Note: Workshop schedule is subject to change. 

Nery García & Giana Montoya (Ft. Myers, FL)

Nery is the founder, owner, and director of Elegant Rumba Dance Company in Ft. Myers, FL.  Born in Newark, NJ, he grew up dancing folk dances native to his parents' Latin heritage. After a visit to California in 2003, his passion and love of dance expanded to include the L.A. style of salsa.  His ability to quickly acquire the moves and techniques of this flashy style led him to become a permanent fixture in the LA-style salsa scene.  Nery has performed, given workshops, and taught classes both in the U.S. and internationally aboard cruise ships.  His style is fun, sexy, and exciting to watch!

Giana Montoya is a professional dancer, actress, and choreographer who inspires her students to reach new levels in both social and professional dancing. She fuses her skills and extensive training in salsa, Latin, jazz, musical theatre, yoga, burlesque, modern, and Flamenco, creating powerful, emotional, and sexy performances and choreography.  Giana's incredible flexibility, technique, body movement, and stage presence have made her a national and international guest instructor, performer, and coach for many venues around the world. In 2008, she founded her dance and yoga training and performance company, Shiva Latina in Sacramento, CA, and has since expanded coast-to-coast to Florida where she has joined her partner, Nery Garcia.

Sean Wilson & Lisa Perez (Orlando, FL)

Originally from Jamaica, Sean moved to the United States at age eleven and began taking salsa classes in 2003.  He learned quickly and by 2004 was performing with the Salsa Karibe Dance Team in Miami. He has taught both salsa on 1, mambo on 2, and cha cha. Currently, he teaches classes on 2 for Salsa Addiction in Orlando. His intellect, patience, sense of humor, and ability to relate to a wide range of people make him a superior instructor.

Born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Boston, Lisa studied and taught NY-style salsa on 2 with April Genovese and performed with Dave Morgan before moving to Miami in 2003, where she focused on teaching ladies' salsa styling.  She later moved to Orlando, where she currently resides, and began performing with Universal Mambo Dance Academy, directed by former Eddie Torres dancer Eric Baez. 

In 2008, Sean and Lisa became partners and are currently the co-directors of Essential Element Dance Company in Orlando, FL.  They teach and perform NY-style Mambo on 2 and cha cha cha.

Christian Sola (Orlando, FL)

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Christian was given a great foundation in musical genres, listening and dancing to Latin folkloric music, salsa, bachata, merengue, and jazz.  He was introduced to bachata dancing in 2005 and soon after started developing his own personal style, "Sensual Bachata," influenced by tango, waltz, and rumba.  He has traveled all over the world teaching workshops and participating in bachata and salsa festivals and congresses.  His teams perform locally, nationally, and internationally.  He has recently started hosting events as well, such as his monthly Bahhari Nights which promote unity among dance organizations.  This same idea was taken to the next step with the first- ever Latin Dance World Congress held in Orlando in May 2010. 

Omar Clinton (Tampa, FL)

Omar Clinton is the founder and creator of BodyIsolations.com, a system which teaches your body to be smarter about movement which directly translates to your ablity to learn salsa.  He currently trains in ballet and modern dance, which gives him a unique understanding of the fundamentals of how the body moves.  In this workshop, he will give you an amazing warm-up for the rest of the workshops as he takes the class through every joint in the body moving it and coordinates it with smooth transitions and sharp Afro-Cuban movements.

Tate Blomquist (Orlando, FL)

Tate, born and raised as an all-American Southern girl, is of Lithuanian and Swedish descent and is a 6th-generation Floridian. She began dancing ballet at age 4 but was drawn to hip-hop around age 8 and continued into adulthood.  She began learning On1/LA-style salsa at Salsa Heat Dance Studio in Orlando, Florida in the summer of 2007. Her fated exposure to the Latin dance scene found her bitten by an entirely new love bug--bachata!  She began a seven-couple bachata team, Guatú, in the fall of 2009 and is about to debut her all-girl bachata team, The Honey Bees.

Darren Stuart (Gainesville, FL)

Born and raised in Barbados, Darren is now the owner and director of Salsa Caliente Dance Studio (no relation to our studio), which has locations in Gainesville and Jacksonville.