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Elisa Aloe, is one of the few samba-reggaeton dance teachers in the UK. As a versatile dancer, Elisa has a worked with a wide range of dance companies and has been taught by some phenomenal dance teachers over the years. Elisa’s main focus has been working with young offenders, and last year had the privilege of working with Dance United, a contemporary dance company which specialises in dance rehabilitation in the criminal justice system.
In 2004, she was in the Pan European Nike advert Rise Don’t Fall, she also features on Nascente Records’ Urban Latino CD cover and has taught at the UK Salsa Congress 2006 and 2007. Over the past 10 months, she has worked closely with Yorkshire’s bellydance company Banat Eshorouk in choreographing what is a growing demand for reggaeton and Arabic/belly dance fusion.
A long trip to Miami back in 2002 was what sealed Elisa’s love for reggaeton music and bachata. Living with her cuban friends near Calle Ocho meant that she was taken to the underground reggaeton clubs of the city. There she heard some of the best beats and witnessed some mind blowing reggaeton v hiphop dance battles.
Totally fired up, Elisa returned to Leeds and soon found that the demand amongst her samba students was growing for reggaeton as a result of DJ Lubi’s latin night Salsoul. She eventually set up her own weekly classes and has been teaching reggaeton across the country ever since. Her energy, enthusiasm and strict discipline has led her to being scouted to teach socially-excluded teenagers for the EU program LEAP as well as teaching courses in secondary schools for asylum seeker children from Africa. Elisa’s extensive travels to Latin America, the US and the Middle East have impacted her work greatly.
Elisa has just recently returned to her home city of London and is currently a dance assistant at Pineapple Dance Studios in Covent Garden.
Born in London to Italian parents, she began dancing when she was 4 in ballet, gymnastics and jazz.
After 4 years of ice skating between the ages of 12 and 16, and having attained the full 12 grades Elisa decided to follow her love for Latin music off the ice and began attending classes in Lambada and Zouk, with Berg and Solange Diaz at London’s Danceworks. After two years of learning she travelled with them to their hometown of Porto Seguro where she spent a month training in Lambada, Zouk, Samba, Axe and Baile funk.
At 18, Elisa left her home city for Leeds where she attended university for the next 4 years. With the absence of Lambada-Zouk in the north, she was asked to teach weekly classes by Leeds University’s Spanish and Latin American Society. Although a total novice to teaching dance Elisa nervously accepted and began on her journey to working in the dance industry.
Salsa very quickly added itself to her dance repertoire in 2000 (having learnt with The Latin Quarter and later with the Salsaholics), and so she began frequenting the unforgettable Casa Latina, run by DJ Lubi. There she was approached by the club’s resident dancers The Da Silva Samba Dance Company headed by Christina Da Silva (at the time the only Samba dance troop in the North) to fill in at the last minute for an absent dancer for a performance at Casa Latina. That show got her a permanent position with the company. As the youngest in the group, and the less experienced in teaching and performing, she shadowed the other members assisting them in their samba and salsa classes, and performing around the northern UK clubs.
Simultaneously, she was working with Tango Yorkshire, as a teaching assistant and performing at council funded community events and in that same year succeeded in an audition to work with the highly respected RJC dance company directed by De Napoli Clarke.
After the Da Silva group split at the end of 2002, Elisa was asked to perform with urban salsa group Los Del Calle, again resident dancers for DJ Lubi’s night Salsoul. She later set up her own Samba dance group Meninadanca in 2003 with dancers Ella Peck and Zeina Hechme. At the end of 2004, Elisa decided to take a break from performing and concentrate on her teaching and choreographing.
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