Salsa & Latin Dance Classes Near Colonie, NY

Salsa classes in Colonie, NY start in the most populous suburb of Albany, a town of 85,590 people (2020 census) that covers 57.9 square miles of land and water, about 11 percent of Albany County. Felix Ortiz teaches Latin dance at 952 Troy-Schenectady Road in Latham, a hamlet of 13,680 residents along US Route 9 near the center of town, so Colonie dancers reach the studio without leaving the Town of Colonie.

The name is Dutch. Colonye was the Colonie of Rensselaerswyck, and all the land outside the Village of Beverwyck, now Albany, was called the Colonie. The town itself dates to 1895, when residents of the Town of Watervliet opposed turning the whole town into the city of Watervliet. The center of today’s Colonie was once the extensive farms of the Shaker community: the Shaker Heritage Society at 25 Meeting House Road keeps the site of the first Shaker community, founded in 1776, where Mother Ann Lee is buried, and its restored 1848 meetinghouse hosts public events such as concerts. Much of the old Shaker land is now Albany International Airport.

Colonie stayed a series of farms and a few hamlets through the 1930s. After World War II the suburbs came, and by 1980 development had saturated the town. Colonie Center, which opened in 1966 in Roessleville where Central Avenue, Wolf Road and I-87 meet, was the first enclosed shopping mall in the Capital Region. CQ Press ranked the town as having the lowest crime rate among US communities of 75,000 or more in both 2009 and 2010.

Civic life gathers along Loudon Road and US Route 9. Colonie Memorial Town Hall stands at 534 Loudon Road, and Siena University, a private Franciscan school founded by the Order of Friars Minor in 1937, anchors the hamlet of Loudonville at 515 Loudon Road. Shaker High School serves Latham and the hamlets north of it. At 207 Old Niskayuna Road in Newtonville, the Pruyn House, a late Federal and early Greek Revival home, is open to the public as the town’s historical and cultural arts center.

Two villages and ten hamlets make up the map: the villages of Colonie and Menands, and the hamlets of Latham, Newtonville, Loudonville, Boght Corners, Verdoy, Karner, Roessleville, Maywood, Lisha Kill and Dunsbach Ferry. Karner, once called Center Station, is where the Karner Blue butterfly was first identified. Maywood and Lisha Kill sit on Central Avenue (NY Route 5) in the west and northwest, while Dunsbach Ferry reaches the Mohawk River. Green space includes the 130-acre Crossings Park of Colonie at 580 Albany Shaker Road.

Latin dance fits this town’s weeknights. Monday brings bachata, Tuesday and Wednesday bring three levels of On-1 salsa, Wednesday adds casino rueda, and Thursday swings into the SalSwing Social, all in Latham, all inside the Town of Colonie, with your first class free.