In a yoga studio at Kensington’s Albert Einstein High School, Manuel Ramirez is guiding 20 of his classmates through elementary salsa steps. Over and over, they practice the basic, the side step, right and left turns in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, above which hangs a sign bearing the “Seven Secrets of Super Performers.”
“1-2-3, 5-6-7!” says Manuel, the group’s de facto leader at age 18, as the teenagers swivel their hips in unison. He asks them to add a shoulder roll, and his counting picks up speed. Music blares from an iPod—a joyful mix of trombones and trumpets, percussive congas and syncopated piano. Everybody is concentrating on the moves, but Manuel insists they keep counting.
“I can’t hear you!” he yells, walking around and adjusting elbows in line with chests. “Strong arms,” he urges them, and each dancer strives for the perfect posture.
Perfection appears well within reach. It’s late October and Titanes Salseros—the competitive dance team of Latin American Students United (LASU), an after-school club—has a legacy to uphold. They’re the defending champions of Montgomery County Public Schools’ annual Latin Dance Competition, held each fall at The Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda and now just a month away.
In 2012, Titanes Salseros—which combines a Latinized version of the school’s team name, the Titans, with the Spanish word for “salsa dancers”—won six out of eight categories in the competition. The contest awards prizes in both group and individual couples dances, from salsa to bachata to merengue to the cha-cha. Since 2001, the group has earned 46 first-place trophies.
After the dancers finish their warm-up, Paula Peró, an AP Spanish teacher and the group’s adviser, asks them to gather around in a circle. She reminds the dancers that they’re counting on each other. They need to forgo video games and outings with friends, she says, and focus on dancing, homework and getting enough sleep.
“Even if you’re at the back of that stage, people can see you,” Peró tells them. “Everybody on that stage matters.”
In the days that follow, the team practices its three-minute routine every weekday afternoon except Mondays, when Peró has a standing meeting as chairwoman of Einstein’s World Languages Department. Technically, practices run from 2:30 to 5 p.m., but the group often rehearses until 7 or later. Their weekends are devoted to dance, too.
“Most people see the performance, but they don’t see the process,” Peró says. Parents who fret about grades aren’t always sympathetic to the dancers’ relentless schedule. Some, she says, “think we’re wasting time here.”
Not that there’s time to waste. The team will have to dance brilliantly, and the more experienced dancers will become choreographers as well, creating steps for all the routines. “Coreo,” the kids call it.
“It’s really stressful coming up with it,” says senior William Martinez, 18, who’ll compete in the group dance, cha-cha, the parent/student category and Jack and Jill, in which teens from competing high schools are paired for extemporaneous social dancing.
