Dancers / Stars

Contact: Rudsel - rudsel@hotmail.com

Marysol - marysolzr@yahoo.com

Rudsel Magdalena was born in Curacao on 17th May 1969. His family moved to Aruba when he was one year old where he spent his next 17 years in the town of San Nicolaas, Aruba. When Rudsel turned 15 years of age, he began to master the art of break dancing, which sparked his dancing career. He joined the group called Pop City Breakers and gave shows all around the island. After two years of break dancing, Rudsel moved to Curacao for his studies, where he studied electrical engineering at MTS. In Curacao, he began to dance folkloric dances, and began to master the art of Latin dancing. By the year 1995, he was one of the best merengue dancers on the island.

In 1996, Rudsel got caught with the salsa fever. He saw a Dutch group called Crema Exotica, and they inspired him to start dancing salsa with more intensity. Rudsel teamed up with a spectacular dancer, Tibisay Goede, and entered the salsa championships in 1996, and ended up all the way to the last round of the championships at Keizershof in January of 1997.

After the big contest, Rudsel has represented his beautiful island many times in the world salsa congress in Puerto Rico in the years of 1997 and 1998 and performed on the same stage with many of the salsa greats such as Francisco and Johnny Vasquez, Salsa Brava and Angel Ortiz, attending World Salsa Congresses in places like Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Toronto. In addition, Rudsel has been invited as a special guest instructor to schools in the Netherlands on two occasions thus far.

Currently, Rudsel works as an instrument technician at ISLA refinery, and in 1999 started his own dance school, Salsation Dance Company!

Marysol Rodriguez was born on the little rhythmic island of Curacao in the middle of the Caribbean Sea; where life is "seriously easygoing". For as far as she can remember music and dance have been big parts of her life. Her culture itself is based on music and rhythms (their ancestors were African slaves and we all know what this has meant for today's music and rhythms) and so she has to thank her parents for passing on their musical genes.

Marysol has been singing since she was three years old and has taken ballet, jazz and tap-dance classes, also playing organ, flute and synthesizer. She grew up listening to Merengue, Salsa, Montuno, Bolero, Tumba, Tambu, Wals,

Mazurka and every other type of music and rhythm one can think of.
Curacao is a little island with inhabitants from all over the world. The population is a mixture of all races and so is the music. She says: " I'm very fortunate and extremely proud of being a "yu'i Korsou" (child of Curacao)."

She went through life dancing, but it was in august 1999 that a dear friend of hers showed her a different way of dancing Salsa (the so called L.A. Style). Up until then she had been dancing Salsa the "Curacao-style" (what we nowadays see as dancing with the "right foot forward on count 3"). Either way that day was a life changing moment and since then she just can't get enough of dancing Salsa.
What was her passion became her way of life.

The first dance group she joined was the Salsation Dance Group (Curacao, aug 1999 - jun 2000) under the leadership of Rudsel Magdalena. In august 2000 she returned to Holland for her apprenticeship and in January 2001, joined the Salsa Dance Squad (SDS). For 2 years she performed with this group both nationally and internationally increasing her love and passion for salsa. She then danced with Alma Rumbera Dance Company and Salsa Addicts Dance Company.

After some great years of having lived an intensive Salsa life in Europe, she was extremely happy to move back to her beautiful easygoing Curacao. Here she re-joined her original dance company- Salsation. She says "With very much admiration and appreciation for the many good dancers all across the world I'd love to share my passion with the world, never forgetting where I come from and always treasuring the different rhythms that are running through my veins."