When I started looking for bachata events in New York, I was trying to get out more. Friends and family were in different parts of their lives, and we weren't going out together the way we used to. I had spent plenty of nights in Salsa con Fuego, around Dyckman and Washington Heights, in Spanish lounges, clubs, and at family parties. I was comfortable dancing, but going out by myself wasn't always comfortable. People came with their own groups, and wanting to dance didn't necessarily mean they wanted to dance with a stranger.

In 2022, I found Dominicana Party, a night where people danced bachata and merengue. I kept looking for more nights like that. That brought me to events like Roofchata and Passion Thursdays, where I started seeing dancing that looked different from what I knew.

At Roofchata, there were movements I would now recognize as body rolls, but I didn't have names for them then. Even the music was different. So much of the bachata I knew was tied to family and songs I'd heard growing up. Here, I didn't recognize a lot of what was playing. Sometimes I wasn't even sure whether it was bachata. I didn't know there was a whole social-dance scene with its own classes and expectations. I had gone out thinking I knew how to dance, and now I wasn't so sure.

Finding what I was looking for

Around that time, I started taking salsa classes because it was something I'd always wanted to learn. I also tried sensual bachata, but while I looked forward to salsa, I dreaded going to that class and eventually stopped. Later, I took salsa and more modern bachata at Nieves. I was beginning to understand that these classes weren't all teaching the same thing, but I still didn't know where to find what I wanted.

Then I saw both bachata and Dominican bachata on the schedule at Empire Mambo. Seeing them listed separately made me curious. In August 2023, I took my first Dominican bachata class there with Guillermo. I'd finally found someone teaching what I wanted to learn, and I stayed for about a year, until he stopped teaching there.

What I was missing wasn't just a particular way of moving. Something fundamentally Dominican felt absent from a lot of the bachata socials I was finding. I could still go to Dominican clubs and lounges around the Heights and hear the music I knew, but going to a club alone was different from going to a social where people came expecting to dance with people they hadn't met. I wanted those two experiences to come together.

There were people already doing that. I'd been going to El Colmado Social, Ace Fusion's Dominican bachata social, since around its first edition in 2023. In April 2024, Angely and Beverly started Dame Tu Pasito, a bachata party rooted in Dominican culture. DJ Chris Amargue played at both events and was part of what made those nights work for me. Finding those nights mattered because I could hear more of the music I wanted and dance with people who were there for that experience. As someone introverted, I also liked being able to connect with someone without having to make conversation first. I could ask for a dance, enjoy a song together, and come back another night. Getting to know people took longer, but I could already participate.

An assignment that stayed with me

In May 2024, I went to A Lo Dominican Bachata Festival near Barcelona after seeing it on Instagram. I went because it looked like something I'd enjoy. Being around so many people involved in Dominican bachata made me want to take my own dancing more seriously. I'd already decided to return the next year, with more practice behind me.

That was also where I got to know Ace Fusion after attending their socials in New York. When I returned, I started taking classes at their dance academy, Amargue Flow. That led to an Amargue Flow teacher training retreat in the Dominican Republic that August.

I'd been to DR to visit family when I was younger, but this was my first trip there for dancing. We stayed mostly in Santo Domingo and went out to places where people were dancing bachata. I was getting to experience it beyond the family visits I already knew, while also thinking about how to teach it.

One assignment in the training asked us to teach something to the rest of the group. To figure out what I could teach, I started thinking about how I'd learned to dance before I ever took a class.

I hadn't started with counts. I thought about being little and being picked up and moved to music, then dancing with my mother, aunts, or grandmother at family parties. Later, dancing became part of going out and flirting. Watching older relatives, I could see how well they knew the songs and how comfortable they were doing less with them.

There had been years of listening, watching, and participating before I ever tried to explain any of it. How could a class help someone who hadn't grown up with that experience? How could I help them become comfortable with the music and another person, instead of only giving them a routine to remember?

That assignment was where the idea behind my four levels began: looking at how I'd learned through different stages of my life and considering how to help someone develop that feeling in a studio. I wanted to teach people how to dance socially without turning the experience into choreography and rehearsals.

Alongside that, traveling was making me think about the kind of dancing I wanted more often. At Dominican festivals, I could spend several days dancing with people who practiced this, studied it, and traveled for it themselves. I enjoyed that level of shared interest. It was different from a club night where people might dance a few songs as part of going out.

