I know what it feels like to want to dance and express yourself, but not feel like you have enough skills or technique to do this with confidence.  I was always attracted to dance, gymnastics, movement, and stretching, as a child. But there were no studios around my area to take classes.  Thus, as an adult, I embarked on this journey to change my body and train myself to become more aligned and technically able to do yoga and dance at an advanced level.  That is why I am so passionate about helping everyone release their inner dancer, or inner yogi, so they can feel empowered to be dynamic and free in their bodies.

 

There was also no you tube to see movement as kids can do today. So I copied dances I would see on TV and music videos. I also danced a lot at school dances, and would make up dances with my friends. 

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I became a cheerleader and was on the dance team in junior high school which was where I started to do choreography and perform.  I was very good at choreography and became head cheerleader, yet I still did not have formal training and always felt I lacked the skill to become a professional dancer.  When I went to college, I started taking formal jazz and ballet and found myself not having the alignment to do more advanced dance technique and I didn’t know how to fix this problem. I could not turn twice, I could not balance well on one foot. I didn’t make the dance team.  I thought that I had to have taken ballet since I was 3 like most other advanced dancers I knew.

 

Then I stopped dancing and focused on academics for my college years, until I came to Japan and fell in love with salsa dance. I found myself dancing every weekend, at hip hop clubs and then salsa clubs where many Latinos from the military would come up for the weekend and it was there I learned bachata and salsa.  I got so into it that people started asking me to teach, so I opened some classes.  Yet, I felt I had not studied enough and then came to Tokyo to pursue salsa and train more.  So I made the decision as an adult, to change my body and become the best dancer I could. Whilst working, I took dance classes almost everyday and if there was something I couldn’t do, I would train until I could do it. I learned I had holes in my technique, and rhythm.  I studied anatomy, trained in Yoga, Pilates, body conditioning, through which I found out I couldn’t do things because I wasn’t talented, it was because my body wasn’t aligned, so I couldn’t access the right combination of muscles to achieve a certain move.

 

This is why I am so passionate about teaching. I know there are so many children and adults who want to dance, who want to be better, but don’t know how to start or how to get to the next level.  Some people believe they ‘can’t do something’ and I never accept the word ‘can’t’ . Some people just have not had the right information yet, and therefore don’t now how to approach