About Us

SalsaIsGood is interested in the development of salsa in its various forms of expression, from the music to the dance and its social and cultural background. Naturally inclined towards experimentation and evolution, we are mostly interested in today's salsa, that is, what makes salsa a contemporary and global phenomenon. This does not mean we want to deny its historical roots, rather that we look beyond them instead of being constrained by them.

SalsaIsGood comprises Fabio Boschetti and Allison Lyons (Ally). We are partners in life and partners in salsa, forming a harmonious team with complimentary skills which means that we rarely have to seek outside technical assistance. Together we are experts in video production from concept development, choreography, filming, script writing and all stages of the editing and final production process. We also do our own web design, distribution, marketing and communications. And since more than 45 international dancers and world renowned musician Jimmy Bosch agreed to collaborate with us in "Salsa with the Stars", we must be easy to work with..! As we are fully involved in every stage of music and video production we often get the feedback from our customers that our videos are rare in the market - designed by dancers for dancers, with painstaking attention to detail so that the student can learn easily. An example of this is the beat-counter on every frame feature on all of our videos to make keeping the time, whether on1 or on2 completely painless! We have produced a number of Salsa Videos and CDs, with many more in the pipeline.

How we work. We tend to work by projects, often carrying out more than one at the same time. For each project we aim to produce a final permanent result, be it a video, a CD or a web site. This is different from other artists who may aim at creations that live in a specific 'moment' in time, like a performance or a workshop. For Ally and I salsa has to be a part-time occupation though it remains our passion. We have other work and demands on our time but these have the potential to bring different skills into the projects and novel perspectives from which salsa can be looked at.

Our driving philosophy

Salsa as a global form of expression. Defining salsa as a Latin dance, is somehow misleading. From one perspective is too general, since salsa is in fact a Caribbean dance. From another one is too limiting, since it does not acknowledge that it actually developed in New York (see About Salsa). Whatever the history, today's salsa is global, as few dances have been before. The congresses bring together dancers from everywhere around the world several times a year. People travel thousands of kms, even intercontinental distances, to attend. Thanks to the web, travelers, either for business or pleasure, find it as easy to locate the best salsa club in town as it is to book an hotel. Moves from the most popular stars spread around the world within days. A move invented in NY may end up been danced in Tokyo the week after. This is a global cultural phenomenon. We believe dancers should feel free to interpret salsa according to their own feeling and background and salsa will keep on evolving, as a result.

Salsa Literature. Unlike other more established form of dance, salsa does not have an established literature. Salsa videos somehow work as such, but in most cases are not produced for this purpose. Neither are the few books available. This is different from salsa Music, which contains several formal references. Our videos and CDs try somehow to deal with this issue, by covering topics not addressed by other videos, by making references to other style and other instructors, and by trying to improve the way videos are edited, adding features which help students to learn directly from the videos. Our salsa dictionary or glossary of salsa terms and elements provides a reference point for students to learn more about salsa and develop their understanding of the richness of salsa around the world. Our salsa DVDs with their broad reach across all salsa styles are also a record of where salsa is in 2006. In particular our latest DVDs, the "Salsa With The Stars" series showing demonstrations from more than 45 international dancers, provides an anthology of all that is possible in salsa.