Kick Up Your Heels - Harbourfront
Performing with Miko Sobreira and Yani Borell Salsa Orchestra.
During the Kick Up Your Heels Festival at the Harbourfront Center
My passion is to teach people to dance together. I do so in a way that embraces vulnerability, builds confidence and opens access to the joy of human connection. I grew up in a magical and strange world of competitive ballroom dance in the Far East corner of the former Soviet Union. In that world, kids trained in dance as athletes from a very early age. Aside from the countless hours of training, competing and performing, what I remember and value most is the feeling of genuine connection to my company members. We trained together, ate together, traveled together, and shared an experience of living through the fall of a political and economic regime that our people were so identified with. Today, each one of us is in a different part of the world but we are still connected through dance and as life-long friends. It is a bond like no other. It holds both real magic and real power and that is what I strive to share through my teaching and creative work. To me, each new dance experience…
