked him in his leg... I hope he will not dislike salsa for that!! We also have another secret scene, with just the two of us with Ben Stiller, which may be used or not... who knows, keep an eye on the movie when it's out...! ;) Jennifer was really pretty, she is much smaller than I thought, she seemed like a very nice person, as rumors say. Other than the shooting itself, we all had alot of fun, there was about 20 or more dancers. While we were waiting at the holding, we played dominos, sang songs, then played salsa music, danced to music, talked, debated, and just had fun! It was a great chance to get to know each other, while usually we only say "hi!" "bye!" in salsa clubs. It was a great opportunity in many ways.
Dec 17 2002

Mambo Salsa Holiday by Seaons Stylist was a party with great quality! Great music was playing, the female vocalist has a beautiful voice! (I'm afraid I don't know the band's name!!) The performances were all On2 groups except for us, which was very interesting...! We couldn't see them, but I'm sure they were great! I believe Salsa Brava did great too!! I felt our energy up there on stage, being together. One of the greatest feelings! It was alot of fun! There were alot of people watching the show too, I believe alot were new comers or families. It was a nice cozy party...! Great dancers were there from NY, San Francisco, San Diego, etc... almost like a mini congress. A great party, I enjoyed it!
Dec 8 2002

The Fiesta en el Barrio!! was a big party! This was a party by Salsabor y Cache (Rogelio Moreno) & Los Rumberos (Francisco Vazquez). The pretty ballroom was packed with people, and was a disappointment that some people couldn't get in with the over loaded capacity. But otherwise, a very successful party! The place was filled with everybody's heat and passion! We enjoyed watching the great dancers dancing together in the middle of the formed circles. All the footworks and shines, hot dancing!! The performances were really nice too, hopefully we did good with the Santa outfits too?!! Next week is the Seaons Stylist Holiday Party, remember to be there too!

At Coppacabana Restaurant Nov 19 Tuesday, in Pomona there was a fund raising salsa event to build homes in Mexico. It was bigger event than we imagined, the place was packed and really hot! There was about 11 groups that performed like Afeenix Dance Co., Salsabor y Cache, Salsa in the Mix, David Stein Dance Co., Jesus Morales and Lana, and of course us! Randi, Rodrigo, Cesar and I did the United routine, it was Randi's first show with Salsa Brava, she's already a great dancer but congratulations anyways! It was pretty fun!

The San Francisco Congress was alot of fun! Lots of people were there and we really had fun!!! Salsa Brava drove up there in a van, listening to music and talking all the way. First night, from Salsa Brava 3 couples performed the United Routine, next day we danced the Animal Routine. I will be getting the animal photos on the photo page soon... Don't tell me you didn't know that the cheetah was me..! There were other great performances by Salsa con Clave, Carribean Soul, Seaon Stylist, and many more. Gaby and Victor from Salsa con Clave did their Mexican Quebradita dancing which completely took the audience away. They had a great workshop on quebradita too. I loved the way Griselle Ponce from Carribean Soul danced, with her elegant and sexy styling. She also taught a nice On2 ladies styling workshop. Seaon Stylist did a very clean routine with footwork and Seaon's styling! I'm sure you will see this at their Mambo Holiday Party coming up on Dec 7th. Super Mario from London also had a very challenging workshop with his intricate arm patterns! In all there was alot of great dancers and lots of fun, we can definetely look forward to this congress next year!
Nov 22 2002

Salsa dancer audition for a movie, taking place at Club Tropical on Tuesday night.This is the club located in Culver City, Steven from Salsa Brava gives classes every Tuesday. Check it out!

San Francisco Congress is coming up in a week Nov 14-17. Salsa Brava will be performing "the United routine" and "the Animals routine" (I will be performing this routine for the first time!).

I am back from the Japan Salsa Congress which was alot of fun!
There were many many performing groups from Japan and others from LA, NY, PR, etc. The level has improved so much since last year, I was really happy to see that! The great thing over there is that everyone dances different styles. They dance On2 mambo style, On1 LA style, Cuban style and others.. It was fun dancing with the cuban dancers which you can't do much in LA! I noticed that they feel the music in a different way than the technical way we learn to hear the beat in the salsa music. As long as we feel the music and enjoy, salsa is really world wide!
Salsa Brava seemed to have enjoyed Japan too. They were stars over there with their fans crowding around them for photos and autographs. and asking them for millions of dances! They were almost on their heels....!!! During our free time, I took them around the city.
<Day 1> A walk through Omotesando (A long street with cute shops and nice food places. Considered to be one of the modern, fashionable areas of Tokyo with lots of young people. We did alot of shopping here...!) leading to the Meiji-jingu (A Japanese shrine. There were cute little girls dressed in their kimono outfits for the traditional 753 celebration.) then to Shinjuku (One of the main parts of Tokyo, with offices and train transfers. We went to the big electronics shop there.).
<Day 2> A nice trip in Asaskusa (It's a traditional Tokyo downtown. With little cute souvenir shops along the street. This is a must when you visit Tokyo! We got some nice Japanese things and got to see a parade with lots of nicely dressed people in traditional outfits. We finished it off with a visit to the Asakusa temple at the end of the street. They bowed their heads and clapped their hands to pray in front of the temple in the traditional way...! A fun tour in old Japan!)
<Day 3> Just a short trip to the little mall in Ebisu (Ebisu is where we had the salsa congress itsself. During the little interval we had, we went shopping their. Of course the guys got bored and returned to the congress workshops, but the girls, we did some good jewelry shopping!) then we went out again to Roppongi (The party place with all the salsa clubs and other dance clubs and drinking places. This is where most of the foreign visitors go to to have fun..! We stopped by the Hard Rock Cafe Tokyo then had lunch at a pizza/pasta place. It was really good! But we were all surprised to see that the Coca-Cola was $5 served in something like a wine glass?! Of course there's no refills..!)
<The last night> After drinking someJapanese energy drinks (like a red-bull) we partyied until 5 in the morning or something. There were some people that retired earlier, but some of us just danced out at the after party! Where ever do we get that energy?! That's salsa!
I think we all had fun! I look forward to the congress next year. Also there is a big event on March 2nd, 2003 for the Japanese salsa community. They are inviting Johnny Polanco for the first time. I hope the salsa will keep on growing in Japan!
Nov 9, 2002

Nickolai and I won First Place!!
October 10th, 2002 Salsa Competition at Club Sevilla in Riverside
Watch our video clip from the Mayan Competition in May.
Oct. 12, 2002