Arias, 44, says the music attracted him to salsa. “It has a lot of joy. It’s contagious. It boosts your spirits.”

Like Arias, many San Diego residents have been seduced by the charms of salsa in recent years, thanks to more nightclubs offering classes that teach the basic steps before the party gets started.

On average, some 40 people attend the class offered at Café Sevilla by Valerie Ortiz Wallace, who has been promoting salsa in San Diego since 1989, making her one of the salsa pioneers in the region.

“The classes fill up,” she says.

There are about a dozen nightclubs where club-goers can dance salsa Thursday to Sunday.

“It’s a culture and a scene that people find addictive,” says Tatiana Velarde, a salsa dance instructor in San Diego. “Once a person is exposed to this music, they don’t stop moving.”

That’s what happened to Walter Meneses, who took his first salsa lessons at Café Sevilla in 1995. Since then, he hasn’t stopped dancing and is now one of the most active salsa promoters in the region. So much so, in fact, that two years ago he founded Dancing After School, a nonprofit group that teaches dance at elementary schools in lower-income areas.

“When I got started in this I didn’t know a thing about salsa dance steps,” says Meneses. “But it’s all a matter of dedication.”

Velarde says the public’s interest in salsa dancing has grown, thanks to television shows like “Dancing with the Stars.”

“People say, ‘I want to learn to dance like they’re doing it on TV,’ ” says Velarde, whose promotion company is called Salsabrosura Entertainment.

Salsa breaks down all social biases, says Ortiz Wallace. “When you’re on the dance floor and the timbales and the trumpets are playing blasting, you forget about your differences.

“There’s a little of everything, salsa has a flavor that transcends generational and ethnic barriers,” she says.

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