Masha

About Masha

Giancarlo and Masha spent a total of 11 years in Australia/New Zealand and have been featured as NZ's leading salsa dance professionals on TVNZ's Good Morning Show, were guest choreographers for Salsa and Mambo on the New Zealand version of TV3's "So You Think You Can Dance", were sole New Zealand representatives at the World DanceSport Games in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and were in the top 30 semi-finalists on TVONE's "New Zealand's Got Talent" 2012.

Masha represented her native country of Slovenia as an elite rhythmic gymnast before relocating to New Zealand. Since the age of 4, Masha has been dancing ballet, jazz, Latin-American Dance Sport and contemporary dance. In return she now has over 20+ years of disciplined dance training with immaculate dance and gymnastic techniques. Masha & Giancarlo were the first salsa instructors in New Zealand to introduce syllabus based salsa courses that would extend to any level of salsa dancing. The idea of the syllabus was to spread it to all of New Zealand in order for the schools to be able to teach the same basis and as result students would have a "universal" way of learning and competing. Today the syllabus structure has been adapted by the majority of salsa dance schools, which in return has raised and continues to raise the level of salsa dancing in New Zealand.

Masha is an incredibly passionate dancer, performer and instructor. In fact so passionate that she took her dancing to an academic level. She studied Physiology, Nutrition and Anatomy as part of the Bachelor of Dance degree at Auckland University of Technology in 2001.

Masha is highly respected in the salsa dance industry for her clear, precise and technical instruction. Masha & Giancarlo also had the honor of being the first couple ever to be invited by the New Zealand Federation of Dance Teachers (NZFDT) to do a salsa demonstration at the Opening Ceremony of the New Zealand Ballroom & Latin-American Dancesport Championships, been featured on a full page in the New Zealand Herald's "Photos Of The Year 2007", featured and interviewed in DANZ magazine by Francesca Horsley as "...New Zealand's Best!" and were main characters and dancers in the music video "Insane" by The Sagittarian, to mention a few.

Giancarlo & Masha dance with style, energy, professionalism and precision. Together they have performed and taught in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Hong Kong, Seoul, Bangalore, Miami, Los Angeles, Hamburg, Gold Coast and more. They are the choreographers, instructors and directors of New Zealand's most popular and successful student salsa dance team - TEAM Latinissimo. They were also coaches for the World Amateur Salsa Champions, Asia-Pacific Amateur Salsa Champions and the undefeated New Zealand Amateur Salsa Champions. Latinissimo won the NZ Salsa People's Choice Award in 3 out of 4 categories at the NZ Salsa Nationals.