ABOUT ARTIA

Artia is a performer and teacher in Australia and is traveling and sharing his unique style of salsa all around the world. As well as teaching and touring, Artia is the creator of two professional dance teams in Australia, the Shines Brothers and The Salsa Unit. Shine Brothers is a group for strong, talented male dancers chosen to perform unique (Latin dance) shows. With much of the dancing world in Australia framed as female-orientated, the group was created to demonstrate professional male dancers in their own right and to raise the appeal and prominence of male dance in Australia. The Salsa Unit is a professional dance team that brings together the highest level of talent in Melbourne. Aiming to inspire and bring unity among Latin dance scene artists, the team creates artistic collaborations that are performed around Melbourne and Australia and are recorded to be shared world-wide.

Artia is trained in ballet, lyrical, hip-hop, and jazz. However, his life is about salsa and Latin Dance. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Artia juggles a busy schedule of home and international teaching and performance commitments, as well as working on his own professional development and home city dance projects.

ARTIA’S PHILOSOPHY

Artia’s main philosophy in dance is based on developing an understanding of the intricacies of salsa music and being able to better represent the complexity of this music in comparison to the more mainstream dance music. He strives to educate dancers about the power of musicality and the representation of the music through the use of appropriate body movement.

More recently, Artia has been striving to lead more meaningfully in his professional role in his community: he partakes in two main activities in the hope of giving back to the wider community as well as the dance community. The first project is providing free, online dance classes for the Persian community in Iran. With this project, Artia aims to fight against some of the limitations that the youth and dance enthusiasts battle in Iran. The second project is one which uses dance to raise awareness towards eating disorders in the community. As Artia has been a sufferer of eating disorder himself, he decided to start publicly speaking and raising awareness about this largely unspoken-about issue with in the dance community. 

BACKGROUND

Artia has always had an innate interest for music and dance. Born in the Iran’s capital city Tehran, his first tastes of music and dancing were not so traditional, but  based on watching his dad do breakdancing in the living room and listening to western dance music. 

As he grew up, Artia found his main interest for music and dance inspired not by the streets and ceremonies in Tehran but by sources a world away: Western dance shows and Hollywood dance movies. From a young age he was drawn to illegal TV broadcasts, such as “so you think you can dance”, “Dancing with the stars” and “Step-up”. As most forms of non-traditional art expressions were restricted in Iran, all this early inspiration was streamed and practiced, on imaginary stages, in front of imaginary audiences, in the privacy of his own home. 

At the age of 15, Artia moved away from Iran and his passion for dancing and his dream of being a professional dancer was allowed to grow without restriction. Artia moved to Australia and his dancing life really began. In high school, he took up dance courses and joined street dance teams. And, it was in high school that he first found salsa and fell in love. As well as the music, the rhythms, Artia fell in love with the salsa culture and the social aspect of the dance. From high school, Artia has been fusing his street style and love for Latin dance, most notably salsa.

Education and staying up to date with the world of dance is at the forefront of Artia’s dance journey. He has studied with many different salsa dancers from around the world including Australia’s ten-time world champion Olivia Pineda; Australia’s world-renown teacher, choreographer and promoter Jamie Jesus Manuelian; Mambo legend Adolfo Indacochea, Peru; and, the king of fusion salsa Fernando Salsa and the Tropical Gem team, Italy.