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Christina, the director and choreographer of ¡SALSA CALIENTE!, has always had a love of dance. She started dancing at the age of four when she began ten years of ballet training. During this time, she danced in many community performances as well as in the Santa Clara Ballet Company's production of Sleeping Beauty. Ballet was followed by three years of jazz dance lessons, before a knee injury forced her to quit dancing for several years. When the swing band that Christina was playing saxophone with suggested that she join a ballroom dance club to get a better idea of what was required from a dance band, she jumped on the idea. After one lesson, she was hooked and for the next four years, she trained and competed.  She also spent some time as the club's social coordinator, planning all of the club's social events and dances, hiring bands, and organizing intercity dance competitions.

The first time that Christina ever experienced salsa was when a friend of hers from the ballroom dance club took her to a local Friday night dance at Cafe Merengue. When she felt the friendliness of the people and the expression and the rhythm of the music and of the dances, she knew that this was the type of dancing that she wanted to concentrate on. For the next six years, she took lessons in Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA and performed with and choreographed for various local bands. In 1999, she was asked to choreograph and perform a show at the ICA Folk Fest in Victoria, BC and due to the overwhelming response received, she began to teach classes of her own and formed the performance group ¡SALSA CALIENTE!

Since then, Christina has performed and taught with various partners at fundraisers, parties and nightclubs locally as well as in New York, Los Angeles, Puerto Rico, Cancun, and Italy. She has performed with Jayson Molina from Puerto Rico, Steve Seda & Carlos Figueroa from New York and Latin Motions from New Orleans.  She performed at the East Coast Salsa Congress with Seattle dance company, Rumba Brava, at the West Coast Salsa Congress with Seattle dance company Somos El Son and at the Canada Salsa Congress with New Jersey dance company Cultural Explosion.  Christina was a featured model in the 2004 Salsa Women of Canada calendar done as a fundraiser for breast cancer research and was chosen as the choreographer for BC on Salsa Team Canada.

Her dance company, ¡SALSA CALIENTE!, has grown from a beginner group to a group of some of Victoria's best dancers.  In the last six years, ¡SALSA CALIENTE! has traveled to perform at the New York Salsa Congress (all six years), the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress, the Canada Salsa Congress in Toronto, Chicago Salsa Congress, Atlanta Salsa Congress and on the Stuck On Salsa All Star Salsa Cruises to the Bahamas, Cayman Islands & Mexico.  In 2003 they even went on a ten day tour of Italy with Luis Zegarra from New York.  ¡SALSA CALIENTE! has also appeared on stage dancing with Spanish Harlem Orchestra, and Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca.   

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