Director of “La Época” and salsa musicality pioneer, Josue Joseph
So, having returned home to Ireland I managed to go a full 30 days without a single dance (quite possibly the longest salsa-free period in my life since I became a salsero). Being back on the farm in the middle of the Irish countryside means that I’m not exactly spoiled for choice when I comes to dance options.
So I was delighted to break my salsa “dry spell” with a trip to Dublin to attend a screening of the salsa musicality documentaries “La Época” along with a day of musicality workshops led by the director, Josue Joseph. Mr. Joseph was brought to Dublin by the great team at Sun Dance Ireland (nice work guys).
Josue was kind enough to do an interview with me after the workshops in which he talks about his work and the response it has received over the years. You can check out the 2-part interview below.
Part 1
Part 2
My take on “La Época”
“Mind blown, brain melted” is how I can best describe how I felt after a day of workshops with Josue and his partner, Sara.
The reason was due to the fact that I had never been exposed to such detailed information on the music that I’ve been dancing to for years. Josue is a musician (amongst other titles) and his movies open up a depth of latin musicality that most people never consider, even after years of dancing. It really makes you start thinking more deeply about how you should interpret music when you dance and this is probably one of the greatest achievements of La Época.
Whether I agree with all of Josue’s opinions is not important. What’s important is that exposure to his work has made me better informed and much more interested in the musicality of latin dance and that can only lead to an improvement in my dancing (hopefully).
If you’re interested in learning more about musicality I can’t recommend La Época enough. Especially for people teaching dance, La Época finally introduces a definitive way to explain how different parts of music can be translated into body movement while dancing. So its a much more satisfactory alternative to simply telling a student to just “feel the music”.
You can find out more about Josue and his work by visiting his site www.laepocafilm.com. You can also find out where he’ll be holding his next film screenings and workshops (Josue is currently based out of Poland). It will allow you to take the next step in making a big improvement in your dance.
Keep dancing folks.
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The Dancing Irishman 