Roberto Herrera, The Latin-Dance Teacher – The People Issue 2024

Roberto Herrera, 37, grew up in Rogers Park, where he began learning to dance with his family. In 2018, he opened Latin Techniques Dance Studio in Albany Park. The studio is now located in Portage Park, where Herrera teaches students—beginners and beyond—how to dance cumbia, salsa, bachata, and guaracha. In addition to offering private and group classes (and teaching specialized choreography for events like quinceñeras and weddings), Latin Techniques hosts dance socials two Fridays every month, where students from all levels, as well as members of the general public, can mix, mingle, and move.

I grew up in Rogers Park up to the age of 14, 15. Then I moved to Albany Park. I have four sisters and a brother. Recently my brother just passed away—two years ago. I went to Kilmer School from preschool all the way to seventh grade, and then I graduated from Gale School.

I started with cumbia, because my parents are Mexican, so cumbia’s a very popular dance in Mexico. And also in Colombia. My mom was the one that taught all my siblings when we were kids. Just growing up, I kind of learned the other genres. Salsa is more like a Cuban and Puerto Rican dance; my mom didn’t know anything about that, so I had to take classes for that. I also took classes for another dance called guaracha, which is more of a Mexico City dance. But cumbia and guaracha, those are the ones that I pretty much grew up with and just learned along the way. My mom would always make parties, like almost every weekend. So that’s how my passion grew since I was a kid.

I took salsa classes at Dance Chicago starting around 19. And then for guaracha, I took those classes at another dance studio that was in Rogers Park, called Key 2 Dance, until I was like 21, but unfortunately, that one closed up after COVID. I did go to another studio to take some ballet, because it’s something that everyone has to learn.

Before I opened my dance studio, I was working at a pharmacy; I worked there for about eight years. At Key 2 Dance, where my friend Oswaldo taught me how to dance guaracha, he wanted me to also help teach. At first, I didn’t want to, because I didn’t feel that confidence to teach people how to dance. But then he helped me. I did that off and on between the ages of 23 and 27. After a few years, one of my ex-students, Alex, contacted me, and he was like, “Hey, Robert, when are you gonna start teaching again?” I told him, “Well, you know, I don’t have any plans of returning to teaching.” I was working at the pharmacy, so that was pretty much my job.

He contacted me back in 2017, and then he told me that his friend had a studio in Albany Park. He was like, “You should come back and teach again.” I was like, “You know what? If your friend allows me to teach, then I’ll probably think about it.” So then he contacted me maybe a few days later and told me that his friend had decided that I can teach at the studio. I started getting all this clientele. I put my classes on Facebook, on Instagram, and then a lot of people were contacting me. 

[Herrera opened the first location of Latin Techniques Dance Studio on Kedzie in 2018 and moved to the current Portage Park location in February 2024.]

I was afraid. I took the leap of faith, because I didn’t know if this was gonna work or not. But, thankfully, it did all work out.

Because of social media, for one, Latin dancing has become very popular—people kind of already know what each Latin style is. Even with other cultures, even non-Latin people, they already know what’s salsa or what’s bachata or what’s cumbia, because it’s becoming so popular. When they contact me, they do ask me, “So what’s the easiest dance? Or what’s the hardest one?” I do sometimes recommend my students to maybe take the easiest genre, which is bachata. And then they can work their way up from there. But if someone wants to learn salsa, which is the hardest one out of the three that I teach, I make them aware that it is pretty difficult. 

During COVID, I did have to close for about six to seven months. I fell into a depression. I got the SBA [Small Business Administration] loan—that helped me to maintain my studio, because I still had to pay rent, you know? I was doing Uber Eats, unfortunately. That’s what made me depressed back then, because I was like, “Man, I have my own business and I have to work for another company?”

I still had guidelines to follow with the whole COVID thing [after reopening], but people did start coming back. 

People come to my dance studio because they say they forget about their problems. They just go there, have fun. I have had students that have gotten married and have kids together. I tell them, “I’m gonna charge you guys extra for that.”

But yeah, it’s definitely a place where they feel comfortable. They have a good time. They forget about their problems. I didn’t know that until my students kept telling me that. I didn’t know I made an impact for each one of my students in a good way, you know? So that makes me really, really happy that I can make a difference in everyone’s lives. 

This was originally published in the 2024 edition of our People Issue, the Reader’s annual special of first-person stories, as told by your neighbors, classmates, and the weirdo at the end of the bar.