Paloma Santiago-Adorno
Dancer/SAOCO SmartAss

Paloma, one of two and a half Boricuas in our group, was born in Puerto Rico but raised mostly in NoVA (could she be Stef's long-lost older sister?). It is rumored that she is also a long lost cousin of a cousin of a marriage twice-removed of the SAOCO webmaster, but, that has yet to be confirmed.

Paloma discovered rueda in 2001 at the excellent and awesome University of Michigan (U of M) where none other than El Caballero de la Rueda Joel Rodriguez, another SAOCO member, was her first instructor. She loved U of M and her fellow dancers so much, she stalked, I mean, followed them back to Washington DC. Here is where she met up with her next instructors—Piero Gonzalez and Jimmy Rivas. While in lessons, she also met Ernesto (Neto) when he was just starting out and can say "I remember when Neto could barely....". This is also how she met her long-lost-possible relative and was happy to get in touch years later. SAOCO enticed her to return to rueda and she has been a member of the group for a year now.

Paloma has been dancing in the street since 1997. Or as she likes to call it 'Street Dancing'. Because she is Puerto Rican, she has salsa in her blood and it shows in how she dances.

Besides her dancing skills, Paloma is a badass pool-basketball player. She single-handedly is able to take down the men in the pool and score. No pun intended. When talking to her, you may repeatedly hear smartass remarks which you should never take personally because Paloma is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. Except in the pool. She also does a lot of normal, boring stuff that we didn't want to mention here for fear of boring you.