As a professional dance instructor and dance teacher trainer, new author and blogger Francisco De La Calleja has dedicated the last three decades to making it easier for everyone to learn and teach partnership dances. Francisco was born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico. Francisco was only fourteen years old when his family emigrated to Canada, choosing the Montreal area as their new home, attracted by the city's bilingual culture and cosmopolitan allure. There he took his first dance lessons at the age of fifteen and was fortunate to quickly be taken under the wing of one of Montreal's best dance teachers of that time; Antonieta Cortez Barreno. He was so impressed by the teaching abilities of his instructor and by the impact the benefits of dancing had in his personal life that only a few months later he made the commitment not just to work as an instructor, but to a lifelong quest to become the best dance teacher he could be. Today Francisco is a dance teacher and trainer of multiple talents, a veritable walking encyclopedia and one of the most experienced Salsa instructors in the Montreal area. His dance experience ranges from Mexican and international folklore, classical ballet, ballet-jazz, tap, lambada, American and International Style Ballroom, old style swing, Salsa and other Latino dances as well as aerobics and rhythmic gymnastics. In a teaching career spanning thirty-three years, Francisco taught more than twenty-one thousand students in six different dance schools before becoming an independent teacher. He has also danced in, coached or choreographed for nine dance troupes. He has performed and choreographed in films, TV shows, music videos and almost a thousand live performances across the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario. He has also performed at Salsa Congresses and Conventions in Montreal, Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Puerto Rico. He was a member of Salsa Team Canada from 2002 to 2005 at the World Salsa Congress in Puerto Rico and the team's Quebec choreographer in 2005. Francisco was co-founder of the San Tropez Dance School in Montreal in the 1990's. Besides teaching, his other functions included developing curricula, teaching systems and training the teaching staff. He was soon recognized by his students as being one of the most resourceful dance teachers in eastern Canada, as well as a Rueda de Casino Master teacher. Some of the most renowned salsa and latino dancers in Quebec got their first training with him, including the current directors and teachers of several dance troupes or schools. Since his earliest days in the field, Francisco is committed to perfecting not just the art of dancing but also the science of teaching dancing. He has studied the biomechanical, psychological, sociological and even genetic aspects of human motion and learning. His endless study of teaching customs and habits led him to question a lot of the techniques and language used by dance instructors and to reject a lot of the popular wisdom that has shaped the thinking of no few of them. Between 1997 and 2008 he developed the She dances... With him! dance theory and teaching system. It has been a resounding success with a whole new generation of dance students. Although his only professional writing experience was putting together a monthly newsletter for one of the dance schools he worked at, in 2015 Francisco began a new career as an author. His future projects include a book about learning, teaching and dancing salsa, a dance teacher's training manual and a collection of teaching anecdotes.
