Salsa Lover Hotfoots It Onto the Internet

By day she is Edie Lewis, a mild-mannered, Los Angeles software expert who runs her own Web site. But Lewis has a second identity that is revealed whenever she hears mambo. At the drop of a beat, Lewis transforms into the Salsa Freak.

“I’m addicted to the dance, the music and the culture,” says the 34-year-old self-described salsaholic. “People relate to me.”

Some certainly do. With more than 80,000 hits per day, her Web site (https://www.salsaweb.com)is one of the most popular dance-oriented Web sites in the world. The ever-growing site, which includes more than 8,000 pages, is updated every five minutes.

Utilizing an international network of more than 100 correspondents from over 50 countries, Lewis has made it her life’s work to be up to the minute with salsa news from every part of the planet. The fishnet-wearing ambassador of all things salsa recently toured Scandinavia, Western Europe and a number of Arab nations to enlist dancers from every culture.

“I slept on dance floors and in five-star hotels. I never knew what I was going to get,” Lewis says. “The biggest thrill was a class I offered in Jordan. I was the first person to teach salsa in an Arab country. I wasn’t allowed to say the words ‘sexy’ or ‘sensual,’ and I was covered up . . . for me.”

Stories and information about her tour can be found on Salsaweb, which also offers dozens of topics from dance tips for beginners to the “Dear Edie” advice column. Unlike the quippy Ann Landers, Lewis offers extensive analyses in response to a wide variety of questions.

One frequently asked question is, “How do I deal with the sweat situation?”

If you’re a salsa lover like Lewis who dances seven nights a week, you’ll go to great lengths to combat the hazards of perspiration.

“I bring two dresses to the club because I always sweat through the first one,” she explains.

To avoid running mascara and smeared lipstick, Edie has had her makeup--eyeliner and eyebrows as well as her lips--permanently tattooed.

So how did this Angeleno by way of Colorado become so obsessed with salsa? When discovering the dance in the winter of 1994, Lewis claims that salsa saved her life.

“Mambo, which is the basis of all salsa dancing, means ‘medicine of the gods,’ and it’s true,” she says. “I used to have terrible allergies, asthma and a weight problem. I prayed for a cure for years. Within one month of my salsa discovery, the asthma and allergies affecting my body completely disappeared. And because I was so happy, I started rapidly losing weight. I went from a size 14 to a size 3 over a period of two years. I highly recommend salsa dancing as a prescription drug / vaccination for any type of bodily or mental ailment.”

Lewis’ new outlook on life has attracted fans and followers, who send her e-mail at a rate of one every three seconds, including a fair share of Internet marriage proposals.

A word of advice to Salsa Freak suitors: Be sure to write your wedding plans in plain old English.

“I’m a white girl in a Latin-looking body who still can’t speak a lick of Spanish,” says Lewish with a laugh--she is part Mexican and part French. “People send me e-mail in Spanish all the time, and I look at them like a deer caught in the headlights.”