(City Weekend)
Updated: 2007-07-23 10:39

Twelve-year-old Janice Wu and 8-year-old Anita Lu smile shyly, giggle and fiddle with the dance studio bar before Mambo Jack's Saturday afternoon youth salsa class. But once the music comes on these two salsa 'tweens turn into salsa queens. "I loved having everyone watch me dance," Wu says of her on-stage performance at the inaugural China Salsa Congress last summer. "It made me feel proud."

Salsa is not only red hot on the Beijing party circuit, more and more kids are getting into it for exercise, coordination and plain old fun. This year's China Salsa Congress features a week long kiddie camp wrapped up with a large-scale salsa performance, where salsa ‘tweens like Wu and Lu will show Beijing how to shake it.

Mambo Jack (Jack Dunn) first launched kid's salsa a year and a half ago. "I was teaching an adult class at the time, when one day a mother asked if her daughter could learn it, too," Dunn recalls. Another mother, Feng Danyi, adds, "Anita loved to watch the adult classes through the window. She saw them and said 'I want to try, too.'"

Today, the youth team has around eight members ranging from 6 to 12 years old—all girls. "One boy tried once but couldn't do it," Dunn says. "We need a few guys to get it started. When boys walk by and see a roomful of girls, they get intimidated."

The weeklong camp, held as part of the 2007 China Salsa Congress, will hopefully get more little salsa kings out on the dance floor. The presence of world famous youth salsa teams from Colombia and New Zealand should help.

"We try to appeal to kids on many levels," Dunn says. "We not only learn dance moves and improve coordination and flexibility; we also learn a bit of salsa history and how to recognize the rhythms of different salsa instruments."

Mambo Jack uses a newer version of Bachata music to introduce kids to the panoply of salsa styles. "It has a hip-hop type beat that kids like," Dunn explains. "The bands we dance to are like boy bands for Bachata."

The main goal of the salsa camp is to help kids develop skills, ambition and confidence, says Dunn: "Some kids will get on stage and realize that wow, this is my world," Dunn says.