1) Peridot Lounge – Saturday February 21st – 81 Bloor Street East (at Yonge)
Beginner and intermediate lessons from 10:00 – 10:30pm

2) Plaza Flamingo – Friday March 6th – 423 College Street (at Bathurst)
Beginner and intermediate lessons from 9:30 – 10:30pm

3) Acrobat Lounge – Saturday March 21st – 2464 Yonge Street (at Eglinton)
Beginner and intermediate lessons from 9:00 – 10:00pm
Debut performance by the TDS Professional Dance Team at 11:30pm

As usual we also have our weekly Sunday practice sessions called “socials” at Empress Walk from 6-9pm so come out and make new friends, practice your moves and get a great workout.

Hope to see you all at these events!

Sharon

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Welcome to all our new students and welcome back to our returning students. It is great to see and feel the excitement of students back in class, meeting new friends, getting a great workout and really feeling the fun and joy of dancing. For me, I really missed dancing as I have been also away from it for a couple of months spending time in Hawaii and trying to get through the first trimester of my pregnancy. I feel so much better on the dance floor physically and mentally and I know everyone feels similarly after a low key holiday season.

Our first outing of 2009 is this Friday, January 23rd at 9:30pm at Plaza Flamingo. Get there a bit early so that you can check your coat and be ready for the lesson from 9:30pm – 10:30pm. Velina and Mark will be teaching the absolute beginners lesson and Evan and I will be teaching the intermediate class. As a special treat our Toronto Dance Salsa Helpers Performance Class will be performing their choreographed routine that they have been working on for the past few months at 11:15pm so come out to support them!

The Sunday Social time has changed to 6-9pm. Every Sunday (excluding long weekends) we dance the Sunday evening away at Empress Walk. Over 100 students and friends come out weekly and it is a ton of fun and very comfortable.

We also have non-salsa classes available at Empress including Zumba which is an amazing fun workout on Wednesdays with Tracie, Belly Dance level 1 and 2 with Ece, Hip Hop with Ece (Sold out), Yoga with Pamela and Pilates with Elizabeth. Check out details on the Class Schedule Page.

I have been asked where students can buy our new Toronto Dance Salsa sloganed T-Shirts. They are available every Sunday at the social. You can also email us and we can try to bring you a shirt to your own class. T-shirts are only $20 taxes included.

That is about all the news for now. See you on Friday at the outing!

The post Welcome back everyone! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

The next new class to be offered is the very famous Zumba Fitness Workout 5 week session. This is a high energy, fun cardiovascular exercise program that incorporates Latin dance footsteps, body movement and arm movement to get the heart pumping and the muscles working. No partner is required. Cost is $70 for 5 weeks and the class takes place on Wednesdays 5:45 – 6:45pm starting November 19th. Here are some more details regarding this program:

What is Zumba Fitness?
Founded by celebrity fitness trainer, “Beto” Perez, Zumba Fitness Classes Toronto fuses hypnotic Latin rhythms and easy to follow moves to create a dynamic workout system that will blow you away. It’s an exhilarating workout of caloric-burning, heart-racing, muscle-pumping, and body-energizing movements meant to engage and captivate for life! The routines feature interval training sessions where fast and slow rhythms and resistance training are combined to tone and sculpt your body while burning fat.

In the past years Zumba Fitness Classes have become nothing short of a revolution. Coining the concept of “fitness-party” and making fitness fun, Zumba has spread like wild-fire throughout North America. The routines feature interval training sessions where fast and slow rhythms, and resistance training are combined to tone and sculpt your body while burning fat. Add some Latin flavor and international zest into the mix and you’ve got Zumba Fitness!

Zumba Fitness Classes in Toronto will get you grooving to Merengue, Salsa, Reggaeton, Cumbia, Bachata and Cha Cha Cha. The progressive level 1 class will start you with the basic footwork patterns and as the weeks progress, styling and fitness elements will be added to have you really working up a sweat! What are you waiting for? Join the party!

Toronto Dance Salsa offers Zumba Fitness dance classes in Toronto for beginners. This five week introduction class will address all the basics of the dances including technique, footwork, arm movements, body movement and styling.

Our Zumba Fitness Toronto classes are taught by Tracie Macko. Here is Tracie’s bio:

Tracie Macko, Salsa and Zumba Instructor
Tracie first fell in love with salsa in 2002 at a club in her hometown of Winnipeg, MB. Moving to Toronto that same year, Tracie saw the diverse dance and performing arts community that Toronto had to offer and immediately immersed herself into the Latin dance social scene. She quickly obtained a position as a Salsa dance group and private class instructor at Soles Dance Studio, and was a main dance instructor there until Soles closed its doors in the summer of 2004.

Since then Tracie has continued on as a private On1 Salsa Dance instructor, and, in 2005, expanded her teaching into the world of dance fitness, teaching ‘Zumba Fitness’ and Salsa Cardio at various fitness facilities throughout the GTA. Tracie has also established herself as a creative, dedicated and energetic dance performer and choreographer, making appearances on numerous Toronto stages in a variety of dance genres, ranging from cabaret style jazz to Salsa to Afro-Brazilian and Samba. She is currently a performing member of The Dance Migration, The Orient Dance Company and Las Gatas Entertainment. She is also a “regular” on the social Salsa dancing scene, dancing both On1 and On2 at clubs in the Toronto area, and is known for her unique style that reflects her diverse dance background.
Click here to view our Zumba Fitness Workout Classes Toronto.

