SLO Salsa Exchange

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Khang Duong

CPSalsa is host­ing the first, annual SLO Salsa Exchange from March 30 — April 1.

We’re invit­ing col­lege salsa clubs from all over Cal­i­for­nia to come dance here in SLO. You’ll meet dancers from the Bay Area, Los Ange­les, Santa Bar­bara, Fresno, Davis, Sacra­mento — and that’s just who we’ve heard from so far.

We’re busy spread­ing the word, and you can help!

Get your tick­ets at slosx.com now!

Posted in Dance | |

Becoming a Better Dancer (Commandment #6)

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Jeff Berkman

6. Learn by Teaching

Learn­ing to teach Salsa starts off by ana­lyz­ing every lead, fol­low, move­ment and style that make up a com­bi­na­tion. This detailed analy­sis will improve your own under­stand­ing and aware­ness of the com­bi­na­tion, and will also show you which parts of a com­bi­na­tion you need to practice.

You don’t have to be a pro­fes­sional instruc­tor in order to teach basic Salsa com­bi­na­tions. All you need to do is find a friend that you can prac­tice the com­bi­na­tion with. Break down each com­po­nent with your part­ner until you under­stand the entire move fully. Also prac­tice word­ing each part of the com­bi­na­tion so that you get com­fort­able explain­ing each step. It may be sec­ond nature to exe­cute a core move with­out think­ing about it, but once you look at each part in iso­la­tion, you may find it much harder to ver­bal­ize what you are doing. If this hap­pens, keep switch­ing between doing the move in it’s entirety and the part that’s hard to exe­cute and/or explain. Once you can clearly and eas­ily explain every part for both fol­low and lead, you are ready to teach!

Once you gather a group of friends together, break down the com­bi­na­tion in counts of 3. Start by teach­ing the leader’s foot­work, then include arms, then styling, then teach the fol­low. Don’t teach more than a 16 count com­bi­na­tion, and make sure to play plenty of music for prac­tic­ing. If your stu­dents aren’t under­stand­ing your com­bi­na­tion, you need to pin­point which 3 count sec­tion they are hav­ing dif­fi­culty with and focus on that section.

Good luck and have fun teach­ing, learn­ing, and dancing.

Posted in Dance | |

For your listening pleasure

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Khang Duong

Here’s a bachata by Xavier called Eres Mi Angel. Enjoy!

Posted in Dance, Music, Videos | Tagged , | |

Favorite Songs

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Khang Duong

There are many ways to become a bet­ter salsa dancer. One of the best ways, is get­ting to know the music. Here’s a list of some of my cur­rent favorite songs to get you all started:

  1. La Salsa Nunca Se Acaba — Susie Hansen
  2. No Woman No Cry — Àngeles
  3. Yo No Se Mañana — Luise Enrique
  4. Stair­way to Heaven — Manuel Gonzalez
  5. Nave del Olvido — Avance
  6. Hielo — Willy Chirino
  7. En Ausen­cia De Ti — Michel El Buenon
  8. Mambo Dia­blo — Tito Puente
  9. Hait­ian Lady — Willie Bobo
  10. Se Me Fué — El Gran Combo

And some non-Salsa to mix it up (Cha Cha Cha, Bachata, etc.):

  1. Bésame Mama — Pon­cho Sanchez
  2. Adios, Adios — Salsa Celtica
  3. Amor Estereo — Croma Latina
  4. Te Extraño — Xtreme
  5. Fukuoka — Juan Luis Guerra
  6. Cayuco — Tito Puente
  7. Te Quiero — Oliver
  8. Eres Asi — Domenic Marte
  9. Pa’ Gozar — Span­ish Harlem Orchestra
  10. Adónde Va el Amor — Daniel Santacruz
Posted in Dance, Music | Tagged , , , | |

Cuban Pete

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Khang Duong

 

Si uno no baila en clave — metido en el ritmo de la musica, esta bai­lando con­tra la musica.

–Pedro Aguilar “Cuban Pete”

Cuban Pete was one of the cel­e­brated dancers of the Pal­la­dium era of mambo/salsa in the 50s. I strongly encour­age watch­ing films (here, and here) about this era of danc­ing to get an idea of the where salsa as a dance came from. The above quote trans­lates to: If you don’t dance on the clave– within the rhythm of the music, you are danc­ing against the music. Com­ment below your thoughts on this quote and what it means to you.

Posted in History, Quotations | Tagged , , | |

I need more moves!

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Khang Duong

For all the leads out there strug­gling with the ‘I need more moves’ conun­drum, I give you this sage bit of advice from Oliver Pineda:

In a nut­shell, what’s more impor­tant to the fol­lows isn’t the num­ber of com­bi­na­tions you know, but the way you lead the ones you know, how you inter­pret the music, and how you treat the fol­low while danc­ing. Not easy con­cepts, for sure, but impor­tant for all us leads in help­ing us be bet­ter social dancers.

