A perpetual spark drives "Salsa Susie" to make her dreams a reality

 

SAN DIEGO, CA | Texas?  Really?  It’s hard to believe, but its true that the Director of Ooh La La Dance Company, Susie Nguyen, a.k.a. “Salsa Susie” started her path to La Jolla, California from the Lone Star State.  One of four children to parents who met at a Vietnamese refugee camp, she has consistently broken through barriers to live her dream.  She can’t help it - it runs in her blood.  

 

“Entrepreneurship runs in my family, my parents ran a Mom & Pop convenience store, the most successful in our small Texas county.  They sold it and moved us to Monterrey, CA.” It was in this sleepy No

rthern California town that Susie battled her parents’ traditional Asian culture, moving out in her early teens so she could participate in high school cheer, becoming captain after making the team due to GPA requirements.  Her Father told her she didn’t even make the squad.  Susie’s competitive drive surfaced with cheer as the team qualified for nationals, “we came in 67th place”, she laughed.  Not bad for someone with other small responsibilities like Class President.

 

 

Cheer led her to her first study abroad, in Costa Rica where she attended the Universidad de Costa Rica on a full scholarship. There she became the first American to lead a cheer team to win the Costa Rican National Title, and move onto compete at the United Cheer Association in Daytona Beach, FL.  While in Costa Rica, Susie became trilingual by adding Spanish to her already fluent English and Vietnamese.  

 

 

Catch your breath?  This is just freshman year.

 

 

After a year, she returned to Santa Barbara, first attending Santa Barbara Community College (SBCC) and then transferring to SDSU to major in International Business, Finance and minor in Spanish.  While at SBCC, she quickly became close friends with Camille Yannantuono, with whom she ironically crossed paths with years later while finding seats at a salsa show.  After finishing school, Susie returned to Santa Barbara and discovered salsa, becoming a regular at Ruby’s.  “Where do you go when you’re 25 and want to dance while your friends want to stay home?  Ruby’s was a dive, but really fun.  I got hooked!”  It was there she first met Alex Da Silva, who she trained with for a summer.  

 

 

Soon, Susie found herself travelling from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles every night to dance, crashing with friends and driving back the next day to work.  During this time she also trained with names like Cristian Oviedo, Los Reyes de la Rumba, and competed at the Conga Room and Mayan.  Her sister is credited for her moniker, giving her the domain name “SalsaSusie.com” for her birthday.  In the daytime Susie held a “regular" job with Diesel as their International Footwear sales rep.  “I am a footwear fanatic,”  she shared in a recent interview “but the shopping and the travel habits I had drove me into major debt, and my job didn’t pay enough to get out, so I quit.”

 

 

Moving to San Diego, Susie re-channeled her energy into her sales position at Xerox, becoming their top sales executive for consecutive years.  Out of debt and successful, she lived the good life, travelling and dancing.   She partnered with Juan Garcia in 2006 and competed in the 2007 ESPN Salsa Championships, finishing 15th in the hotly contested Cabaret Division. Still, she wasn’t fulfilled.  Susie saved enough money to leave her job and pursue her dream.  “I wanted to incorporate dance and travel into one company,” and today that company is Ooh La La Dance Company.  She is committed to providing a fun and surprising product. “We fuse 50% salsa with 50% burlesque, and 100% everything Latin in between.”  Susie says with her captivating smile.  Ooh La La Dance Company is located in La Jolla, CA and has numerous teams, most notably the all-female Cosabellas who showcase their salsa-burlesque fusion.

 

 

As a one person show, Susie leverages both a strong marketing background and savvy management experience to recruit new dancers and keep them challenged.  Her girls typically don’t come from salsa clubs and have a background in multiple disciplines, including singing.  “I recruit outside of the salsa scene and create ‘new’ dancers" she says proudly.  Her business smarts a reflected in her extended team of instructors, who are specialists in a variety of genres, including Argentine Tango, Flamenco, Ballet, Jazz, and Hip-Hop.

 

 

Has she succeed in her goal to incorporate travel?  Well her teams have taken 35 people worldwide to countries such as Bora Bora, Turks and Caicos, Bali, Australia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Greece, Egypt, Morocco and Spain.  In the US, her team has performed under contract with Napa Auto Parts at major soccer events in  Seattle, Denver, Anaheim and Oakland.  Their YouTube videos and awards, such as the 2010 Performing Artist of the Year Award presented by Raw – An Indie Arts Award, captured the attention of both America’s Got Talent and Paula Abdul’s Live to Dance.  “They loved the fusion of salsa and burlesque” she explained, “they approached us.”  All of the team travel and rehearsals and shows don’t keep her from performing and competing on her own.  In 2010, Susie partnered with Three-time On-1 World Champion Abel Pena to dazzle crowds in San Diego, Atlanta and New York.

 

 

Do you think she’d stop there?  Nope.  Susie also does nightclubs.  Why?  “We had some gigs at these places and just saw it would be a great venue and wanted to share it with the Salsa Community.”  First, she partnered with Rumba Entertainment to launch Sway at the Keating Hotel and later started her once-a-month event at Spin Nightclub in Old Town.

 

 

Even with this chaotic workload, she’s not sitting still.  Every day, she looks at her goals - typed in her iPhone and segmented between short term and long term.  The list ranges from a branded apparel line to creating a talent agency and elevating from Ooh La La to Academy status.  Proof of her commitment, The Ooh La La Dance Academy is opening October 1st.  Taking a break from a demolition party at the new location, she said “The place will be Oh…So…Ooh La La!  Eight years of working hard with tears, sweat & blood & joy.  It’s finally coming to fruition!”  Long term, she’s set her sights on franchising Ooh La La in other cities.  Her vision to “offer a lifestyle, not just a studio,” and her own motto is “Music feeds our diet, dance feeds our soul.”

 

 

When asked about the origin of the the team name, she beamed,  “Ooh La La means ‘an element of surprise.’  We surprise people at times.”

 

 

Yes Susie, you do.