Salsa & Mambo Video Reviews

Stacey Lopez - Video Reviews 

How to learn to teach salsa

Level: Beginners

Style: Puerto Rican

Content: Teaching concepts.

General Comment: There are many salsa products around, but original ideas are few and far between, so much so that they (the ideas and their creators) must feel pretty lonely.

This DVD is one such original idea, partly because of the content, and partly because of the format. It contains a number of clips, in which Stacey Lopez shows the basic elements of salsa Puerto Rican style, both on1 and on2, as well as a short demo. This material is equivalent to a standard beginner course. The clips are not organised in a sequence, as in most DVDs, but delivered via an interactive menu. You need to be in front of your computer to enjoy this, but if you are, then you can choose which clip to view, from which angle, whether to loop it or not and even change the speed if you need to analyse things in slow motion. On top of that you can even write down some notes and keep track of how many times you watched a clip.

It shares the idea of being able to interactively select the view angle with the “Quick and Dirty Guide to Salsa” but here the angles are clearer. With Salsaville’s Salsaware, it shares the idea of putting you in control of what to view and how, though in this case the clips are given and you can not upload your own.

An 'apparently' annoying feature is that the software requires an electronic key to install; if you are used to downloading software from the net, you will find this operation trivial, since it works well and fast (within a couple of minutes you will register and obtain the key); if you are techno-phobic then you may find irritating not being able to simply view the material on your TV, but with a little patience you will solve the problem.

When it comes to the content, I can’t help but being biased, since Stacey is one of my favourite dancers; apart from the explanation of the basic elements, what makes this DVD unique is that it both teaches basic elements and then shows you how to teach them; Stacey has a graduate diploma in education and his double role of great dancer and educator make this product useful for instructors as well as students

Reviewed by: Fabio from SalsaIsGood Good