Posted in Videos | Tagged | |

Becoming a Better Dancer (Commandment #5)

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Jeff Berkman

5. Buy Some Dance Shoes

Too many CPSalsa dancers wear flip flops or sneak­ers, week after week, month after month, with­out real­iz­ing what a huge hin­drance it is to their danc­ing. Buy­ing a pair of dance shoes is per­haps the eas­i­est way to improve one’s danc­ing quickly.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Dance | |

Becoming a Better Dancer (Commandment #4)

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Jeff Berkman
4. Bet­ter Danc­ing Through Awareness

The best advice I can give to an aspir­ing dancer, besides tak­ing classes and danc­ing, is to become mind­ful. I see too many “expe­ri­enced” dancers lead­ing or fol­low­ing poorly because they are danc­ing blindly, unaware of their flaws, their sur­round­ing, their every­thing. They dance at the same low level for years, barely mak­ing progress. It’s a com­mon sight, really. The rem­edy is to sharpen your aware­ness of your­self, your part­ner, and your envi­ron­ment. It’s so easy, I’m sur­prised more don’t do it. Here are a few tips to get you tuned in:
Posted in Dance | |

Becoming a Better Dancer (Commandment #3)

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Jeff Berkman
3. Visit Other Dance Communities

Yes, igno­rance is bliss, but if you want to be a bet­ter dancer, you need to ven­ture out and expe­ri­ence Salsa in the big world. SLO has a par­tic­u­lar homey, homo­ge­neous style called “late nineties on ‘1’ L.A.” Our local dancers know each other so well, they can dance  blind­folded and tell who their part­ner is.

Trav­el­ing to other com­mu­ni­ties will expose you to more styles of danc­ing and more expe­ri­enced dancers. The vari­eties can be strik­ingly dif­fer­ent from what you are used to. For exam­ple, you may see peo­ple danc­ing on ‘2’ or Cuban Style. Expe­ri­enc­ing these dif­fer­ences on a first hand level will hone and expand your skills. Even watch­ing them dance can inspire you beyond your plateau. And when you do go, let peo­ple know you’re from SLO. You’ll be sur­prised at how many dancers out there took their first Salsa steps at CPSalsa.

If you want to explore Santa Bar­bara, I’d rec­om­mend these web­sites for ideas on where to dance:


If you want to visit Fresno, look at:


If you want to try a big city such as L.A. or S.F., talk to our expe­ri­enced mem­bers and see which clubs they like. You can join us on our field trips as well. If you want more infor­ma­tion, join our face­book fan page.
Posted in Dance | |

A Little History

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Khang Duong

Eleven years ago…

CPSalsa was lit­tle more than an idea, a smat­ter­ing of elec­tri­cal pulses jump­ing between neu­rons inside the heads of a cou­ple of guys. Back then, they may not have known that CPSalsa would still be here now, but to them, all that mat­tered was that they needed to dance Salsa, and they wanted more peo­ple to get into it like they were. This lit­tle story is about how those two guys gave rise to our favorite lit­tle club.

It starts with two guys named Jeff and Ed…

In 2000, Jeff Berk­man was a new res­i­dent of San Luis Obispo, a new hire at Cal­Trans, and a recent grad­u­ate of U.C. Irvine. He was in the midst of a dance addic­tion, hav­ing learned swing first, then Salsa from a stu­dent club while in Irvine. To feed his addic­tion, Jeff sought a new place to dance, even­tu­ally com­ing upon lessons taught by Ike and Nancy Lara on Sun­days at a place called Tor­tilla Flats (which you may now know as Ciopinot). While at the lessons, Jeff met a stu­dent named Ed Rodriguez.

An Aero­space Engi­neer­ing junior at Cal Poly, Ed was one of the few stu­dents tak­ing the Salsa lessons. Unlike Jeff, Ed was fairly new to Salsa at the time, but he too had fallen into the danc­ing addic­tion many of you might be famil­iar with.

Younger than the other dancers, Jeff and Ed nat­u­rally grav­i­tated towards each other and began talk­ing about the lack of younger dancers to dance with. By Spring of 2000 Jeff started talk­ing to Ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of start­ing up a stu­dent club. After all, how Jeff started was with a stu­dent club, which he enjoyed immensely, so why not repli­cate it?

Idea to reality

Jeff and Ed’s first move was to approach the ball­room club about teach­ing Salsa. The ball­room club agreed and they quickly began teach­ing lessons on Thurs­days dur­ing the Sum­mer months. Not con­tent to sim­ply be part of the ball­room club (they wanted a night of their own where they could play mostly Salsa music), Jeff and Ed began the process of becom­ing a stu­dent club with Cal Poly. By Sep­tem­ber, CPSalsa had become official.

CPSalsa began host­ing weekly lessons every Tues­day accom­pa­nied by a dance. Slowly they began to amass a fol­low­ing of stu­dents (and non-students) want­ing to learn Salsa as well as a core group of peo­ple inter­ested in run­ning the club. Even­tu­ally, the list of offi­cers grew to include the likes of Lil­iana Gra­ham, Nate Nocon, Sonia Bal­cazar, Amber Ouster­ling, Ana Ruval­calba, Roge­lio Her­nan­dez, Melanie Mueller, Sieno Castillo and more.

On to big­ger and bet­ter things

Over the years, the club moved on and grew. Tues­day nights became Fri­day nights. Measly lit­tle CD play­ers and speak­ers gave way to a full DJ setup. Rope lights snaked their way onto the walls as CPSalsa traded the few dinky DJ lights it had to a full array of advanced DJ lights. Salsa cruises in Morro Bay became a yearly tra­di­tion along with guest instruc­tors, dance events, live bands, and lest we for­get, lots of fun par­ties. Of course, a fair share of offi­cers and vol­un­teers made CPSalsa their own, each con­tribut­ing a lit­tle of them­selves to keep CPSalsa going.

All of this because two guys wanted a bet­ter place to dance Salsa.

Thanks to Jeff and Ed, we’ve had eleven years of CPSalsa. Here’s to eleven more!

Posted in History | Tagged | |
Private