17 years
Legit teachers
- Thread starter Chris_Yannick
- Start date
He's a great guy and has done a lot for the London scene, but honestly I don't rate his teaching. To be fair I have only done drop ins, maybe his progressive courses are better.
But his drop in was pretty disappointing tbh, just 'copy me' patterns. The moves are good, but copy me and repeat just isn't good teaching imho.
Absolutely! This is why i don't think it's the best idea to judge teachers by their star students. Those are the ones who are probably taking other classes, doing workshops, learning from all sorts of different teachers, putting the hours of practice in. Good students often do well even with bad teachers.
Imho a better test of teaching is how you teach lower levels, especially beginners. Which a lot of star teachers don't do, they only do advanced classes and farm out beginners to assistants.
You raise a very good point. I would not judge a teacher based on their star pupil. Rather I look at how their beginners are doing. It's natural that beginners will fall off and that's not the fault of the teacher, but if not a single beginner improves after taking multiple classes with the same teacher, then that's when I start to question the teacher.
We have many local teachers who have been teaching for years but have produced ZERO good students. This is sadly the norm.
It would be nice to see a list of teachers who are the exception to the rule.
Most dancers have learned from several instructors, so can you call them a student of somebody specific? I learned at two schools, took online courses, learned from youtube, took lots of privates, learned at home alone, listened to a lot of salsa music at home and learned from a lot of social practice. Taken altogether I progressed. Who was my teacher? Many people - including myself. I think the mixture of all these made me better. If you only go to a school you probably won't progress.
Even good instructors don't have a magic stick to make you better. Practice every day makes you better - modern dances have a high standard - actually too high to be enjoyable for everyone. Good teachers tell you that: to become good you have to practice at home each day. Seen this way I didn't have good teachers.
Salsa teaching is mostly about moves, bad enough, but even for moves there are good and bad ones. For social dancing the most important is: are these moves applicable in social also with improver followers? Most pros dance mainly with other pros - they don't know that improvers can't follow this or that move. I learned tons of useless combos which are not applicable to improver followers. They were good for the instructor to show off, but pointless for the students.
I had instructors who invented new moves at the beginning of the lesson: letting their students have a warm-up dance to a song, while the instructor couple tried to find some new unusual moves to teach. That means: these moves are untested in social! That's a really bad habit, to teach untested moves. Needless to say they mostly were as bizarre as useless.
To my surprise an instructor can even be didactically not good but be a good teacher - if he teaches applicable moves he uses since years in social. I had such a teacher for a month back in 2020 - and I still use these moves often. They work, they are nice, a pro follows them with elegance but also an improver can follow them somehow. People told me they disliked workshops of Fadi Fusion - yes, he is didactically not good, but his moves work in social (for me).
Even good instructors don't have a magic stick to make you better. Practice every day makes you better - modern dances have a high standard - actually too high to be enjoyable for everyone. Good teachers tell you that: to become good you have to practice at home each day. Seen this way I didn't have good teachers.
Salsa teaching is mostly about moves, bad enough, but even for moves there are good and bad ones. For social dancing the most important is: are these moves applicable in social also with improver followers? Most pros dance mainly with other pros - they don't know that improvers can't follow this or that move. I learned tons of useless combos which are not applicable to improver followers. They were good for the instructor to show off, but pointless for the students.
I had instructors who invented new moves at the beginning of the lesson: letting their students have a warm-up dance to a song, while the instructor couple tried to find some new unusual moves to teach. That means: these moves are untested in social! That's a really bad habit, to teach untested moves. Needless to say they mostly were as bizarre as useless.
To my surprise an instructor can even be didactically not good but be a good teacher - if he teaches applicable moves he uses since years in social. I had such a teacher for a month back in 2020 - and I still use these moves often. They work, they are nice, a pro follows them with elegance but also an improver can follow them somehow. People told me they disliked workshops of Fadi Fusion - yes, he is didactically not good, but his moves work in social (for me).
What do you consider "good teaching" or what could he have done to enhance your experience?
Fundamentally we're talking about 2 related but distinct aspects, getting learners over the beginner hell, and boost social dancers to great dancers. Just about everything so far in this thread is about the latter, the glamors and the stars. Nothing wrong with that.
But the greatest challenge facing the community is graduating learners from beginner hell, without whom there's no latter. Personally as nyc lead, if I look back to all the leads started around my time, I would say it's like running a gauntlet with 90% attrition rate.
So would love to see stories of local teachers that have achieved greater success...
Good teaching doesn't just show you it explains the HOW and WHY and encourages students to analyse things for themselves.
Part of it is structural, crowded drop in classes and Congress workshops are terrible places to learn. But we keep pushing them somehow.
calichris10
Son Montuno
Too young! I am sure she will be a great teacher, but not enough experienceYaritza Arboleda is a seriously great teacher and I'm pretty sure will be universally recognized as such in the mambo community eventually. Being in her mid-20s she just hasn't gotten there yet. She has trained in other styles and hence her classes are very well structured and she knows how to break down movement. Actually tries to teach people how to dance rather than just memorise combos, has the perfect balance of technique and flow, sees mistakes and will correct them gently and helpfully. Also is just a lovely person with great energy on top of all of that. Her intensive training I've taken has easily been the best workshop I've ever taken in terms of value and content I've gotten out of that. That has led me to subscribing to their (Diego's and her) online school and I haven't been disappointed and can only highly recommend it.
