The evening began with a fun hour long lesson. Tracie and Mark taught the beginner lesson upstairs and Emely and Olivier taught the intermediate lesson on the main floor. After an hour of social dancing the competition began and the four finalists each took the stage to perform their choreographed routines. No limits on dips and allowances on lifts meant some very showy and entertaining tricks from all the competitors.

While we tabulated the judges’ scores, we were privy to three awesome performances by Latin Energy, the Semi Pro Team at iFreestyle and United Salseros. Thank you so much to each performer and the schools for a wonderful and inspiring display of salsa!

By the time the last school finished performing, the results were in and here they are below. Congratulations to all four couples – what a great effort!

1st Place – Mridu & Elton
2nd Place – Winnie & Manuel
3rd Place – Karen & John
Runners Up – Maysa & Dan

Special thank you to Evan, George, Sara, Tracie, Mark, Emely, Olivier, Adis, Nora and our great judges Teddy, Rene, Angus, Vanesa and Oscar.

The post TDS Amateur Salsa Competition Update! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

The doors open at 6:30pm and we have two lessons lined up from 7pm – 8pm downstairs (intermediate) and upstairs (beginner) with Emely and Tracie.

From 8 – 9pm there is social dancing with DJ Efren who always keeps the mood fun and exciting with upbeat, sexy salsa, merengue and bachata songs.

At 9m the competition will begin. We have 4 couples competing in the finals:

Mridu and Elton
Winnie and Manuel
Maysa and Dan
Karen & John

Each will perform a 2 minute to 2.5 minute routine that they have choreographed. The judges (Oscar, Vanesa, Teddy, Rene and Angus) will have the opportunity to rate each couple and, once the 4 couples finish their routines, I will have the opportunity to add up the scores with Sara while the audience enjoys 3 performances by our fellow dance schools: Latin Energy, iFreestyle and Mambo Mosaic. The announcement of the winner will be announced after the schools perform and then DJ Efren will continue on with the social dancing for the rest of the evening.

Hope to see you all out supporting our competitors. I will post the results next week!

The post The finals are this Sunday! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

Evan and I were out very early on Sunday shopping for all the yummy desserts and decorations for the evening. By noon we were setting up at the studio, then I taught 3 hours of class and I don’t think we left the studio until 11pm which was a long day but everyone’s energy and enthusiasm kept us fully motivated!

At 4pm Evan, David and Annamarie began to set up the tables, chairs, balloons, etc. With the help of Emely, Joanne, Karina, Sara and many more the studio was transformed for the evening. We opened the doors to DJ Evan’s awesome salsa at 5:30pm and by 6:00pm the studio was hopping. Throughout the evening we had many TDS friends and students drop by to enjoy the tasty desserts and dance the evening away. It was great to see so many faces.

Monica, Selena and Annamarie took care of providing everyone with a Spanish version of their name and there were some very creative and sexy nametags in attendance. Thanks also to Joanne and Daniel for helping.

At 7pm Alfred and Nina started off the performances with a bang. Camela and Manuel performed their choreography from the finals of the competition and finally to end the evening off Bryant & Faye from Tango Soul Productions performed an Argentine Tango routine. We raffled off some salsa T-shirts and DVDs also – congrats to the winners!

I was worried that the studio wouldn’t be able to handle the amount of dancers we expected but we had about 250ppl in the studio from 5:30 – 930pm and at no time was it packed so I know that our Sunday Socials will always be spacious.

Big thanks to Evan – it was his debut as a DJ and I thought he did an awesome job! He will be DJing this Saturday July 19th at 9pm at Peridot Lounge for our next outing as well as at our first Salsa Sunday Social this Sunday July 20th from 5:30 – 8:30pm at Empress Walk Studio. Hope to see everyone there!!

The post Our Grand Opening Party! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

Over 450 people came out to Six Degrees last night to enjoy the evening and cheer on the competitors and performers for our second annual Toronto Dance Salsa Amateur Competition.

