Today we’d like to introduce you to Danny Kalman.
Hi Danny, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My first salsa dance class was in college. I was just exploring what the university had to offer and salsa looked fun.
Bachata wasn’t popular in the United States back then, so not until about seven years later, after I moved to Los Angeles, did I take my first bachata class.
I did NOT choose dancing as a career though – dancing chose me!
In fact, many times I chose to pursue a career and business endeavors other than dancing, but with nearly perfect consistency, there was always a “cosmic slap” as I like to call it, which put me back on track with dancing.
Even though salsa classes were just for fun as a hobbyist when I started, within my first year of dancing salsa, I was already performing and entered my first competition. I LOVED being on stage!
That was in Oregon. I then lived in Jerusalem, Cairo, then Tokyo and was always taking salsa classes wherever I lived, regardless of the language and whether or not I understood the instructor’s words.
Over time, I became more obsessed with salsa and dancing in general.
In Tokyo, I remember sitting on the floor in my tiny apartment and asking myself where on Earth I should live to take my salsa dancing to the highest level. I dreamed of becoming a world champion.
On my radar was New York, Colombia, or Los Angeles. Ultimately, the dancers who inspired me most were in Los Angeles.
After the 2011 tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan, I moved back home to Oregon and then finally to Los Angeles.
I trained and trained and trained, and within three months started helping teach for my dance mentor in Los Angeles.
Eventually, I started teaching salsa and bachata independently, and from that point on, it seemed that teaching was the business that consistently worked. Even though I took on over a dozen business initiatives in Los Angeles, I kept coming back to dancing.
Eventually, I got out of my own way and allowed myself to go all in on dancing.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not even close to smooth. Even though I now have one of the more successful salsa and bachata dance academies (in terms of business), the path has been as rocky as ever and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone!
When I moved to Los Angeles, I was homeless for the first three weeks. All I owned was the Pontiac that my father had gifted me for the journey (admittedly, it was a cool car) and the clothes, dance shoes, and sleeping pad I packed inside it.
I immediately went to the Los Angeles Bachata Festival and started making friends. Occasionally I was lucky enough to be invited to sleep on the floor in a dorm room or on a living room couch, but most nights, I slept in my car.
Finally, I moved into the living room of an apartment in the Palms area (West Los Angeles).
Embarrassingly, I lived in that living room for five years. The money saved on rent made it hard to justify moving into a bedroom.
My attitude was ultra-positive though. I was having an adventure. Heck, I even had girlfriends during that time and used to brag, “I know they definitely don’t want me for money – they want me for me!”
Eventually, I moved and did make it into a proper bedroom – a huge upgrade. That living situation brought its own challenges, though. I moved in with my business partner at the time and it ended up becoming a tumultuous business partnership.
The pandemic, interestingly, forced a huge shift that I was able to navigate to improve my life in overwhelmingly positive ways.
The government shut down the dance academy and I was on the verge of moving back home to Oregon since my Los Angeles rent was expensive and I had no income. However, I found ways to stay in Los Angeles and actually moved 8 times in 2020 and 2021.
It sounds terrible but it was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me in Los Angeles.
After the pandemic, I re-opened the salsa and bachata dance academy with a new arrangement, got my own place (the nicest one yet), regained stability, and the academy took off like I’d never seen before. I believe that the combination of building a reputation over 8 years plus humans being thirsty for human contact and social activities was a powerful, winning combination. Bachata had been gaining massive popularity as well, which supported the market for bachata classes as a whole. 2022 was the best year of my life!
Now I am focused on the dance academy full time, which I am grateful to say has grown into possibly the largest salsa and bachata dance academy in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
Every day I still work my tail off, but now, thank goodness, with a much better set of “problems.”
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I’ve built Movers and Shakers Salsa and Bachata Dance Academy with the guiding principle of creating the best salsa and bachata educational experience in the world.
The word “best” has many implications.
I’ll keep it simple here and just emphasize that we are very focused on creating a warm, supportive, welcoming environment for beginners taking salsa classes or bachata classes for the first time.
When we successfully help a new student fall in love with salsa and bachata and the journey of learning, then everybody wins.
I’m obsessed with details and quality, and I work daily on improving every aspect of the academy and the student experience. I believe this is one reason that we are, thank goodness, doing well.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Often to my own demise, I’ve always been a risk taker.
Physically, I’ve always taken risks with extreme sports and paid the price. After five broken bones (all on different occasions), dislocated shoulders, a fractured spine, torn ankle, and miraculously surviving rolling 100 feet off a cliff in Malibu in my convertible with the top down, I’ve been through a lot.
I don’t advise taking physical risks.
As for risk in business, I’ve always taken a calculated risk that won’t bankrupt me if I fail. Failure, again and again and again, is inevitable – any entrepreneur needs to see that reality – this is the reality that’s often not mentioned on Instagram or YouTube.
I always wanted to be a “burn the boats” kind of person in entrepreneurship, but the reality is that I always ensured I had some sort of safety net, such as working on two ventures at once. I can’t say for sure that this is the best way, but for me, eventually, after years, it worked.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.moversandshakersdance.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dannykalman/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dakalman
- Other: Online Salsa & Bachata Dance Programs: https://www.dancechemistry.com
