Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Cobb County. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Milli M. helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Cobb County, Georgia.
Is your business serving the residents of Cobb County? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpCobbCounty.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County
E65: Latin Dance Creates Community Beyond Borders
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk into a dance club anywhere in the world and confidently join the movement? Fuquan Ferrell, owner of Atlanta-based Fuego y Hielo dance studio, makes this possible for his students through authentic Latin dance instruction that goes far beyond basic steps.
Fuquan's journey from college dance enthusiast to global instructor and studio owner reveals how Latin dance creates connections across cultures and borders. With his dance company performing everywhere from Turkey to Vietnam, he brings international expertise to Atlanta's west side at the newly opened studios. Unlike competitive ballroom approaches, Fuego y Hielo specializes in "street" style dancing—the authentic movements you'd find in actual Latin clubs worldwide.
What truly distinguishes this studio is its commitment to the complete dance journey. Whether students dream of professional performance or simply want to confidently navigate social dance floors, Fuquan creates a supportive path forward. "We take dancers through a dance journey," he explains, describing how the studio incorporates not just technique but music, culture, and history into their comprehensive learning experience. This approach has cultivated something special: a tight-knit community where dancers become family, celebrating each other's growth and connecting beyond the dance floor through shared activities and travels.
Even during the pandemic shutdown—a particularly challenging time for an industry built on physical proximity—the studio adapted and persevered. Now thriving again, Fuquan encourages those curious about Latin dance to overcome their hesitation: "You might end up finding your new love of your life, both in the classes or just in the community you might find here." Ready to discover if dance could transform your social life and travel experiences? Visit fuegoyhielo.com or find them on social media to begin your own dance journey.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Millie.
Speaker 2:M. Hello everybody, welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I am your host, millie M. Are you in need of some more dance in your life? We all need some more dance in our lives. We have some great dance classes that are closer than you think. I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, bukwan farrell of fuego hielo. How did I do? You did it well, great job okay, okay, because I was getting a little tongue tied there. How are you?
Speaker 3:I'm good about yourself doing quite well.
Speaker 2:We are excited to learn all about you and your business.
Speaker 3:Tell us more so, uh, basically we're a full-service dance studio on the west side of Atlanta and actually we just opened up our new studio, space Fire Knight Studios, and we have a wide range of classes from salsa, bachata, cha-cha after that diffusion, and we'll be expanding into more other dances as well as time goes on. As well, as you know, the typical stuff private lessons, private events. We do a wide myriad of things, just depending on what you want out of dance in your life. We have social events. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff you can get into if you want to dance some more.
Speaker 2:Full service from beginner all the way up to you have a dance team, don't you that you could?
Speaker 3:We have a whole dance company, my partner and I. We travel all over the world teaching, performing dance. We started back in Turkey last month, we'll be in Berlin later on this year. We've been as far as Vietnam and Latin America and we're all over the place teaching and performing. So in our dance company typically goes mostly nationally with us, but they're all over the place with us as well.
Speaker 2:They dancing over there in Turkey. I love it. I love it. So tell me more about how you got into this business. What sparked your love?
Speaker 3:for dance. So I've been in the arts most of my life. But in college I just kind of happened to find Latin dancing. I had a lot of friends who were part of the Latin American Association at Georgia State and they were like, hey, you know, there's also classes here as well, and I just happened to fall into it and fell in love with it. I've been dancing all my life, so this is just another dance that happened to be, I guess, I had a affinity for and I fell in love with the music and it just kind of steamrolled, joined people's teams, trained all over the world, and now I have my own dance company, my own dance studio.
Speaker 2:That's quite beautiful. So what are some of the myths or misconceptions about your industry or what you do specifically?
Speaker 3:I think a lot of misconceptions are like the ballroom side of things. People always ask us do you do ballroom? Do you do a lot of competitions? Like you know, ballroom is its own, separate thing. They also have a version of salsa and bachata, but we are, I guess, what they would call streets. Streets like the authentic, what you would dance if you were to go out dancing at a salsa club. This is what we teach here.