The evening started at 7pm with three lessons. Velina and Lovelize taught the absolute beginners, Sara and Rob taught the level 1s and Emely and Emmett taught the intermediate lesson on stage with a very sexy dip. Everyone did a great job considering the massive amount of students that came out.

Social dancing began at 8pm and it was nice to see salseros of any level dancing together. The competitors and judges also arrived by this time and we were able to draw the order of the competitors. Alfred & Nina, last year’s competition winners, also gave a short pep talk to the group of competitors and it was awesome to see all the competitors excited and pumped about going on stage.

At 9pm sharp George a.k.a. Georgeous, the man who took sexy back, and our Host with the Most started the competition. As usual George was funny, engaging and kept the spirit of the crowd high.

George asked all the competitors to do a 2 minute warm up on stage and then introduced the judges: Teddy and Rene from United Salseros, Vanesa and Oscar from Latin Energy, Ana Machado and Salsa Steph from Go Dance Mambo.

Here were the order of the competitors:

David & Milded
Tyrone & Jennifer
John & Marsha
James & Therese
Joseph & Natasha
Manuel & Camela
Jonathan & Andrea
Barry & Kelly

Everyone did an amazing job and we got to see lots of fun body waves, dips and tricks.
The crowd was great at keeping the energy high. After everyone finished I quickly gathered the numbers from the judges and, with Sara’s assistance (thanks Sara!) we added the numbers while iFreestyle and Latin Energy dazzled the crowd with some awesome performances.

Finally we were done and George proceeded, with the help of Salsa Steph, to give away 4 tickets to the Salsa Chocolate Party happening next Friday, 4 DVDs from Salsa Steph regarding Timing & Rhythm and 4 TDS DVDs.

The George called out the 5 finalist who will be performing a choreographed routine for the finals. In no particular order, here they are:

Tyrone & Jennifer
John & Marsha
James & Therese
Manuel & Camela
Barry & Kelly

Congrats to everyone who competed – whether or not you go to the finals doesn’t take away from the big accomplishment of last night. Some competitors had only been salsa dancing for 7month to 1 year so that is a huge accomplishment.

More details of the finals to come!

The post The Preliminaries appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

With almost 200 students in attendance there were partners for everyone. Many of the instructors came out as well which is great to see – Sara, Velina, Emely, Alfred, Nina, Evan and myself were all enjoying the night along with the 40 helpers that came out and all the students and guests.

It was Evan’ birthday this past week and as per tradition we put him on the spot for a birthday dance (photo above is from that dance). He was awesome and managed to get through a great deal of partners in a short amount of time. Thanks to everyone for participating and to Evan for being a great sport regardless of the partner (nice body wave Alfred :).

Our next outing is actually the Toronto Dance Salsa Amateur Competition preliminaries on Sunday June 8th at 7pm at 6 Degrees. We can’t wait to see all the work the competitors have put into their freestyle round. There are also performances by Latin Energy and iFreestyle so come out and support the competitors, watch some great performances and have a blast! More details to follow!

The post Peridot On Sunday appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

A very short walk from the subway station and with cheap $5 parking across at the Marriott, Peridot is very accessible. There are 2 floors with 3 main sections as well as a patio. We had 300ppl there almost and there was still space for more which was such a pleasant surprise!

There are 3 main rooms so we offered 3 lessons. Velina with Mildred as an assistant did the absolute beginner class, Emely and Sonya did the level 1 class and Evan and I did the intermediate class. Classes were very busy – hopefully everyone learned the combo and were able to practice it that evening to memorize.

Peridot kindly offered us gift certificates to give away and 2 lucky dancers received those. There was also a birthday dance for Tyrone, one of our helpers. All in all a great evening. Photos will be posted this week on our “events” page.

We look forward to visiting Peridot again very soon for our next Sunday outing!

The post Peridot Last Night! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

It has been a long time in the making but we are so excited to announce that Toronto Dance Salsa is finally moving into our own studio! We will be throwing our doors wide open June 1st, 2008, just in time to begin our summer semester.

Our gorgeous new studio is located in the heart of North York on Yonge Street between Finch and Sheppard at Empress Walk Mall right on top of the North York Civic Centre Subway. Parking is free for 1.5hrs for students in the underground parking. The studio is extremely large and airy at 1600 square feet!

