To The Beat Of The Latin Rhythm
He made Latin music his lifestyle. He fused the art of contemporary dance with the Caribbean rhythm. He made the national and international stages his home and the Salsa artists his true friends. He is a professional dancer, composer, and director of online programs. In each dance, he reflects his style… He is elegant, passionate, classic, and unstoppable. This is how Pietro Mingarelli shows himself.
More than 40 years of experience summarize a series of national and international triumphs. At 5 years old Pietro was already seen as one of the best dancers in Italy. His beginnings were in ballet, Jazz, tap (Tip-Tap), and contemporary dance, achieving third place in his first competition with only 5 years old, among a group of 500 couples with competitors up to 12 years old, which allowed him to stand out from his first presentation.
For the next 10 years, he continued his dance studies and participation in couples’ championships with his sister, partner, and dance partner, Daria Mingarelli, with whom he won 10 national championships.
In the mid-80s, without forgetting the rigor and discipline learned in his dance studies in Europe, he finds himself for the first time on a journey of no return to what would be his true passion, the Salsa. During a trip to Puerto Rico, he was able to establish the click with the Latin culture and one of the main and most representative rhythmic movements of it.
Between participation in a lot of festivals including the Bacardi International Dance Festival, which years later its format would become Congress, Pietro had the opportunity to establish professional alliances with the Arthur Murray Dance Center Academy (Puerto Rico) where he began to teach by Mambo. During that time, the Mingarelli brothers attended local patron saint festivals that would introduce them to the Caribbean idiosyncrasy, to the cadence of the salsa rhythm that is not found in the academies, that it is not possible to have it without feeling the music from the heart and connecting the feelings, which has no other name than what we know as the “El Sabor de la Calle”.
By the beginning of the ‘90s, Pietro had a consolidated career on the island of enchantment, dancing together with Daria for different local Salsa orchestras. From 1994 to 1998 the brothers were the official dancers of Gilberto Santa Rosa “El Caballero de la Salsa”, who see them dance and immediately add them to his work team. They were the protagonists of his Video “No digas Nada y Baila”, recorded in Old San Juan on the Calle del Cristo in 1997, and participated in the “Show de las 12” one of the most popular programs in the country in the presentations of the Salsa singer.
Instructor of Instructors
From the age of 15, Pietro born in Alessandria was emerging as the instructor of the instructors of Caribbean dance in Italy. As early as 1995 he was the co-founder of one of the most renowned schools in Turin, Salsa Manía, with franchises in Germany and other European countries.
Since 2000 he has been one of the annual organizers of world championships with live orchestras, such as the Italian Amateur Federcaribe Championship and the World Championship in San Marino.
As a visionary, he created the online program “Dance Revolution” that combines the training technique of a professional dancer with the “Son” (rhythm) of the street. Each class is live and personalized. This course of various levels teaches you the basic characteristics of Puerto Rican Salsa, teaching culture, and the differentiating way from other courses is the use of instruments played live to adapt the assistant’s ear for a safe and perfect entry into the dance.
The “Mingarelli Style” dance school with the slogan “From the Neighborhood to the Academy” took hold of Italy and the teaching system based on the combination of mastery of technique, a rhythmic execution of Puerto Rican Salsa, and an instructional mechanism that isn’t only based on the counter but the rhythmic sound of Salsa, it’s the current teaching method chosen by most of the best teachers from different salsa academies in the country.
For years, Pietro has been doing altruistic work with his sister, collaborating with associations of children with Down syndrome, deaf, dumb, and blind children to give free lessons, achieving an excellent level of performance among children with these special conditions.
Latin Beat
The Salsa dance professional, Pietro, masters several musical instruments: the Piano, the Conga, and the Percussion, the latter two he learned and mastered during his trips to Puerto Rico.
This knowledge laid the basis for the creation of his orchestra Pietro Mingarelli and his Generation 73 at the end of 2015. The name of the orchestra was given by the year of birth of each member of the orchestra, coinciding in the year 1973. This orchestra varies from 9 to 11 musicians on stage depending on the space. They have performed to 3000 people in discos and dance halls in the cradle of Italy, Turin.
At the same time, Pietro Mingarelli has composed more than 20 songs, including 9 of them in his digital record production ” Hecho en Cuba”, where the Romantic Salsa single “Volveré otra vez” stands out, “Caldero” (more danceable) dedicated to the renowned Cuban Timbalero Juan Carlos Calderin, and “Mi cubana salsera” lyrics inspired by his wife Yusely from Guantánamo – Cuba, among many others.
Currently, “Alma en Pena” is his most recent single released in 2019 that you can enjoy on digital platforms and will be part of the new CD that Pietro will bring us with famous international Salsa artists … Maybe, Gilberto Santa Rosa could be one of his vocalists… We will wait to see what this excellent pioneer of Salsa in Italy brings us very soon.
A Ritmo de Salsa…
A Ritmo de Salsa is his most ambitious program created in 2020. Its original name was “Aventuras en Ritmo de Salsa” and it would be broadcast from a cruise ship for one of the main television stations in Italy. However, it cannot be carried out due to the arrival of the Covid 19 Pandemic.
However, this program did not remain in the drawer, it was launched online through its platform “Dance Revolution” and its first episode arrived in March 2020, surprising its audience with interviews with friends and great personalities from the Salsa world, among which stand out: Gilberto Santa Rosa, Charlie Aponte, Willie Rosario, and Bobby Valentin.
This successful program is 1 hour long; however, everything can change depending on the interviewee. One of the cases was the interview with César “Pupy” Pedroso (The Van Van´s Pianist, arranger, and composer) that lasted 3 hours, while 1 hour and 30 minutes was the duration of the program of the guest Alfredo de la Fe, Cuban violinist -American, who has shared the stage with Celia Cruz, Tito Puente and other great personalities of the Salsa´s first line.
Each interview is loaded with history, anecdotes, mini-concerts, and learning tips that have helped these famous artists to successfully manage their instruments and their careers.
You can see new episodes of A Ritmo de Salsa on Sundays in premiere at 8:30 PM… And for this month Pietro brings us to the “Sonera del Mundo”, Aymée Nuviola. You don´t miss out on all the fun!