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Dancing with the baby boomers
(Posted Date: Thursday, October 16, 2008)

As our population ages and looks for new ways to stay fit, many are turning to dancing
By Brian Baker
DANCING THROUGH LIFE: Couples of all ages are learning how to cut a rug, thanks, in part, to the popularity of reality dancing shows like Dancing with the Stars.

Adding a little spring to your step helps to tap dance on the head of the stereotype that says you have to take it easy as you get older.

Dancing, whether it’s ballroom or Latin, is a great way to ease into physical activity without the intensive regimen of weight training, say experts and participants.

Automotive industry executive Tony Dobranowski and his wife Janice started taking ballroom dancing lessons in the spring and plan to continue this fall.

Their goal was to get out for a bit of exercise and develop some dancing skills, Dobranowski says. And he credits Dancing with the Stars for helping to motivate the pair.

The TV show has helped timid baby boomers picture themselves as the next Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers, says Sharon Galor, president and owner of Toronto Dance Salsa.

“I think (boomers) were hesitant a few years ago because it was still fairly underground and it was considered a young person’s dance,” she says. “Now you see Dancing with the Stars and you see people of all ages dancing — it’s not limited any more to young people. Everyone’s taking advantage of it.”

Galor, an avid Latin dancer for more than a decade, adds the show is a positive influence, since Marie Osmond, Steve Guttenberg, Jane Seymour and Susan Lucci — all baby boomers — have wowed audiences.

Besides popularity on television, dancing is a great low-impact way for older, less active people to stay in shape.

“First of all, it’s a cardiovascular exercise so you’re going to be sweating, you’re going to be getting the heart rate up,” she says. “You’re going to be using muscles in terms of toning, have the abs being worked, the hips being worked, and all the muscles in your arms and legs.

“So it’s a really good overall body workout, without being too hard on your body.”

Dancing also helps with coordination, reflexes and memory, Galor says.

“A lot of people come to us and the first few weeks they can’t remember any of the moves we teach them,” she says. “Usually by the end of the semester they’ve got the moves, they’re being able to put them together.”

Professors at York University’s School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences echo Galor’s dance floor observations.

But, associate professor Joe Baker says, there’s a pervasive stigma attached to getting older. And he wants to stomp out the negative stereotype that as we age we can’t be as physically active as we once were.

“Our big social push in the lab is to get more people physically active and to forget about the stereotypes of what it means to be an older person, because we are finding more and more that those stereotypes just aren’t accurate,” says Baker, who researches physical activity and aging at York.

His suggestion for those who are not as active is to get out and dance.

“Our general message is you need to be doing activities that will challenge the current state of your cognitive and physical functioning,” he says. “So if you are a baby boomer who hasn’t been that active in physical activity for the past couple of decades, dancing is a great way to start getting a little bit more exercise integrated into your lifestyle.”

More exercise means greater blood flow, which also benefits the most important organ of all: the brain.
“There’s mounting evidence that suggests any time you get your heart up and getting the blood flowing, it also flows to the brain,” Baker says. “And so the brain is getting more enriched with oxygen than if you were sitting on the couch.”

For Wendy Lavender, office manager and teacher at the William G. Pollock Dance Studio, the enjoyment of dancing is a lot simpler.

“Well, (dance lessons) get people up moving around the floor,” she says. “It’s a lot more social than somebody going to the gym and getting on a stationary bike.”

Pollock Dance Studio, in the Yonge and Davisville area, offers smooth dancing styles like the foxtrot, waltz and tango, and some more uptempo steps: rumba, cha-cha, merengue, swing and mambo.

Lavender, a dancer for 18 years, says plenty of boomer couples come into the studio because they have more free time to be together.

“They’re empty nesters now and they’re looking some time to spend with each other,” she says.

And it’s the ease of dancing that attracts Dobranowski even more.

“(Janice and I) have admired for a long time the ‘old smoothies’ who glided around the floor effortlessly,” he says, “and we were hoping we might be able to do the same.”

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I think cardio salsa classes are great. They are a great, fun workout that incorporate great merengue, salsa, cha cha and other latin rhythms. It introduces students to fast footwork, step choreography, musicality and body movement. For those looking to get healthy, lose weight, have fun, and dance it is a great step to take.

The thing that these classes don’t teach is how to dance with a partner and that is the essence of salsa dancing. Leading and following turnpatterns is the key to dancing salsa. So what you get in a cardio class is a good workout and fun steps but it really doesn’t have much to do with the partnerwork, turnpatterns and feel of the dance.

So if you have taken cardio classes like Zumba, it will help you learn footwork better in class but it won’t help you skip levels because you have to learn how to lead or follow and that is the difficult part of dancing.

If you take cardio salsa in conjunction with regular salsa classes you will definitely see the benefit though as you can last longer, learn footsteps faster, have a sharper memory due to the choreography and speed of the class. So the moral of the story is everything helps but nothing can replace a good salsa partnerwork class!

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