Speaker 3:Our focus is on social dancing versus like competition. So a lot of people come here to ask about when can I compete? I'm like well, we don't do competitions here, focus on actually social dancing. So you learn social, you know technique, leads and follows, how to be able to go out dancing and dance anywhere, as long as they dancing kind of salsa, bachata. You should able to go out dancing and dance anywhere, as long as they dance the same kind of salsa or bachata. You should be able to go anywhere in the world and dance. You know, and I have students when they travel for work, they're like where can I go dancing in Lisbon? Or where can I go dancing when I'm in China? And I'm like okay, well, I know this person here, you know they have a club here or they have a social here. You can dance with them fine. So that's, I guess, a big deception is the competition or showy nature of it versus the social dancing nature of it.
Speaker 2:I know that's how I was introduced to it, just from growing up watching competitions, but I love that community aspect of it. You know, as a solo traveler, you can find those people that you can connect with through dance.
Speaker 3:It's a very small and large world, so like it's, you can find people very easily because how small it is, but it's everywhere, like every major city, every major country has like Latin dancing at this point.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love that. So who are your target customers and how do you attract them? Is there a specific person you're looking for for your classes or no?
Speaker 3:You know what Our dance studio kind of sets us apart in the fact that we love everyone, but our classes are more focused towards people who actually want to learn how to dance. So, for instance, you have a lot of the casual students who are just going to. On the extreme side, I've had people come in drunk to classes. It's their birthdays. You wanna just kinda hang out. I'm like that's a little extreme.
Speaker 3:You know dancing for everything for that kind of crowd where we're, like you know, the clubby type of people I would guess, not to say we would turn them away. But we actually love taking dancers through a dance journey. So they say, hey, I've always wanted to dance and I could. I never could find an opportunity because it wasn't even around when I was young or I couldn't afford it, my family couldn't afford it. I want to dance. Now we're like, hey, we'll take you on, we'll take you as far as you want to go, whether it's like a solid beginner or a solid intermediate, or if you want to be a pro one day, we'll get you through any of those steps you want to.
Speaker 3:We're that kind of focus on people. You know we go food, the music, the culture, the history, the dances themselves like we have everything we can give to everyone because we want people to have that if they want it in their lives through us. But also, you know, we take casual dancers as well, like people all the time. Like you know, I don't want to be a professionalist, want to be able to go out and dance. Okay, well, still, you can still be the best dancer. You can be at whatever level, right, so come learn what you can and start going out dancing, and we have plenty of dance events for that, you know.
Speaker 3:So I wouldn't say we have like a particular clientele, but I will say that we are more focused on, I guess, a serious track. I want people to like take it seriously while they're kind of like going to the gym. There's people who go in very casually, like once a month, twice a month, or they'll have the membership, though we want people who want to be in the gym, they want to actually see changes in bodies and actually want to have that experience and build a community. We have a community here of dancers who are here all the time and they hang out together, they go on hikes together and they do parties together. We like building that community sense here.
Speaker 2:Family.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can only imagine how fulfilling it is for you to see a person get better over time and then also see how proud they are of themselves for getting better over time.
Speaker 3:We do a lot of like encouraging video work, like bringing in phones or tripods and like recording yourself so you can see your journey, and it's just nice and general, like we have one of our students, malia. Not too long ago she went with us to Reno earlier this year in January and through all her hard work she actually won a social dancing competition while she was there, you know, and just the joy everyone had in that moment because we were all there to witness it, you know, it was a really big moment for her and for us, having been her teachers right. So there's so much opportunity for community here and seeing everyone's growth is a big part of it, and we really enjoy seeing the growth in people.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Have you ever thought about doing your own podcast to like talk about the history of dance and everything that's involved with it?
Speaker 3:When I tell you I am busy, that is an understatement. So you know, I run a dance studio. Now I have my own dance company, Then I have my partner and I.
Speaker 2:I have my son, and then you're always out the country.
Speaker 3:And then just social media alone. I'm finding, you know, that blockage of like. I just have so little time to really invest in social media and really social media is about, you know, a long game of planning and putting out content and so a podcast on top of that, oh Lord, I don't even know. Maybe one day if I can find some assistance to help me out with everything, I actually watched a social media person, a content creator, talk about how they have a whole team just for their one singular channel and I was like I don't have a team yet, so maybe that's what I'm missing is a team to help me facilitate everything, and with that team, maybe one day I could do something like a podcast.
Speaker 2:I understand the new term is bandwidth. I guess you don't have the bandwidth. I do not have the bandwidth. No, I hear you.
