About the Teachers
Lucia & Javi (Valencia/ESP)
Lucía and Javi (ES) have been dancing and teaching swing dances together for more than a decade. Their balboa adventure began in 2014, they both fell in love with this dance and since then, they wish to spread this feeling among other people in their local dance school Black Bottom and throughout Europe.
In classes, they love to focus on partnership and creating an harmonious flow while dancing in couple playing and reacting with each other. They offer students the tools for both ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ to communicate and create together their own steps and variations.
Lucía and Javi are real masters in improvising to live music. For them, dancing Balboa is a continuous game with music and the fun of jazz dance in its purest form. Be ready for challenging and playfulness classes with them!
Neus & Albert (Barcelona/ESP)
Neus
I discovered swing by happenstance at Parc de la Ciutadella, in Barcelona. The music and partner dancing captivated me, and in 2007 I started taking lindy hop classes, then solo jazz, incorporating balboa in 2009 by taking classes in Barcelona and at international workshops. Since then, I’ve extended this fascination with balboa to lindy hop and other swing dances. I’ve shared this passion by participating in jams, swing events and competitions, and by training, djing, performing and teaching classes, constantly looking to learn and discover everything that swing enables you to express both individually and with a partner. The way I see it, the definition of a successful day is one in which I have the privilege of dancing and learning something new!
Albert
I’ve loved to dance since I was a child, and in 1996 I finally discovered folk dancing. Then one magical evening in 2000, between waltzes at Plaça del Rei in Barcelona, I was invited to a swing dance. That’s when I started dancing lindy. Enthralled with social dancing, I discovered balboa in 2005, and towards the end of 2006, Gloria and I began teaching this amazing dance locally and growing the scene in Barcelona. In 2011, we started teaching international workshops, and in June 2014 during a competition in the US, I had a personal crisis that made me question whether the way I danced was consistent with who I was and how I felt about partner dancing. That’s when I decided to embark on a different path.
Maria & Luis (Mallorca/ESP)
Maria
Maria Acuñas began dancing swing in 2014, and her love of the learning process has kept her going, adding more and more abilities and ideas to her distinctive style. She is a fan of high energy swing music, so Balboa was an obvious option for her next step.
She started Jazz Bouncing, a dance studio in Mallorca, in 2015, where she is the principal instructor of Lindy Hop and Balboa, quickly becoming one of the island's reference followers.
She has been dancing and competing in national and international events since the beginning of her dance career, winning various competitions, the most recent in Balboa being a second prize in Valencia Balboa or a first place in the European Balboa Championships.
Her dance is defined by her FUN and carefree style, with a strong emphasis on creativity, musicality, and partner communication.
Luis
Luis Arredondo is noted for his energetic dance style, risk-taking, never-ending smile, and detailed approach to the learning process . He relocated to Toronto in 2011, where he lived for ten years, traveling, teaching, and competing across North America. He is now back in Spain, working to build the Balboa scene in Mallorca.
Luis likes to keep his lessons moving by including lots of positive energy, a creative approach to partnership conversation, and a healthy dose of technique. He likes to make sure that each class gets everything it needs to succeed, and no two classes are the same!
In North America and Europe, he has won and placed in numerous national and international contests.
He is excited to see you all.
Isabelle & Eran (Dortmund GER/ISR)
After discovering Swing in 2007, Eran Tobi spent almost all of his time to travel, dance and spread the spirit of Lindy Hop, Balboa & co. in Israel. He is one of the co-founder of Holy Lindy Land - one of the most successful swing dance schools of our time. His passion for the dance and teaching it lead him in 2013 to Berlin, from where he could expend his love for the dance onto the world. Eran has won multiple competitions in Lindy Hop, Balboa and Blues at different events, e.g. at the International Lindy Hop Championships, Lindy On The Rocks, Berlin Blues Explosion, Camp Hollywood and the European Swing Dance Championships.
Isabelle Jaschke got hooked on Swing dance from the first time seeing it and when she had to move to a new city, she decided where to go depending on the supply of Swing dance classes where she could learn the dance. It didn't take long and she took the dance floors in Freiburg on storm. She never missed an opportunity to soak as much as possible on local and international dance knowledge or to try something new. The dance school became her second home and Isabelle was on all Lindy Hop, Balboa and Blues dance floors in Freiburg and around.
Eran and Isabelle believe that the quality of movement is a very important component of couple dancing. They teach complex movements by means of examples from everyday life and with a lot of humor, so that everybody can apply them easily. You will notice that behind Eran's soft smile and Isabelle's sometimes strict look, there is a preserving couple, which won't give up until everybody understands the move.
Polett & Patrick (Cologne/GER)
Patrick
discovered Lindy Hop in 2012. The energy of the music, the opportunity to interpret the music freely and the communication with his dance partners fascinated him immediately and ignited his passion for Swing dancing. From then on, he danced several times a week and began taking his first Balboa lessons a year later. He traveled to numerous Lindy Hop and Balboa events throughout Europe and has been teaching Lindy Hop since 2014 and Balboa for Swingin' Pool Cologne e.V. since 2016. Later, he added solo jazz.
Polett
chose the opposite path. She started Balboa in 2015 and later discovered Lindy Hop for herself. After a year of lessons in Stuttgart, she attended countless Balboa events around the world. The opportunity offered by Balboa or swing dances in general, to develop her own dance style and freely improvise to music captivated her. She has lived and taught in Cologne since 2019.
Polett and Patrick founded a vital Balboa scene in Bonn and teach Slow Bal in Cologne for quite a while. The focus in their classes is to convey that dancing is primarily about fun and communication. Everyone can contribute equally to the dance and develop their own style.
Precise timing, good connection, and fluid body movement are essential elements that transform communication into a fantastic dance experience. Good lesson preparation is just as important to them, as being able to respond spontaneously and adapt the lesson material to the participants and the specific teaching situation.
