Dear TOsalsa!

Feedback about our new Partner Search!
Date Dear TOsalsa... Our Response or Reader's Feedback...
 
Oct 30, 2001 Thank you for providing this service.
It is very much needed. Finding the right dance partner is not easy -- Marie
Oct 29, 2001 October 29, 2001
Misconceptions and a question
Rose, I was reading your ads for partner search. I wanted to clear up some misconceptions about Casino or Cuban style Salsa dancing. Cuban dancing is not the Cumbia step (the kick, step back).
I have never seen a Cuban guy dance with Cumbia step. There are cross body leads in Cuban style dancing. I mean it is all cross body leads. Casino is not only when you dance in a group, it is a dance style.
In the Dominican Republic, they dance an older form of Casino. Because of history and depth of dancing in Cuba, there many different salsa dance styles even inside Cuba.
The way they danced Casino of the 1950's is very different from Casino of the 1970's. Salsa dancing is different in Santiago than Havana. But the way many teach Casino in Toronto is wrong !! They teach it as an add-on the New York or LA style salsa. They can't even do the basic step in Casino, the son montuno.
 Dear Chincubano, thank you for sharing your knowledge on cuban-style salsa dancing, but when we decided what dances were going to be included in our design, it was based on what are the most popular forms of partner dancing including the most popular forms of salsa being taught around the world today. When we talk about Casino Rueda, we are talking about Miami-style salsa where you have one dancer calling out a series of moves (short combinations) using verbal and hand signals in a circle with a minimum of 2 couples with partners changing mid-stream while dancing. That is what is usually taught in Toronto and at most of the salsa conventions around the World -- Rose Knows
Oct 27, 2001 Hi, I'm from Montreal and I'm looking for a male partner in my area to dance salsa. Since your site is mainly aimed at the Toronto area, I was wondering if there was a similar one that you could suggest for people involved in the Montreal salsa scene.

Thanks, Valerie

 Dear Valerie, I know of a few salsa sites, but I don't think they offer a partner search right now. I'm glad you took the plunge to join ours, and possibly someone from Montreal may join and/or decide to email you. We just launched our site, so it's going to take awhile for dancers in Montreal to realize that we offer this service across Canada.

I would suggest using www.google.com and try a search on Montreal dance partner search or similar words and maybe you may get lucky. Join as many sites as you can and eventually you may find a partner. Another suggestion, if you're already going to the clubs or taking classes, see if there's any eager males who want to practive and improve -- that's what I used to do.
Oct 24, 2001

What a great new service! I've been looking for this kind of thing for ages - I even considered using classifieds - so thanks! But you don't cover my type of dance which is Ceroc (also known as LeJive or Modern Jive).

It's massive in Europe - check out www.ceroc.com for details. It's a 6 or 8 beat dance with the arm movements of swing or salsa but with constant foot movement and danced to any style of music from 30's to 2001 release songs.

Please, please consider adding a section - I'd love to hook up with people in the Toronto area who know this style of dance. Like any other it's addicitive. Hope to hear from you, Jenny

Dear Jenny, we're glad you love our new service, and unfortunately, it's difficult to put every style of dance on our site -- even swing has more than one specialty, so we opted to pick only the partner-dances which are very popular in the world right now. In hindsight, we probably should have put an "Other" dance option, but maybe in the next phase.