Ryan Mead is co-director and co-founder of Rueda Con Ritmo. Ryan has been teaching Cuban Salsa and Rueda de Casino since 2005, and to date he has taught and performed across the United States, and internationally in Cuba, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand. Besides being a dancer, Ryan has been a percussionist since he was eight years old. He is an alumnus of the New England Conservatory and has taken many trips to Cuba to study both dance and music -- he now leads Cuba Dance Study Trips with Sidney three times per year. As both dancer and musician, Ryan is uniquely positioned to illuminate the inextricable connection between dance and music. Aside from his creativity as a choreographer, he is perhaps best known by lovers of Cuban dance and music for innovating a vocabulary of rhythmic calls and steps to aid dancers in the understanding and interpretation of Cuban music.

Sidney Weaverling is co-director and co-founder of Rueda Con Ritmo. She first studied dance as a teenager, and after several trips to Cuba she began teaching Cuban Salsa and Rueda de Casino in 1999. She is a longtime contributor to the currently thriving Cuban Salsa scene in the SF Bay Area, has taught and performed across the United States and internationally, and now leads dance study trips to Cuba with Ryan several times a year. As a former student of theater and film, Sidney is a talented director with a keen aesthetic vision. A natural dancer and a thorough teacher, Sidney not only has a beautiful and fluid style of movement - she has the teaching experience and attention to detail that enable her to effectively and efficiently transform and inspire dancers at any level.