.
Search
Email this articleE-mail this story  Discuss this articleWrite letter to editor  Discuss this articleOrder a classified ad



Salsa instructor Rebecca Chouinard dances with Maiko Sell at a Latin dance night at The Gallery.

Salsa spirit is hot, hot

Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 13/04) - By day, Rebecca Chouinard is a pollution control specialist for water resources with the federal government.

By night, specifically certain Friday nights at The Gallery, Chouinard is a salsa dance queen, instructing Yellowknifers in the fine art of Latin dancing.

"It's fun, you meet people and it's a great form of exercise," said Chouinard.

"I can't explain it. It's just a great feeling. Even if you're just a beginner, when you're twirling around ... It's a gut feeling. It's great."

Chouinard didn't take dance classes as a child. She just fell into salsa dancing in 1998 while she was a student in London, Ont., studying geology and environmental sciences.

"I found it late in life and got addicted to it," she said.

She had travelled to Cuba a few times and had danced a little bit there but didn't really get hooked until her final year of school when she started working at a salsa bar.

"I met a lot of people in the Latin community," she said.

She began dancing with a Colombian group, learning folkloric dances. Then when she began contract work up North, she'd use her off time to travel to Spain and Central America, learning new steps along the way.

Chouinard said latin dancing is hot, hot, hot in Canada right now.

"I find there's more of a salsa dance scene in Canada than in Spain. In Guatemala I'd ask 'does anyone want to dance with me?' and they'd laugh because I was from Canada. Then I'd dance and they would be shocked. 'Where did you learn that?'"

Chouinard said club style latin dancing mostly sticks to the salsa, meringue, bachata and cumbia but the salsa is the hardest. Once you learn salsa steps, she said, it's easy to pick up the rest.

She once taught ballroom dancing at a studio in Toronto but said the ballroom steps can be very different.

"You never see the cha cha in a latin bar," she said.

Tonight is her third time leading The Gallery patrons through Latin dance steps. Chouinard has people rotate, dancing with different partners every few minutes.

"I don't want it to be a 'couples' thing," she said.

Last time more girls than guys showed up.

"That's the thing," said Chouinard. "It's getting the guys to come."

Tonight at 9:30 p.m., the whole bar is going latin-themed, with decorations, latin music, latin drinks (margaritas, mojitos and the salsa sting) and a raffle for prizes. such as dinner for two at Old Town Landing, a diamond ring and his and her watches.

Chouinard is grateful there's been so much interest in the latin dance nights. When she had "a dancing incident" last November (somebody stepped on her foot, putting her out of commission for weeks) she and the bar got lots of phone calls from people wanting to know when the next dance night would be.

More lessons might be in the works. If there's enough interest to warrant it, Chouinard might start offering more formal classes.