Hansel Rivero

My dance career began in the streets of Havana, standing out from a very young age dancing Cuban popular music and urban music (hip hop, reggaeton). At the age of 13 I decided to learn a little more and started taking classes at the school of Tony Menéndez, Narciso Medina and some intensive workshops in Conjunto Folklórico and Teatro Nacional focusing mainly on Cuban folklore, dance technique (contemporary) and ballet. At the age of 15 I founded the urban group called "Los Vakeros" together with Reinier Alexis and Junior Puentes which quickly became one of the best reggaeton, hip hop and fusion style crews in all of Havana. With this group I began to work as a dancer and choreographer in audiovisual projects and alsomade a couple of appearances in Cuban television. A little later I decided to start opening myself for other dance styles and after successful auditioningstarted to work in Cuban Show company “Danza Mora” making a contract with Agencia Actual. With this group I started dancing a fusion between hip hop elements and traditional Cuban dances and later focused only on Cuban show.

I looked for more improvement auditioning in the show school of Tropicana de Cuba and in show company Parisien located in the National Hotel of Cuba. Passing both auditions I started studying in the school of Tropicana and at the same time I continued surpassing myself in the Parisien taking classes of Cuban folklore and ballet to be able to dance at the level of my classmates since the vast majority of all of them were graduates of state dance institutions while I came from the street and had only studied at some smaller dance schools.

After months of preparation in the school of Tropicana and in the classes of Parisien I contracted with Tuarte s.a. and started working in Parisien. Some months later, after several evaluative cuts, I graduated from the Tropicana school as the best student of my year (from maximum of 5 I obtained 4-ballett 5-Folkore 5-Repertoire 5-Dance technique) and as a result got the opportunity to work as a dancer in world famous Cabaret Tropicana de Cuba starting from the year 2015. While in Tropicana I wanted to continue growing in dance and took the entrance examination at the I.S.A. (Higher Institute of Art) in the specialty of Folklore, where after taking the theoretical and practical exams with about 100 young people I was the first in the ranks to enter the university. But some weeks later I passed two auditions which gave me the rare opportunity to travel outside of Cuba as an independent artist with a Cuban show group and I decided to go to work in Turkey for 6 months.

Returned from Turkey, I danced some time in Sancti Spiritus folkloric company and gave Cuban salsa classes to tourists until I came to Estonia in 2017 where I started sharing all my knowledge and experience as a dancer and dance teacher.