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Susana with dance partner Leon Rose, photograph by Michou von Beschwitz, courtesy of Salsa-UK.

From Ballerina to Salsa Diva:
La Montero - A Dancer's Tale

Susana Montero says she’s going to slow down. It’s like Shane Warne saying he’s going to try less hard to win the Ashes back for Aus. On school nights, Susana has a demanding weekly teaching schedule and practises with dance partner Leon Rose. At weekends, she’s on the salsa Congress circuit, living out of a suitcase and jetting off around the globe to teach and perform, writes Lee Knights
     Watching Susana teach and dance, you’d think her natural flair for both grew out of dancing salsa her whole life. You’d be wrong. In fact, Susana took up salsa seven years and started out on a very different road; training and performing as a classical ballerina in Madrid, where she was born and grew up.
     “When I was 4, I was dancing all the time; music came on and I’d start jumping
up and down so my mother took me to ballet school. I won my first ballet competition when I was 10 and the prize was to train with the Spanish National Ballet Company. By the time I was 14, I was teaching ballet to little girls,” Susana recalls. As a ballerina with the Silvia Yague Ballet Dance Company, Susana went on to play the lead in productions like Giselle, Don Quixote, Carmen as well as training in Flamenco, contemporary, Afro-Cuban and jazz dance.
   As the eldest of three sisters, Susana had to put her ballet career aside to help support her family through a period of financial difficulty. “I don’t regret it – I don’t regret doing anything for my family,” she says. “But salsa is a second chance for me to dance again. I love salsa. I loved it straight away. I was hooked from the
beginning, it was just good fun. The beauty of salsa is that anybody can do it, you don’t have to be a trained dancer.”
   A chance event set Susana off on her journey to become one of the world’s foremost and versatile salsa instructors. She was working in London as a psychologist and just happened one evening to end up in a salsa club. That night was a life changing experience. Only 18 months on, she won her first UK salsa championship – the Tropicana British Salsa Open - with dance partner, Chandy. She followed this up with a second title – the coveted UK Bacardi Championship – with dance partner Leon Rose. This catapaulted her onto the international salsa stage and a new life.
Below: Susana with Tamambo, photographs by Michou von Beschwitz, courtesy of Salsa-UK. 

  When teaching and performing you see a Susana who is confident, relaxed and easy going but this is only part of the Susana conundrum. There is a grittiness just below the surface and a strong sense of personal discipline, second nature after years of formal ballet training. It is this combination – not to mention a feisty Latin spirit – that has made her a twice British Salsa champion, drives her to teach without respite at congresses all over the world and earned her more awards than you could shake a klave at. It is also what sustained her through six gruelling years of part-time work and study to qualify with a Phd in psychology.
   It’s been a long haul though and Susana is the first to admit it. “Not many women make it in Salsa and it’s taken a lot of hard work,” she says. “But I didn’t want to work for anybody else – I’m very stubborn and I won’t ask for help.  I wanted to do it by myself.”

Susana with Super Mario by Mike Payne.

   Having made it on her own terms, Susana saysa she wants to take the odd weekend off. Being Susana, though, she won’t be slobbing around the house with a Pot Noodle. She has set her sights on a new challenge; a one-woman mission to help raise the standard of Salsa dance in the UK. 
   “A few years ago, the UK had a reputation as the salsa capital of Europe – we were the best. Now, we’re stuck and everybody has passed us – Milan, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome.” she points out.
   Susana wants to see the UK back in poll position and has the drive to see it through. Not only is she a twice British Salsa Champion but Susana breaks the mould on the UK and international circuit as probably the only female instructor who is as adept at teaching both advanced men and women.
   “In Europe, dancers take their profession as dancers much more seriously and they train hard. UK dancers don’t seem to be so committed and don’t put enough into their training, don’t give it their all.
   I want to be clear - I’m not talking about social dancers. I’m talking about professionals who want to perform or make a living from salsa. You need discipline and commitment to get to the highest level and to be humble. You can’t work with people who think they’re better than everybody.”

Above: Susana introduces a new dance partner, Bob the Builder. Above left: Susana with friend and teaching partner Super Mario.  Both photographs by London Salsa Scene’s Mike Payne.

   Now, Susana is focusing on the challenge of helping women at all levels bring on their dancing. She has just released a new DVD – Ladies Styling 2 – a follow up to Ladies Styling 1 video also just released on DVD. While Ladies Styling 1 is largely aimed at beginners through to intermediate dancers, Susana feels the follow up is aimed at advanced dancers. “The new DVD focuses on body isolation, to help women develop really good, fluid body movement and slanted more towards dance training than conventional women’s styling,” she says.
   To support this, Susana plans to start intensive workshops for beginner-improvers and intermediate/advanced women soon. “I’m putting into practise what I think women in the UK need. We need to work at preparing our bodies for dance so we can express ourselves more fluently and dance with more feeling to music. This means using isolation techniques. We need better technique too; if you don’t have the basics, you can’t improve.” Behind everything Susana the salsa instructor says, the dedication of Susana the classical ballerina is never far away.
   Inevitably maybe, Salsa has played a big part in Susana’s private life. It was salsa that brought Susana together with her Ukranian husband Yuriy. It’s an incredibly romantic story; he was in Kiev, saw Susana’s styling video and fell madly in love. A couple of years ago, he made it happen, turned up in the UK and at one of Susana’s old haunts - My Place in Earls Court. “How long did Yuiy and I know each other before we decided to get married? As Super Mario (Susana’s teaching partner and close friend) says, all it took was five coffees.”
 
Susana has released a brand new DVD (Ladies Styling 2 – to read a review , click HERE ) plus Ladies Styling 1 is now available on DVD – we’ll post a review shortly. You can buy this from: www.monterouk.com Catch Susana in the UK at her weekly classes at Salsa! Charing Cross Road on Mondays; look out for her at weekenders ie Folkestone at the Grand Burstin Hotel soon (see our Diary section) and her forthcoming ladies’ styling workshps.

Words by: Lee Knights, Editor, www.londonsalsascene.co.uk editor@londonsalsascene.co.uk
Photographer: Mike Payne. To hire Mike for your event: call 07734 721983.
The next UK Salsa Congress at Butlins Resort, Bognor Regis is on Friday 22- Sunday 24 Sept 2006 - call 020 8776 9000 or visit www.salsa-uk.com

©London Salsa Scene is an online, independent magazine guide covering salsa and the Latin lifestyle in London and beyond. The views published  are not necessarily those of the Editor. All rights reserved. London Salsa Scene retains Copyright over all the articles and photographs published on this website - it is an infringement of that right to use this material elsewhere without our written permission. Disclaimer: London Salsa Scene publishes information on behalf of promoters, organisers, dancers and others in good faith but is not responsible if these events are cancelled, altered or if performers and instructors billed not not appear; this is exclusive liability and responsibility of the event organiser.

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