Where did Salsa School come from?

To tell the story of Salsa School we have to start with Salsa @ Afterhours.ie. On the 3rd of September 2003 we opened the Salsa @ Afterhours.ie site to create an online community for Salsa Dancers all over Ireland. The site was setup with forums, full salsa class and event listings and an article section where any dancer could publish congress reviews and other articles of interest to the community.

It started out with a few of us at first but soon grew to be a thriving community (the chat room has cost a lot of us more time than it really should have during a busy working day!) which currently has over 600 registered members!

A regular topic of conversation myself and Mark had over the years was what we liked and disliked about the various congresses and salsa weekends we had been to over the years. Then one day we thought to ourselves, we spend all this time talking about what we'd love to see at a salsa event, why not get of our act together and actually do it ourselves. More than anything else we wanted to create an event that would bring the entire Irish salsa community together for a non-profit, truely community run event.

Over the next 9 months we came to regret having that conversation more than once! Neither of us had ever organised anything like this. Neither of us had ever organised anything of this scale and here we were organising a huge event with over 12 teachers in total, 45 classes, full accommodation and dinner for over 200 people!

However we persevered and in June 2006 we finally achieved what had at times had seemed to be a completely unreachable goal. Not only that but the weekend turned out better than we could have ever dreamed.

Then in June 2007 we completely sold with well over a month to go before the weekend began! Just wait till you see what we have planned for this years event!

Who are we?

Mark Elmore

Mark started dancing Salsa in 2000 in the Earl of Kildare Hotel and rapidy caught the bug, dancing up to six nights a week when ever and where ever possible. He began teaching in 2003 and continues to do so weekly in the Garda Club, Dublin. He has attended congresses in Ireland, the UK and Italy over the years and co founded Salsa School in 2006 with Michael Gargan.

Michael Gargan

Michael started dancing salsa about 7 years ago in the Temple Bar Music Centre taking classes with Dr. Rumba and is the founding member and webmaster for Salsa @ Afterhours.ie.