Yaritza Arboleda on Instagram: "Mambo Monday Gdansk, Poland See you this Tuesday at @meetanddance.pl for a full Mambo Intensive So excited to be in this city for the first time Grateful to my @salsea_dance family ❤️ for always making me feel
610 likes, 14 comments - yaritza_arboleda on September 22, 2025: "Mambo Monday Gdansk, Poland See you this Tuesday at @meetanddance.pl for a full Mambo Intensive So excited to be in this city for the first time Grateful to my @salsea_dance family ❤️ for always making me feel so loved...www.instagram.com
A little off subject, but what really gets me is that everyone and their mama is a “teacher” now. It is BS!
I've never attended one of Mario's classes so I don't know what he does also if it is a drop in class, I don't know the makeup or level, time constraints and other important information to provide any feedback.
I've heard this same complaint about other instructors as well. Sometimes students will take a private to go more in-depth and have their specific questions or issues addressed,
Natasha Chuma. She’s a former Milan LSD who has trained with many well known teachers. She has a really good understanding of many salsa elements and can break down the fundamentals extremely well. Ive seen her spot mistakes and fix many issues rather quickly for all levels. I think recently she started posting some tutorials on IG.
Yes, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. So many dancers get roped into teaching by their peers. Salsa is just one of those exotic dances that sounds cool to everyone around that if you say 'I dance Salsa', the first thing a non dancer will say is 'ohh that sounds like fun. Can you teach me?'
It seems that in Salsa, as long as you have more experience than the next person, that it automatically qualifies you as a teacher.
Most people don't even want to teach but get offered a position and the lure of being in a position of authority in an exotic dance is too good to pass up.
It*a all fun and games in the beginning until people start believing in their own hype and their egos start to take over.
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1derpalm
Son Montuno
Dance dictir
It was a rhetorical question
First time I danced with Marina was either at 2008 or 2012 NYC congress. I came to know much later who she was. She did visit NYC in 2000s a few times and also took lessons. She is probably most influential in Eastern Europe and CIS region.
desconocida
Son
I agree that she will certainly hone her craft and become even better with experience, but I'm wondering, have you taken classes with her? I don't mean congress workshops, but actual classes and if so, when?
desconocida
Son
I think that's a bit much, lumping all of Eastern Europe together like that - I am sure the Polish would disagree. They had a bunch of their own really good teachers and I am frankly not sure Marina ever taught there. And yes, I am Russian and I've danced with Marina's students back then and by no means want to downplay any of her achievements. In Poland a bunch of people around Salsa Libre were certainly highly influential and produced a lot of great students. Barbara Materka did, too, I am sure (I don't think she's been with Salsa Libre but she might well have also been). Moreover, at the same time Boogaloo was growing, some teachers 'grew up' in Moscow and St. Petersburg quite on their own, many crossing over from ballroom first into casino (they all went to the congress in Rostov, for sure, but I doubt all of them would consider themselves Marina's students).It was a rhetorical question
First time I danced with Marina was either at 2008 or 2012 NYC congress. I came to know much later who she was. She did visit NYC in 2000s a few times and also took lessons. She is probably most influential in Eastern Europe and CIS region.
I've only heard of Marina's name being mentioned once in over 12 years dancing in Eastern Europe, and the person who mentioned her was Svetlana Ray.
If I hadn't seen that video of her dancing with Frankie Martinez on Salsa Forums, I would have never known who she was.
So not sure how much influence she's had in Eastern Europe, especially if she isn't traveling. Even Frankie had to travel to go dance with her. Most people outside of Russia will have no idea who she is.
If I hadn't seen that video of her dancing with Frankie Martinez on Salsa Forums, I would have never known who she was.
So not sure how much influence she's had in Eastern Europe, especially if she isn't traveling. Even Frankie had to travel to go dance with her. Most people outside of Russia will have no idea who she is.
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@Offbeat is a big picture guy, lol. I've not heard about CIS for 30 years. I assume they exist as an office building in Minsk decorated with a lot of flags.
Marina has produced more good dancers than any other salsa teacher I've known, but she's pretty much a local teacher. And very cool dancer as well.
Also there are other good schools in Rostov.
desconocida
Son
That is also not very accurate, the truth is somewhere in between your and Offbeat's statement: Marina has travelled extensively for a number of years and was at least connected to many organizers, I assume, as she tried to promote her festival on the one hand, but also organized larger groups from Russia for which she needed a formal invite for the respective consulate to issue a visa. And, coming back to her (or rather their, Gennady's and hers) festival: with it running for something like 20 years and them constantly bringing new people to teach, that's at least one reason why many artists would know her. And, last but not least, quite a considerable number of non-artist leads from Europe and the States have traveled to that congress, all of them know who she is, too. So let's just generalize and extrapolate from personal experience a little less on all ends of the spectrum
I dont dispute that they are well known among artists of yore, but we're talking how many years ago?
I'm also not really talking about artists or older generation dancers who were dancing since the 2000s. I don't believe dancers from the 2000s (much less from the 1990s) represent the current state of affairs in the Salsa world.
If you ask the general Salsa crowd about Marina (or Gennady) now, how many will know who they are...compared to say... Terry or Bersy or even a social dancer like Sophia? Unless they've traveled to Russia, the social dancing crowd will struggle to come up with famous dancers who live there.
Also, anyone who started dancing within the last 5 years probably won't know many artists that aren't currently actively traveling.
The old guard in Salsa is slowly dying out along with the history of teachers and festivals that were once held in high regard internationally.
I consider myself someone who's done a lot of research on dancers in localities I've never even visited. The average social dancer will know nothing of these people and there's no reason to.
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