"Salsa from Within... Cuba!"

The directors view:

I went to Nigeria in '76 and lit "Osibisa" at "Festac" in Lagos and Ibaden and many other contributions.  I was a consultant at St Matthew's Meeting Place in Brixton and it is pleasing to see my handywork still in existence there, even now. We put on plays from Michael Abbensetts such as "Sweet talk" to expose the apartheid movement and I supported many smaller organisations like The Black writers Guild.  Our first exposure to the real world came when Linda helped settle Chilean Refugees in London .                                    

Amongst these companies I made many long term friends, my closest, Carl Campbell, took over Dance Co 7 from a colleague and left the London West End show "Hare" to pursue this activity full time.  I joined with him to try and improve the technical delivery of the Company while not destroying its African and Jamaican roots. Both his Company information and one of the dancers of the company at that time, Caroline Muraldo, remain friends.  Both these people still do great things within the community and wonderful artistic shows.  I have the distinction of being one of the longest standing directors of DC7 and at 20 years that is starting to make me feel old!  In the early 80's the Company did a video with the ILEA which became the basis for teaching dance as a GLC syllabus in schools.  It was good work and I look back on the early days with great fondness,

The first classes we went to were run by Elder Sanchez at the West Beach Hotel in Brighton.  Both Linda and myself are now reasonable dancers ( I never thought I would be in those first years) and we love the music and culture that is associated with the dance.

What I liked about Kerry Ribchester's was her enthusiasm and fire. She concentrates on bodywork ....Salsa from Within, how to move your body and release your movement capabilities. She teaches a fine class in this and is very good at getting a group to work at their individual skills to become much better dancers.

Together we both have persuaded our lovers, brothers, aunts and friends to help us go to Cuba and see and film how to really dance that Cuban style.  We have put in our money, time and souls to this. What Kerry brings to the party is her long standing technical dance skills and her bodywork expertise. What I bring is a good technical understanding of video and staging (and the equipment, so to speak), a commitment to portraying a culture at it's best wherever I can, and patience with everyone and everything, and loads of money.

I see the current video as great for beginners, particularly those interested in the Cuban styles but I also see it as Kerry's approach to teaching the subject. The contribution I feel really comfortable with are the two pieces of music at the end and the video I have done alongside them. I hope to go on and make a longer more  detailed video about different aspects of Cuban style with other teachers.

Regrets: well, this video cost myself and Linda lots of money to do and it has taken 5 years to recover that. Kerry too has gone her own way since we made the video and the salsa scene focusses on New York Style in London. I have moved on and we have new videos on about Cuba and some of it's roots. Kerry currently runs holidays to Cuba but has had very little to do with us since releasing the video, she and I have gone our own seperate ways.

It takes a lot of hard work behind the scenes to make a video like this, often not appreciated, or understood by those involved in particular aspects of it. We hope to work again with Ildolidia, the principle dancer in this video and remain in contact and good friends. the technical team that made this video went on to assist in "Spirit of Cuba", "Rueda with Style" and the soon to be released Afrocuban Allstars documentary musical DVD "Felix Baloy, Live in Brighton and alive in Cuba", all directed and edited by Charles Wood.