Larry Toth

Dancing has been a part of my life ever since I was little. I mean that in every honest bone in my body. Since I was 3 years old, I am blessed to have been raised in New York City and to have a family who loves to dance. You can blame my love of dancing mostly from my Mom who still loves to hear her classic disco/dance music and my Dad who loves his Lionel Ritchie and R&B music. I still think I have the only parents in the world who try to keep up with today's music.

With that said, growing up in Queens had many benefits. One major benefit was the exposure of many different cultures and languages that I was surrounded with. I grew up in a neighborhood which was predominately Italian and Latin. So when it came to music, I enjoyed dance music because that was the music being played in the streets, the radio and in my home. Even old school rap back in the eighties was danceable. The majority of my Latin and Italian friends either played club music, Latin House and Latin Freestyle (Not Hip Hop). I remember even battle dancing at one block party when I was kid.

If you ask anyone in my family, they know my love for dancing goes back to when I was young. There were many family weddings and other social events in which I would never say NO to a dance or the opportunity to act like a 'ham'. So when I grew older, my love for dancing grew.

That is when in the summer of 2003 Salsa dancing changed the way I thought. I was living in Boston at the time and across the street from Fenway Park, was a Latin club named "Sophia's". When I attended Sophia's that night, it changed my thinking because I saw first hand 'real' Latin dancing, not street dancing. I remember growing up hearing salsa/Latin music being blasted in the streets of NYC but not in a formal setting. For the first time, I saw salsa dancing and Latin music in a different light.

During that night, reality hit me when I tried to Salsa dance with a young lady that I could not keep in step with. I was truly embarrassed that night. So I said to myself, "I know how to dance?" well, I was wrong. That event of embarrassment motivated me to take Salsa lessons to become a better dancer. I researched the Boston community for Salsa classes and the rest is history.

Since that event in Sophia's, for almost a year and a half, I took lessons on and off in Boston but only when I had the time. Not until the US Army brought me to the beautiful city of Indianapolis of the summer of 2005 that Salsa dancing became a regular occurrence. As I attended more classes, my drive for learning Salsa became stronger with the introduction of Yang and Erin's dance classes.

Since moving to Indianapolis, I have met so many friends because of salsa dancing and that to me is such a great reward. Dancing to me is my way of getting stress out of life, exercise good cardio and having a lot of fun at the same time. So if I am still healthy in my years to come, expect me to still be dancing when I am 80 years old. Just not battle dancing.