Speaker 3:So, outside of work, what do you like to do for fun? You know, honestly, dance is my big pastime. When I can I'm out dancing, but besides that I like to read, I write, I cook, I play video games. I here and there hang out with some friends, but honestly most of my friends kind of feel onto the wayside as dance kind of took over my life. I'm also a photographer and a cinematographer, so honestly, most of my life is working. You know, like today I did a shoot early this morning I went home and did some adulting and now I'm here with you and I'm teaching dance until 11 o'clock tonight. So it's not a lot of spare time. And maybe when I go home, yeah, maybe I'll play a video game when I get home tonight or watch a movie or something before I go to sleep, but past that it's not a lot of free time, it's that grind.
Speaker 2:That's why you got to love what you do and I can imagine your fun includes very calming activities, like you said, playing video games or watching a movie or you know things like that, because I would imagine dance to be such a high energy, high adrenaline activity. I would imagine dance to be such a high energy high adrenaline activity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean honestly if I could do it like my. My goal is to be more and more on the road, cause typically we're traveling on the weekends, like we typically fly out Thursday night or Friday night or back Monday morning, sometimes longer. Like when we do a tour, like we're just in Europe, we're there for like a week and a half and then we're in Berlin. We might be there for like a week and a half and then when we're in Berlin, we might be there for like a week and go somewhere else and do some teaching as well. So those are like a longer stint of time, but typically we're only there on weekends. So if I could have it, I would be out every single weekend dancing, because I honestly really enjoy it and some of these events they'll have dancing until like 8 o'clock in the morning and will dance until 8 o'clock in the morning if I can. I really truly love it. I don't know if I ever get tired of it, but here's hoping not.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a beautiful thing that you can just engross yourself in something that, like you said, you will never get tired of, and I know for me personally. People think that meditation is sitting in a room, crisscross, applesauce, doing a mantra, but I've found, for for me, dance is meditative in the sense that it calms me, it clears my mind.
Speaker 2:I'm not worried, and that's the whole point of meditation is just to clear your mind, right? So, um, I've found that it is that thing for me, so I completely understand. Let's switch gears a little bit. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you had to overcome and how it made you stronger? A hardship or life challenge?
Speaker 3:challenge that you had to overcome and how it made you stronger. A hardship or a life challenge, I guess the big one that we've all had was COVID, you know, working in an industry where I had to touch people or be in close proximity to people. When the world shut down, it was really really rough because of, I guess, two factors. The first was obviously we couldn't teach dance classes for a very long time, so we were surviving off the typical stimulus checks and what we could. We also had online classes, but that only could do so much, because people were like this is a partner dance, what are we really doing? We can't partner up with people. So that was hard, you know, because we were like what's going to happen? Is the world going to open up soon enough for us to get back to work?
Speaker 3:And a large part of our income was these events that travel us out everywhere to perform and teach, and so it was kind of nice in the fact that we could rest, but I don't really like to rest, so it was like this is not a vacation that I needed in my life. And then the second thing is that I'm a hardcore extrovert, and so I like being around people. I get my fuel from being around these huge swaths of people, because some of these events were around on the low end. There's a few hundred people, sometimes a few thousand people, and that's my typical weekend. And to go from that to being on the couch with my partner and our child, I was like this is not giving me anything that I need right now.
Speaker 2:So no, we all definitely had to adjust to COVID for sure. So just tell our listeners one thing you would like for them to always remember about Fuego.
Speaker 3:Just come and see us. You know, a lot of people are really scared to come and try things out for their first time. People are kind of stuck in their ways. They're like I know what I like, I know what I don't like and I'm like you don't really know. People are just kind of stuck. So don't be afraid to come and check out the website, see what we're about.
Speaker 3:Come check out a class you might end up, finding your new love of your life, both in the classes or just in the community. You might find here. You just never know until you try it out, and we're a great place to try it out for the first time. Well, how can people find you? So our website is fuego yellowcom. That's f-u-e-g-o-y-h-i-e-l-ocom. That's the same thing for our instagram, our youtube, our tick tock. Everything is that exact same moniker and you can feel free to check us out there or hit us up on social media and we can talk more about what you guys want and need from your dance life.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Thank you so much. I really enjoy you being here with us. Best of luck to you and your business moving forward.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpcobbcountycom. That's gnpcobbcountycom, or call 470-470-4506.