Dance Cordinator:
Sharon Reynosa
Birth Place: Salem, Oregon
Birth Date: Sometime in the 20th century
Shortly after opening Satin & Latin Dance Studios in 1998 with her husband Remos Reynosa, she saw the movie “Dance with me” starring Vanessa Williams, when she spotted a strange circle dance done to Salsa music. This prompted a call to Miami to find out more about this fun form of Salsa.
Just 2 weeks later Remos and her were at the Salsa Lovers Dance Studio in Miami for their first Casino Rueda training day. Two weeks of days and nights of concentrated private lessons during the day and dancing in Casino circles to solidify the daily training in actual practice, along with videos to help remember every detail of this new found dance passion, and they headed back to Portland to start training performance groups to show Oregon dancers how much fun this crazy Salsa dance can be while further studying Rueda in seminars and workshop while teaching and developing dance groups.
August 4, 1999 was the first Casino Rueda Friday night that was to become the hottest weekly dance event in Portland featured in all of the local newspapers over the years. She has been successfully self employed since 1977 and owned businesses, many connected to the entertainment industry, from restaurants, catering services, lounges and bakeries. The last restaurant and lounge she owned was Cisco & Pancho’s in Old Town where she started the first Cantina with live Latin music.
Conjunto Algrae was the first salsa band and the Cantina at Cisco & Pancho’s was the first Salsa scene that proved to other Lounge owners that there was an interest, in Portland, large enough to support Salsa dancing. Training under her husband who is a past three time National Champion and the only USISTD certified dance instructor in the Northwest, for 10 years of performing, competing and teaching has helped her gain a knowledge of professional technique that has not only enhanced her dancing abilities but has allowed her to gain a knowledge of couching and judging criteria.
The work load of managing the dance studio and running her other company cuts into practice time but she manages to win first places and supreme awards in every dance competition she has ever competed in. She always dreamed of being a dancer from the time she was old enough to do a Shirley Temple impersonation. The Good Ship Lollipop didn’t arrive until one night at the Hilton in Portland that she met a guy named Remos. Still not knowing that he was dancer or teacher, she just enjoyed the dances until the band break when he got up to teach.
Little did she know that 2 years later she would be his wife and business partner in a dance studio. She took a knarled and twisted way to being a dancer but she realized her dream at an age when most people are thinking about retiring. Her dreams of being the second certified dance instructor in the Northwest is the next accomplishment she is working on along while working on fulfilling a dream of competing in a 10 dance competition. Not winning, just competing, which is a very lofty goal at her age.