Salsa... Solo! [DVD] with Yesenia Adame [ALL REGIONS] [NTSC] [Region 1]

A winner of many top professional salsa competitions, special guest performer on Dancing with the Stars, and a star choreographer for the hit TV show Dance Your Ass Off!, Yesenia Adame is passionate about sharing her love for salsa through her clear and precise instruction and supportive spirit. Her program offers every woman a chance to learn and enjoy salsa. So even if you are not on a trajectory toward partner dancing and simply want to experience the salsa vibe and practice salsa for fun and fitness on your own, this DVD is for you.

Performing mini-solos with fancy footwork and sophisticated styling is a part of the salsa tradition, and Yesenia offers you a beautiful exploration of this solo salsa dance vocabulary and styling. Yesenia's program consists of 3 sections. Each introduces a sequence of steps, drills them individually and as a combination, and then puts them to music. Yesenia and her two guest instructors, Ashlé and Nicolette, start with basic salsa steps and gradually add embellishments, variations and shines.

In all instructional and practice sections the video is reversed so that you can mirror the instructors, and there are special practice sections where you can follow Yesenia, Ashlé and Nicolette from the back.

Warmup and cooldown sections feature flexibility exercises and drill special salsa techniques such as Cuban hips.

World Dance New York's first salsa video arrived as a reminder of such how much I always will love this spicy, saucy dance. I haven't danced salsa in a long while, but Salsa Solo is a total beginner's instructional: Perfect. It takes you through the basic steps that make up the salsa dance and then a bunch of patterns or shines, as they are known. You can dance the lot on your own (which is what I love about shines) or you can spice up your partner dancing by breaking away for a moment of extra style. And because salsa is full of constant footwork and arm movement, it makes a good low-impact aerobic exercise - provided you keep it up long enough.

The instruction is led by the lovely Yesenia Adame, who can do some breathtakingly athletic dancing.

The warm up, always a good idea, is short and uses moves that you'll need while dancing the salsa. In fact, this is where you're prepped for the moves. And you get straight into the first of the three combinations in this program. Typically, you have step-by-step, movement review, and practice with music sections to each. The first combo is all basics: front, side, back-back, cuban, right and left turns. Each step is broken down so you can see how the back-replace-forward, forward-replace-back really works. The only non basic part in this combo is when you do arm stylization for the left turn.

Now, the instruction here is clear and attractive enough. You get to see the dancers dancing from the back so that you can follow them as in class. For salsa somehow that's particularly important.

The second combo goes up in difficulty level. There are 6 or 7 moves strung together here. The basic with a tap, cumbia with a slide, the famous squash the bug, foot stylization, a figure eight with arm stylization, etc. Together they look good. They're not unchallenging so there's no danger the learner will just look at the lot, get the basics and move on. this will take some doing. With my own salsa having gone rusty, I definitely would have to spend some time on this combo.

Combination Three gets further into proper shines territory with the cross forward walk or swivel basic, sliding box step, the Susie Q, a right turn that returns with a fast turn stylization, side to side taps, a body roll, and a saucy shimmy turn. This combo is done to faster music. There's a session of dancing all the combos together, of course.

A short cooldown of inhale-exhales and reaches and a few stretches finishes off the program, followed by the special treat of a brief demo of solo dancing by each of the three dancers.

All in all, a pleasant video and if you work with it enough to get that certain Latin look, you definitely will look great on the dance floor. This one is a women only video because of the styling.

I'd recommend looking for Yesenia Adame and checking out her amazing dancing.

The nicest thing about this video is that it's actually learnable on your own - and in a short time! One burst of hard work and you can dance rather well.

There are other solo salsa and shines videos on the market. But this one is a quick and effective lesson at half the price. --amazon.com (US)

5.0 out of 5 stars - Get to the Salsa club now!, November 6, 2009 By Shara of Desert Dance

I'll keep this short and sweet! This DVD will get you right into the salsa club! Spend a couple hours practicing with this and hit the club! This is fun! This is easy! This is great exercise, too! Now get dancing! --amazon.com (US)

5.0 out of 5 stars - Perfect for Beginners, October 10, 2009 By Alechka16 (Ottawa, ON, Canada) Salsa Solo is an instructional DVD and about 60 mins long. It includes the welcomes, a warm up, cool down and three combination sections. Each combination section has an instruction section, a review and then a practice with music. The instruction and review is done with no music to Yesenia's count of the beat, because for complete beginners it is definitely better to know the steps by count without the confusion of trying to be in time with the complex music.

The warm up has you getting ready for salsa and Yesenia introduces Cuban hip movement to get you moving the right way. There is also a break down of a body roll that you will do in a later section.

The first section introduces the basic steps of salsa and turns. The second section puts playful twists on the basics and the third section introduces fun combinations that are a little different from the basics. For example, they add a body roll and a box step. There is also a section that puts all the moves together for a short practice.

I think this DVD provides good practice for beginners who want to become familiar with Salsa. Keep in mind that this is a solo practice DVD, it does not teach you how to partner dance. This DVD has you learning steps and combinations to dancing salsa on your own and it strives to give you the confidence and tools to be able to get creative and find your own style! Also the moves you learn will definitely help you salsa your booty off! --amazon.com (US)