Salsation Curacao

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	Rudsel Magdalena Rudsel Magdalena was born on Curacao on 17th of May 1969. He has been dancing for almost 25 years, mastering a wide variety of dances. From break dancing, to folklore, this eventually led to merengue and later evolved into salsa. Rudsel has been dancing salsa now for more than 11 years and was one of the pioneers of the Puerto Rican style salsa on the island. He has represented our beautiful island many times at the world salsa congress in Puerto Rico in the years of 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2006 and performed on the same stage with many of the big salsa stars. He also attended other salsa congresses in places like Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Toronto, Canada. In addition, Rudsel has been invited as a special guest instructor to schools in the Netherlands on three occasions thus far. He also stars on the DVD ‘Salsa with the Stars’ and in a soon to be released Bachata DVD(www.salsaisgood.com). Now in 2007, after receiving numerous request for salsa classes, Rudsel has decided to revive his dance school, Salsation Dance Company (founded in 1999), to make it bigger than ever!


	Nina Hansen Nina’s dancing career started in her early years when she took ballet classes and later switched to tap dancing. She quit dancing after a few years to focus on other sports. In 2002, her passion for salsa was sparked after her aunts dragged her to a salsa party at Zeilhaven Brakkeput. It was there where she met her fiancée Rudsel Magdalena, leader of the dance group Salsation, who invited her to take classes. She took a break from salsa to graduate and it wasn’t untill 2004 that she picked it up again when she started assisting Rudsel during classes. From that moment Nina’s dancing has improved with big steps. In 2006 she joined the show team and attended the World Salsa Congress in Puerto Rico. After that experience, she performed on many occasions with the show team and within a short period of time Nina became known for her great spinning techniques. She is now Rudsel’s dance partner and instructor at Salsation Dance Company. Nina makes sure to keep improving her style with every step!


	Steven Damiana Steven learned his first Merengue steps from his mother as a youngster. After moving to The Netherlands he started taking salsa classes at Fusion Latina, Nijmegen. In a short period of time Steven became assistant to the instructor and was requested to join the Fusion Latina show group as well as another salsa school in Arnhem. He gladly accepted this challenge and got the chance to perform with Fusion Latina on different occasions before returning to his beloved island. It was then that his path crossed with Rudsel Magdalena… Steven is now also training with the Salsation Show Team. His first performance is due soon.


	Aniza Damiana Aniza was born in Colombia, and is the daughter of a rare combination of a Colombian mother and a Chinese father. She took her first salsa classes in 2003 at Fusion Latina in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in search for a hobby that would be relaxing, make her feel at home, make friends and principally a hobby she could enjoy. She found it all in the salsa scene and has loved it ever since. After she returned to Curacao, she and her husband Steven took several classes from Rudsel in order to improve their dance performance. It was during these classes that Rudsel saw the potential in them to make them instructors of Salsation Dance Company. Aniza is now also on the way to master 15 different dances connecting the cultural roots of Curacao, Caribbean and Latin America. And by the way, she is fluent in Cantonese, Dutch, English, Papiamentu and Spanish.


	Marysol Rodriquez Marysol has been singing and dancing since she was 3 years old. She’s taken (modern) ballet, jazz and tap-dance classes and played quite some instruments; organ, flute and synthesizer. She went through life dancing, but it was in august 1999 that a dear friend of hers, Rudsel Magdalena (founder of Salsation Dance Company), showed her a different way of dancing Salsa (the so called Puerto Rican Style). From that moment salsa became her way of life. Marysol’s first salsa performance has been with Salsation Dance Company. After that she’has been part of many other dance groups in Holland, such as Salsa Dance Squad, Alma Rumbera and Salsa Addicts. For 4 years she’s performed and taught Salsa both nationally as internationally. After some great years of having lived an intensive Salsa life in Europe, she came back to Curacao where she ended up where she started; at Salsation Dance Company. Salsa keeps her heart beating; it surely adds a lot of Salsa to her life!

Sharif Sprockel

Sharif got infected with the salsa fever about six years ago. After dancing with Salsa Friends for a couple of months, he switched to Salsation Dance Company where he’s been dancing ever since. He has attended and performed on different congresses including Puerto Rico, New York, Holland, Aruba and of course Curaçao. He has competed many times on the island and also in Aruba and was 2nd place winner of the Curacao Salsa Tour in 2004 & 2006.

Chandrika Floridas

Chandrika was born on Curaçao on April 23rd 1976. According to her mom, she has been born dancing. She has been performing since the age of 10.
In 1986 she started to take Jazz-Ballet and Tap-Dance classes at Fina Dance Art. After 8 years, she went to dance with Aldrico Felida where she also did African dance.
At the age of 20 she went to Holland to study where she continued to develop her dancing skills. She attended ‘The 5 o’clock Class’ doing Jazz-Ballet, Ballet, Modern and Expression. In 1998 she joined Euro Latino (of Rina Penza-Bernabela) who gave shows and workshops of Salsa and Merengue. After Euro Latino she performed with many other (salsa) groups, including Salsa Addicts (European Group Champions of 2003), Salsasisters, Bilongo Dancers and Salsation Dance Company.
During her time in Holland she took classes in many different dances, like Street Dance, Ballroom and Brazillian Dances. It was there where her passion for Zouk started. She joined Zouk-Lovers Dance Company and became part of the team that promoted the dance of Zouk in Holland.
After returning to Curaçao in 2005 she became the pioneer of Zouk dance on the island and started her own show group; Zouk Lovers Curaçao.

Maria Pavlenko

Maria Pavlenko was born in Moscow, Russia.
Her dancing life started in 2005 when one of her colleagues invited Maria to participate salsa "on1" classes with her. As Maria was picking up fast she also joined Cuban salsa school and rueda school so that she could dance 5 days a week and enjoy her new hobby to the fullest.
In 2006 Maria started travelling to salsa congresses (Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarussia, Germany, Holland, Turkey) and improving her dancing skills.
From 2007 she became a member of "salsa NY style" show group and performed in different cities of Russia. The same year her attention was pulled into afro/rumba workshop that was given by yu'i korsou during Bulgarian salsa congress. So she started practicing Afro-Cuban dancing and later on in 2008 became best female Afro/Rumba dancer in Russia.
Maria has given Afro/Rumba and salsa workshops in St. Petersburg and Moscow (Russia), Kiev (Ukraine), Minsk (Belarus), Riga (Latvia), Istanbul (Turkey).

Shendell Reed

Shendell was born on the island of Curacao on March 3rd 1974. At a very young age he discovered a passion for dancing. The “dance passion” which is the way he names it, involves all local folkloric dances and merengue. At the age of 13 he and salsa crossed path, and it was love at first sight. At the age of 18 he started teaching salsa.
A couple of years later he decided to go to the Netherlands to pursue a career as a schoolteacher. It was there in the Netherlands that he developed his salsa dancing and teaching skills to a very high level; he eventually started his own dance school in Utrecht named “Salsimas”, performed in numerous show groups in and out of the country and also became the co-founder of an Amsterdam based dance school named “La Cuna”.
Shendell had known Rudsel for quite a long time now, he was always fan of Rudsel ‘the dancer’ and Rudsel ‘the person’, that’s why he always said that when he returns to the island, he will join the Salsation team and now this has become a reality.