Indy’s premiere Latin dance studio celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month

INDIANAPOLIS — FOX59/CBS4 is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, taking us to the dance floor of Indianapolis’ longest-running Latin dance studio.

Dance is universal as it’s spoken not with words, but with movement.

“I often tell people learning to dance is like learning to speak another language; what’s difficult is learning the correct pronunciations of the word,” said Kyle Kulmann, founder and owner of Latin Expressions Dance Company.

Kulmann has dedicated nearly 15 years to getting Hoosiers moving with Latin dancing.

“So when you learn to dance, it’s easy to learn the steps, but the more you do it, the easier it is to pronounce the moves going with the way you move your body,” he said.

On his studio’s dance floor, he takes students from Indiana to countries like Colombia, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, showing them the Latin dance styles that weave together across more than 30 countries.

“They were all bringing a little bit of themselves here, bringing a little bit of their home, culture here to the United States,” said Mando Gonzalez, the studio’s senior instructor, when discussing his family’s love of cumbia, a traditional Mexican dance.

Monthly, the first-generation dance teacher brings his own Mexican heritage to these local classes.

“It’s a very communal dance where you can go to a different state and country and dance with somebody I’ve never met before, and have an incredible dance,” he said. “And I think that’s the beauty of Latin dance.”

Latin Expressions thrives on that sense of community as the region’s premier and largest Latin dance company. The studio welcomes all students from 10-years-old to 70-years-old.

“I’d never really seen Latin dancing, having grown up in Indianapolis. I wasn’t really ever exposed to it,” the Hoosier dance instructor recalled. “I started working at a dance studio right out of high school to make some money. I was just working the front desk doing some receptionist work, and they needed some leaders, generally (and) more commonly that’s the male’s role so they asked me to jump in. And I said, ‘ I don’t know, I don’t dance,’ and eventually they convinced me to go out there dancing, and accidentally fell in love with it.”

The rhythm hits your heart and the culture fills your soul, which is exactly what happened to Kulmann, and now he shares the power of Latin dance & Latino culture with hundreds of Hoosiers.

“It just brings people together no matter what background or heritage you’re from. It allows people to come together and have a good time and I think that’s really beautiful,” said Gonzalez.

If you’d like to take a course with Latin Expressions, visit here .

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