Santa Ana Takes Steps to Offer Skills, Fun in Class

It’s midday at the cinder-block Santa Ana Senior Center and the regulars are hunched over a pool table, cue sticks in hand.

Silver-haired ladies sit quietly at three round tables for their meatloaf lunch.

A group of younger people -- downtown office workers on their lunch hour -- punctuate the room’s slow motion on an adjacent dance floor.

And in Orange County’s most-Latino city, it seems natural that they do it with salsa.

Their teacher, Salomon Rivera, the 2003 World Salsa champion, calls to the dancers who have escaped staid office life: “One, Two, Three,” he counts, tapping the rhythm with his feet. “Back together.”

About 20 people have enrolled in the city’s salsa dance class.

“Is there another city where you could do this at noon?” asked Angela Ellis, 30, a paralegal. “I don’t think so.”

The salsa classes have been offered intermittently for five years, attracting government workers, law-office employees and other downtown denizens.

After a survey showed there was more interest in recreation classes than the city realized, it added 50 to the selection of 14 classes it already offered.

And then, for the first time since 1996, it printed a brochure in June to promote them.

The new offerings include children’s instrumental music and singing, kick-boxing, flamenco dance and even ice skating.

The city is hoping that, in time, the classes will pay for themselves from user fees. But income is “icing on the cake,” said Gerardo Moet, the city’s parks and recreation director. “What we want to do is better serve the community.”

Some classes have been canceled for want of students because the city does not have the money to advertise them, said Peggy Calvert, the city’s recreation coordinator.

But salsa is popular.

Rivera teaches salsa not just at the senior center, but at a recreation center, at Santa Ana College and at the Braille Institute in Anaheim for blind dancers.

On a recent afternoon, Rivera played the music of the Colombian salsa band Sonora Carruseles. As Rivera danced to the hit song “El Baile Boogaloo,” the students tried to follow.

Rose Anne Trujillo, senior deputy city clerk, slipped off her high heels and put on slides, hoping to perfect her moves.

“Look at him,” she says, pointing to Rivera. “I would love to dance that way.”

Most of the Mexican Americans in the room were more familiar with slower-beating cumbia and norteno music than the Cuban dance.

But despite beginners’ mistakes, the students found salsa infectious.

“You feel the beat vibrating inside you and you want more,” said one student who didn’t want anyone to know how he spends his lunch break.

Melissa Frazier, 34, said she was bored working out at a gym and was grateful the salsa classes were near her job at a legal firm. “This is too perfect,” she said.