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One of our many healthcare workers, Michelle was a nurse who danced on our 1st Formation Team, won several events dancing both Latin and Swing. Later as a pro won two US Swing Open Showcase Division with Lance Shermoen, and a Feather Award
Janet a neo natal ICU nurse, was also on our National Championship team. Teaming with Enio, she won the Us Pro-Am Ladies A Latin, along with the Florida State. Janet was our first 10 dancer and won in both divisions.Â
Judy was an XRay tech who won several US Championships with different pros. Dancing with Enio, she won several Top student awards, and also won several Feather Awards as Top amateur couple partnered with Dale Emerman.Â
Michelle was a Salsa dancer. Enio introduced her to International Latin. She joined our youth team. Four of the boys tried to partner her. None could keep up! She eventually found a Russian boy in Texas and moved there. Competing in the pro division she made the 24 at Blackpool, just as Enio had. She and Sergey eventually opened up Studio 22 the top studio in Dallas. Â
Jude, General Manager of Mi Piace in Pasadena, was a Salsa and Tango club regular at the Granada. One day at the restaurant, Enio asked Jude “when she would dance for real?” Starting privates with Enio the following week, She danced 10 dance, and within two years won the World Championship in the Pro-am Ladies A standard, got chased off the floor for dancing too high a level, and wowed the judges in Hawaii.
Starting with Karen Lee & Enio in Denver, She moved out to LA to dance with Robert Cordoba. Debbie managed to crack the final at USBC two years in a row and became a beautiful Latin and Swing dancer. Sadly she passed away from an asthma attack at a very young age.
A student from our early days, Sandy followed Janet and Debbie, making the finals at USBC and the Florida State Championships. Sandy was such a good dancer that pros like Joe Cassini and Bobby Medeiros would include her in our impromptu Descargas.
Emmy, An attorney and financial planner, first started with Bill and then Enio. Though she focused on the standard with Enio, she continued with Brian Fortuna after Enio moved to Texas and has becomea top competitor in both Latin and Standard
Cheryl, a teacher in the Alhambra School District, was a dancer that could do tap and jazz. Dancing with Enio, she did some killer performances at Springfest. She also danced in the Masters Division at the US Swing Open. Cheryl was chosen to be Donald O’Conner’s partner in Out To Sea! She was so good we invited her to join the staff and teach Swing.
When Buddy Schwimmer the king of Swing needed a partner for his daughter Lacey, Terryl paired my son Brian with Lacey and they performed their first routine at the US Open Swing in the Junior Division. Because of the distance between kids, we paired Brian with classmate Lauren Calderoni and they did many performances at Springfest and in the studio. As you can see from the video Brian is quite the clown. Later He was chosen to dance the kids competition in Dance With Me and made friends with Vanessa Williams and Jane Krakowski.
Lauren a natural performer, gave us some great performances. Because of her love of aerials, we named her the “crash test dummy”. After Brian quit dancing, Lauren became Robert’s assistant and became our studio West Coast Swing teacher.Â
Brig started on our kids team and before long became the team captain. After several partnerships doing Latin, she partnered with Hector and did several competitions with Hector. Brig was invited to join the staff and took over the Rueda department and has become a fine teacher.Â
Hector came to our attention as the wise guy on the Alhambra High School Dance Team. Partnered with Terryl he did his first competition in the student challenge. After doing many performances on the Salsational team, Hector partnered with Olivia Dasso and won the LA Pro Salsa Championship at the Sportsmens Lodge. Hector becamea firefighter but decided to return to LDLA as a teacher. Later partnered with Kristy Rivers on a cruise ship as a performer.Â
We only have a few miscellaneous pictures and videos of some of these students but still they attempted and achieved!
