RUEDA CON RITMO
Founded in San Francisco in 2007, Rueda Con Ritmo is a community of Cuban Salsa dancers offering classes, events, and performances throughout the Bay Area and beyond, and leading Cuba Dance Trips since 2015. We strive to create a warm and inclusive atmosphere that welcomes dancers of all levels, from all backgrounds, and of all ages. We believe that everyone can learn to dance and it is our goal for each person who attends our classes to improve their dancing while having fun and making friends.
Ryan Mead is co-director and co-founder of Rueda Con Ritmo. Ryan has been teaching Cuban Salsa and Rueda de Casino since 2005, and he has taught and performed across the United States, and internationally in Cuba, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand. Besides being a dancer, Ryan has been a percussionist since the age of eight. He is an alumnus of the New England Conservatory and Stanford and has taken many trips to Cuba to study both dance and music -- since 2015 he has lead Cuba Dance Trips with Sidney, where in 2018 he performed with Companía All Stars in a music video with the Grammy-winning Septeto Santiaguero. As both dancer and musician, Ryan is uniquely positioned to illuminate the inextricable connection between dance and music. Aside from his creativity as a choreographer, he is perhaps best known by lovers of Cuban dance and music for innovating a vocabulary of rhythmic calls and steps to aid dancers in the understanding and interpretation of Cuban music.
Sidney Weaverling is co-director and co-founder of Rueda Con Ritmo and has been teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1999. She has a deep appreciation and respect for Cuban music, dance, and culture and takes great pleasure in sharing her knowledge and experience with her students. She continues to study in Cuba on RCR’s Cuba Dance Trips and is devoted to maintaining traditional Cuban dance styles as well as contributing innovative moves and choreography. She has been a longtime contributor to the thriving Cuban dance scene in the SF Bay Area where she continues to build an inclusive and supportive dance community. A natural dancer and skilled teacher, Sidney not only has a graceful and athletic style of movement - she has the teaching experience and attention to detail that enable her to transform and inspire dancers at any level.
Or Gadish is a senior assistant instructor with Rueda Con Ritmo. Or stumbled upon Rueda de Casino at salsa lessons in Israel which offered “Cuban” and “LA” lessons concurrently. New to both terms, he asked the teacher which was right for him and the teacher responded by asking if he knew the names of moves. Or thought he was being tested, so with “cross body lead” in mind, he said yes. The teacher told him to go to the “Cuban” lessons and from there he was hooked. Or has been a casino and Rueda instructor, choreographer, and performer since 2009, first with Harvard Candela Dance Troupe and MIT Casino Rueda in Boston and since 2020 with RCR in the Bay Area. When he’s not dancing (leading or following), Or is a biomedical R&D engineer at Berkeley Lights.
Cristina Ibarra is an assistant instructor with Rueda con Ritmo. A dancer all her life, Cristina fell in love with salsa when she moved to San Francisco in 2009. Since then she has danced and studied with numerous groups in the Bay Area and beyond, including Rueda con Ritmo, Latin Dance Grooves, and the All Stars on a Cuba Dance Study Trip. She brings her energetic teaching style and her deep love of the dance to the RCR team. When not tearing up the dance floor, you can find Cristina curating art events for the Mission Arts Performance Project (MAPP), or throwing social art parties with LATE NITE ART.
Jose Carrasco is an assistant instructor with Rueda Con Ritmo. A joyful dancer who loves salsa, rumba, samba and second line, Jose is well known in the Mission as a cofounder of Loco Bloco, an Afro Latino performing arts program for youth. Jose and his partner Karla have danced with RCR since 2014, attending one of their first dance trips to Cuba.
Bobbi Williams is an assistant instructor with Rueda Con Ritmo. She was first exposed to salsa dancing in high school, and she loved this “new” style of music and dance and was drawn to the partner connection that was absent in other forms of dance. In 2002 a friend pointed Bobbi to Sidney Weaverling’s classes at Rhythm & Motion. She was invited to join the all women’s Rueda group Timbea in 2005; that year they won first place at the Miami Rueda Congress. In addition to Salsa Bobbi enjoys many types of dance and has studied Tribal Belly Dancing, Bhangra, West African and other genres. Bobbi’s many years of experience as a performer as well as a social dancer makes her a valuable asset to the RCR team.
Kevin Keys is an assistant instructor with Rueda Con Ritmo. He started dancing rueda and casino in 2006 with Ritmos Latinos at The University of Arizona. Since then, has danced in Barcelona, Los Angeles, and Stanford. He regularly started dancing with Rueda con Ritmo in 2015 and hasn't regretted a moment since. When he is not dancing, you can find Kevin at Bay Area research institutes studying the genomic basis of human disease.
Chi-Chi Liang is an assistant instructor with Rueda Con Ritmo. Chi-Chi has been dancing since the age of 5, starting her studies with ballet, tap, jazz and Chinese folkloric dance and has since branched out into other dance forms - Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, Afro Contemporary, Bhangra, Haitian, and most recently, Cuban salsa! She first discovered Cuban salsa when she joined Ryan & Sidney for their Cuba Dance Trip at which point “dame” was still a foreign word to her. Since then she has loved being part of the Rueda Con Ritmo community and dancing with them in their performance workshops and Carnaval contingent. She also dances with Aguas Dance Company.
Bret Hendry is an assistant instructor with Rueda Con Ritmo. Convinced he had two left feet prior to taking Ryan and Sidney’s class for the first time in 2014, he was quickly won over to Cuban Salsa by the energetic and welcoming RCR community. Since then he has regularly participated in performances and workshops across the Bay Area, and brings balance to his vibrant extracurriculars by working in campaign finance.
Sundeep Sivaraman (a.k.a Sunny D) is an assistant instructor with Rueda Con Ritmo. He first started studying Cuban Salsa with Ryan and Sidney at Google in 2012, and he's never stopped learning since. Sunny loves to be a humble show-off (see what he did there), and while he would effortlessly glide across the floor, he doesn't undermine the power of the ponche or the magnificence of the mambo. In his words, "dancing is the mind playing catch up with the body, when you're busy having fun!"