We will still be holding classes downtown at the Adelaide Club and the Toronto Athletic Club so that we can provide convenience and flexibility to our downtown students.

We have just posted our summer schedule and registration is open inclusive of our new location called “Empress Walk”. For all the senior students who have been asking we have a level 6 class and a specialty styling class. Adelaide Classes will be posted very shortly.

For more information or to register please click on the following link:

http://torontodancesalsa.ca/salsa-classes.php

We will be holding regular weekly practice sessions at Empress Walk once we move in and will let you know the details as they come.

We look forward to welcoming you to our new home!

Sharon

The post Our Own New Studio – Finally! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

We were quite worried that the snow would keep everyone away. This was the 3rd outing this semester that was effected by the snow storms in Toronto. However, even the storm couldn’t keep our salsa friends away!

We started the night with 3 lessons. Kimberly and Mark taught the absolute beginner class, Emely and Rob taught the level 1 class, and Evan and I taught the level 2 and up class. Each was very well attended and, although the combos were difficult as always, our students rose up to the challenge.

At 11:15pm the helper group was announced by Caryl. The couples performing were:

1. David & Katie
2. Khemara & Kelly
3. Alex & Ildi
4. Manuel & Nicole
5. Barry & Carolina
6. George & Pansy
7. Mark & Stella

It was amazing to see the confidence in this performance. Many of the helpers had performed at least once if not twice before now and that bit of added experience makes a huge difference. I was so proud of all the performers and Caryl for creating such a great choreography and having the courage to see it through. Hopefully it has inspired many of the students to one day perform themselves.

Our next outings are confirmed:
Sunday March 16th at 7pm at El Rancho
Friday March 28th at 9:30pm at Plaza Flamingo

See you all then!

The post Friday’s Outing to Plaza Flamingo appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

This is the second helper party at our place and I think it is going to become tradition to move all our furniture, blast the salsa music and dance the night away. The Dance-All-Night Award would probably go to John Radke and Emely Tapar – I don’t think I saw them stop dancing which is a good thing because the food and dessert tables were overflowing.

We also surprised Alfred for his 35th birthday. Nina dropped off a huge cake and decorations the day before and all the helpers hid upstairs and shocked poor Alfred. It was Alfred’ first surprise party and hopefully we didn’t scar him for life. Happy birthday Alfred!

Our next helper get-together is on March 15th. I am treating all the helpers to a snowtubing and dinner experience at Horseshoe Resort. Should be a blast – photos to come!

The post Saturday’s Helpers Get Together appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

Below was our CBC adventure!

On Tuesday Evan, Sara, Emely and I met at 7:45am inside the CBC building downtown to film our segment of the show “Steven and Chris”, a new and very popular daytime talk show with the host of HGTV’s Design Rivals.

We were shown to the Green Room to relax while they prepared for our walk through. What was fun to note is that this is the same Green Room that all the top celebrities hang out at when visiting George Stroumboulopoulos on The Hour so we were very happy to hang out in that room!

Everyone who works on the show was super friendly, caring and professional and we were able to run through our segment several times to get a feel for the floor, space and meet Steven and Chris.

Then it was off to makeup which the girls really enjoyed. With hundreds of lipsticks and eye shades, we were in girl heaven. At 11am we sat down to enjoy the filming of the first two segments in preparation for our own segment. And finally it was our turn.

Evan and I started the segment by doing a 30 second freestyle dance. Then Steven and Chris joined us on stage to talk a little bit about the benefits of salsa and why it is so hot. Chris was quite nervous about learning how to dance but he was a good sport and very soon Emely had partnered with Chris and Sara partnered with Steven and we were showing the guys the basic salsa step, the right turn, and a cross body lead.

Steven was really getting the hang of it but Chris was struggling a bit and even tried to run off the stage with Emely (all in fun of course!). It was definitely a light hearted and fun segment and the guys were great sports.

Check out the link above and feel free to put list a comment with CBC about what you thought!

The post CBC fun for us! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.