Bachata Classes in Houston

Originally from Senegal with Cape Verdean roots, Manu has been dancing and performing his entire life. In 2004 he co-founded Salsa Dakar, one of the first salsa schools in Senegal, and he brought that same job — building a social dance scene from the ground up — to Houston.

His teaching list is unusually broad for a ballroom studio: Salsa, Bachata, Merengue, Kizomba and Funaná, the last of which traces straight back to the Cape Verdean side of his family. For a bachata beginner that breadth matters in a specific way — he can hear where a track sits stylistically and put you in the right version of the dance rather than a generic one.

On the studio floor he is the Dance Development Coordinator, which means the progression from first lesson to first social is literally his remit.

Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Crystal holds a master's degree in dance and is a former Korean National Latin Champion who represented her country at the Asian Games.

As Dance With Me Houston's in-house coach, she works with the instructors as well as with students — which is a useful thing to know if you are choosing where to take your first lesson. Her students consistently describe the same thing in reviews: breaking a movement into pieces small enough to actually get, then correcting the one that matters.

For bachata that translates directly into frame and lead-follow clarity, the two things that decide whether Sensual works or falls apart.

Maria is a professional ballroom dancer, choreographer, coach and International Adjudicator. She has coached World Champions, Blackpool Champions and finalists, Russian finalists and medalists, and two-time United States National Champions in Ten Dance and Latin.

To be precise about it: those are her students' titles, not hers. What she brings to a beginner is the other half of that record — she works from the position that everyone can dance, and that the first job is building confidence and partnership skills rather than accumulating figures.

For a couple learning bachata together, that is exactly the right frame.

Eric Botello is a Texas native and a professional ballroom dancer with more than twenty years of experience, and took the 2023 Dance With Me National Championship in Professional Rhythm.

Rhythm is the American ballroom family that includes cha-cha, rumba, swing, bolero and mambo — which is to say, a career spent on exactly the hip action and Latin timing that bachata is built out of. That background shows up in the small stuff: where the weight goes on the tap, and why your hip does the work instead of your shoulders.

Misha Roberts has competed professionally for over fifteen years in both Latin and Smooth styles, and has been trained by renowned coaches including Corky and Shirley Ballas.

Competing across two very different families — the sharp, grounded Latin vocabulary and the long, travelling Smooth one — makes for a teacher who is good at explaining what a movement is actually for, rather than only what it looks like. Useful when a bachata body wave is refusing to feel natural.