Your journey begins here with this one-stop destination to learn about the repeatable rhythms that drive salsa music and dancers. You’ll find the courses and programs necessary to
connect your dance pattern with elements of the music like rhythm, phrasing, timing, including footwork and that
all-illusive seeming rhythm; the clave.
Testimonial
“It is not that one needs to understand salsa phrasing and timing to be able to dance to salsa music and rhythm.
One can become adept to the dance patterns, turns, kicks, thrusts, etc, without ever knowing about clave, tumbao and music phrasing.
But, there is a rich reward at the end of the journey, if one undertakes the task of learning, and becoming aware of the ingredients in salsa, and how they all fit together to produce this very rhythmic, passionate and accelerating music.
Mike Bello's [program] is the perfect tool for this task. In this [program], Mike decomposes salsa into its basic elements. The rhythm is explained in terms of beats, bars and music phrases. All of the rich percussion instruments and piano are introduced one at a time. Their sounds are developed at the succession of the 8-beat count and 2-3 clave.
During all of this, Mike points out which sounds and which instruments should be used by salsa dancers to synchronize their feet and movements to the music.
In sum, after listening to this [program], the rich reward that is gained is the feeling of "close connection" to the song and to the orchestra that is playing it.
The feet, the body become another instrument that is executing the music in tune with the instruments in the band.
There is also a superior understanding and enjoyment of the music and all its rich components.
Our thanks to Mike for his dedication and hard work that went into putting together this [program].”
-George Cuevas
Mike Bello, is the original, he was the first in the Salsa-scene to present a coherent systemacy to explain the multitude of underlying rhythms of Mambo/Salsa.
There have been a few others before and at his times, who did present some or even the key aspects of their view of the rhythmicality within their regular Salsa-classes.
But Mike did present the very first approach to show, how the interaction of dance and music of Salsa, from the aspect of the rhythm, in already even differing Salsa On1, Salsa On2, Modern Mambo and Mambo Classico, how it makes the most sense.
20 years later everybody now is hopping on rhythmicality and musicality, but then Mike was a kind of an exotic bird to present his rhythm classes on the big Salsa-congresses with a lot of pedagogy of a kind of professor, but also a lot fun and creativity. all the best Mike...
-Sebastian Baun
Mike Bello the Mambo Fello
Mike Bello, a New York mambo dancer is a world-renowned educator of dance and rhythm focusing his teachings on the correlation between the rhythms in salsa music and dance.
Having been an integral member of the New York Mambo Society back in the mid-1980s, Mike has brought the sensibilities and the respect of the clave to the West Coast in the late 1990s.
Establishing the first ever New York-influenced On2 dance instructional series in Los Angeles, he quickly signed on with SalsaWeb (the online web magazine/portal) as Director of Music and Promotions spearheading the On2 and clave discussions for the webzine's chat board while establishing a sales department specifically created for the review and proliferation of existing and independent dance driven salsa music.
It was during this time that Mike also began his research on the clave by reading all the relevant books and material specific to all the rhythms in Afro-Cuban popular dance music while interviewing performance musicians in the genre. He initiated a system of cross referencing and corroborating what he understood about the rhythms from the literature and the musicians to develop what was to become the world's most comprehensive salsa/mambo instructional materials (the first of its kind) developed for dancers and instructors alike. His legacy of this highly successful and popular material, whether as a product or in lecture, has no equal. This has been accomplished by breaking down salsa music through the discreet rhythmic components that make up one of the most infectious as well as complex genres of music on the planet: Salsa.
The following year after arriving in Los Angeles from New York, Mike recruited several of LA's best dancers and formed the first ever salsa/mambo On2 dance group in LA that included the Mambo Men and the Mambo Squad. He spent hundreds of hours training them in the highly syncopated shine routine that he choreographed and which they performed in the Hollywood Palladium for the Galavision sponsored International Salsa Festival as well as in the Hollywood Park Casino for the 1st Annual West Coast Salsa Congress.
Mike has since travelled the nation, as well as venturing into the international arena, having taught his weekend workshop series, conducting his signature rhythm-dance lectures and as a returning instructor at many of the salsa congresses that include Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Jersey, New York, Orlando, Palm Springs, San Francisco, San Diego, United Kingdom, Washington D.C., as well as other genre-specific events.
A dedicated teacher who espouses connection to the rhythms of salsa music with his signature AOTC, or Always On The Clave, Mike really cares about giving his students a sense of respect for dancing to the music.