Continuing the Cuban Tradition in D.C.

I have been meaning to write this post for a week. Where does the time go? The very weekend we were visited by Hurricane Irene we were also blessed to have Kati Hernandez & Duane Wrenn visiting DC. People probably wonder why I use the word 'blessed'. We have incredible teachers here in DC but I do believe that Kati & Duane bring something unique that most other teachers of AfroCuba & salsa casino don't have - spirit and love of seeing people learn. Many teachers these days are out there holding classes, taking money, and not really placing the love of dance or the love of the history of Cuban salsa into people's hearts. Kati & Duane do this. Their joy shows through their dancing and how they explain things.

During the Saturday workshop as we transitioned from AfroCuban to timba, Kati was explaining the connection one should have between the body and the music - how listening to the music should move your body. So many teachers fail to connect the dance to the music these days. I don't care if you have 5 students or 80... if your students aren't getting taught anything but move after move then you are failing them. That's a fairly unpopular opinion but if you know me very well then you know that many of my opinions are unpopular. As I have grown as a dancer I have realized a couple of things - first that I don't know anything and two that dancing without thought of the music isn't dancing at all. And before I move into a whole other topic let me continue with Kati and Duane.

Thursday night they joined us at AfroCuba. The one hour class was intense and a preview of the workshop on Saturday. I was pleased to see that about 25 people made it out to the workshop inspite of the rain falling. We worked on some AfroCuban concepts with Kati showing how to integrate those movements into dancing salsa. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who watched and thought "ummm... my body will never do that!" but it is definitely fun to try. Duane moved us into timba footwork. If someone didn't know how to dance the timba portion of the workshop would have been a challenge - it was assumed everyone danced salsa which was fine.

Duane said that we were the first group to get a full AfroTimba workshop so I imagine that there may be changes and refinements in future workshops as they add to the classes. He also mentioned that they'll be having DVDs out in the near future which will focus on both AfroCuban dance and salsa casino - that is pretty exciting. You can see some of the timba portion of the workshop below in the video! If you took the workshop - what did you think? I know that at least one person wasn't happy and felt excluded / cramped.