Personal:
Paul Baarn was born in Surinam (South America) and moved to the Netherlands at age 2. He developed a love for dance and music from the moment he could walk and it’s still there, as strong as ever. Through the years he has not only danced to different styles of music, from rock to hip-hop, but has also composed and played music on various instruments. Listen to "Another Sad Song" by Gallito

It was only at the age of 27 that his cousin introduced him to Salsa. From that moment on Salsa has been a passion in his life.

He met his other passion, his wife and teaching partner Janet, in the first salsa class he attended. The very first thing she told him, was that he wasn’t leading properly. Safe to say it wasn’t love at first sight. Things turned out alright in the end: they’re married and he knows how to lead. Paul and Janet teach several classes now in Haarlem.

Dancing Experience (and styles):
Paul has had many teachers in Holland who taught him a number of styles. He started with Ari Garcia, where he learned the basics of the dance AND the music. After that he learned different styles of dancing, including Cuban, Cumbia, Mambo and LA Style, breaking on 1, 2 and 3. He learned LA Style from Marlon Castillo, taking classes and dancing in his show team.

Around that time Marlon and Annetje Castillo started organizing the festivals in Haarlem, where teachers from all over the world were teaching. These teachers taught and inspired Paul even more and enabled him to improve his dancing in different styles, adding New York style to his list.

Paul is always developing his style, creating new moves and experimenting with elements from streetdance and other styles of dancing.

Teaching Experience:
Paul started teaching the odd workshop when he was still in Marlon’s show team. That went so well, that he was asked to teach at a minifestival in Haarlem, amongst international teachers like Super Mario. After that he decided to start teaching on a regular basis in Club Asi, the school of Marlon and Annetje Castillo, where he now teaches five classes per week.

Next to the regular teaching, he has taught many workshops for different schools in the Netherlands and on several festivals.

Teaching style:
Relaxed, clear, thorough, fun. These are words that are used by participants in Paul’s classes and workshops to describe his teaching.

Paul takes the time to go into the essentials of a move. It’s easy to just do the move in the class over and over again, without caring about the essentials. But you will find it hard or impossible to do the move with someone else the next night. By going into the essentials of the move, Paul targets the things that will make the move work with everyone and the things that make it look good. From the girl’s perspective, Paul goes into the techniques involved in following a ‘million moves’ man.

This attention to details and technique is what makes people, guys AND girls, better dancers. In Paul’s philosophy, if you learn the technique, you can create the move.