Instructors

Rudsel Magdalena

Rudsel Magdalena was born on Curacao on May 17th 1969. He has been dancing for almost 25 years, mastering a wide variety of dances. From break dancing, to folklore, which eventually led to merengue and later evolved into salsa.
Rudsel has been dancing salsa now for more than 15 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 numerous salsa congresses in 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 different occasions.In 2007, after receiving many 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 Magdalena-Hansen

Nina’s passion for salsa started in 2002 when her aunts dragged her to a salsa party at Zeilhaven Brakkeput. It was there where she met her husband Rudsel Magdalena, leader of the dance group Salsation, who invited her to take classes. Unfortunately she had to return back to Holland to finish her study. After graduating she came back to Curacao where a relationship with Rudsel flourished. But it wasn’t till 2004 that she picked up salsa 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 an unusual 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.

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.