Back in New York, I could find a salsa social any day of the week, and modern and sensual bachata had regular weekly options. The Dominican bachata nights I knew had gone from one monthly event to two. I valued them, but I still had to wait for the next one. I wanted to be able to social dance Dominican bachata every week, too.

Giving the idea a real attempt

By the time I went to Amsterdam around New Year's 2025, those ideas were already with me. I spent New Year's there by myself, with a Dominican festival coming up that weekend. That time of year usually makes me reflective, and I had my journal with me. I was thinking about what I wanted my life to look like and how I could actually get there.

I was still practicing every day, even recording a session in my hotel room before going out. Being around people who were so good made me want to keep learning. Those trips gave me something to keep working toward, and made the gaps between events in New York harder to ignore.

I can't place the exact moment I decided to give the project a real shot. I'd already been working toward it. But around that trip, the question became how to make room for this in my life. I'd lost my job the previous July and had spent months looking for work. The jobs I was finding didn't seem compatible with the life I wanted. If I was going to try building something of my own, this felt like the time.

When I came back, I started posting videos every day and filed for my LLC. Making videos for an earlier project had taught me to record, edit, and explain what I was learning. I had a way to start, even if I didn't know how to put everything together yet. The idea was becoming something I could work on, piece by piece, beyond my journal.

Why Tres Golpes

The name came from the same desire that had kept me looking for different places to dance: I wanted more of the Dominican culture I knew to be part of the experience.

Mangú con los tres golpes—mashed green plantains with salchichón, queso de freír y huevo frito—is a Dominican breakfast staple. When our family got together, that's what my mother and aunts would make for everyone. Sometimes my father would bring it home for breakfast on the weekend. It was a familiar part of the culture I wanted the name to carry.

The first idea was Bailando con los Tres Golpes, bringing together bachata, merengue, and dembow. My thinking was that if we learned, played, and danced those together, more of that Dominican feeling would come through. It was a way to bring the culture into the social-dance experience I had been looking for.

For the first few months, though, most of what I was actually doing was putting out videos. During a family reunion trip to Orlando in July 2025, I took a break from posting and had some room to look at what I'd been building. The channel was growing, but videos were only one piece of it. If I wanted to teach, I had to start teaching people in person.

I came back ready to work out what that would look like. I started putting the story, the teaching philosophy, and the levels into words, and building the first version of the website. The ideas had been there for a while. Now I was turning them into something people could understand and sign up for.

Through that work, Tres Golpes became centered on Cultura, Conexión y Comunidad. The brand became more focused on Dominican bachata, while merengue and dembow could still be part of how I taught. Connection was the idea running through it: with the music, with a partner, with yourself, and with the culture behind what we were doing. That helped me get clearer about the experiences I wanted to offer.

Turning it into classes and a social

For the classes, I kept returning to that training assignment and asking how I would want to learn if I were starting again. I didn't grow up as a studio dancer or a performer. Growing up playing baseball gave me another way to think about practice: work on the basics, then use them in something more like a scrimmage, where you have to respond to what's happening.

That became the kind of class I wanted to offer: time to work on the basics, then use them with another person and respond to what was happening.

Getting those experiences started took longer than I expected. I'd hoped to put on a social before the classes, but finding a space and getting everything together kept pushing it back. I finally took the chance on teaching in September 2025. When an opportunity to host a social came along later, I wanted to make sure I built it around the reason I'd wanted one in the first place.

I knew how much I'd enjoyed being able to show up and dance without having to be the most outgoing person in the room. I also knew I didn't always want a big party night. I kept thinking about family coming over at the end of the week: playing games, having a few drinks, music in the background. As the night went on, people would start talking shit, telling jokes, and laughing. We weren't necessarily dancing. The music was there, and we were enjoying being together.

That's the feeling I wanted for La Bandera Social, the gathering I started at Juniper in New York in March 2026. The name comes from another Dominican staple: arroz, habichuelas y carne, familiar from lunch or dinner.

Once the classes and the first social were happening, the idea was finally something people could show up to. I'd started out looking for somewhere to dance. Along the way, I found people who helped me learn and made me want to contribute something of my own. With Tres Golpes, I want to share more of what I grew up with: the music, the dancing, and the ease of enjoying each other's company.