November 4, 2005
A strange and unusual night or so I thought as I left the doors of Club Salsa.
I only managed to get started on printing tickets for the Bachata Project around 6:20 PM with all sorts of people with children were strolling around waiting for the fireworks to begin outside. Everything seemed to make the process more difficult, including the fireworks, printer jams, a computer with mind of its own, and an uncooperative door seemingly designed by Sirius Cybernetics Corp. By the time everything (tickets, posters) was ready, it was past 8 PM. All this would have been ready last night except the photo papers were not delivered yesterday for some reason. I had two thoughts in my mind as I started my journey towards Club Salsa – “I despise working on things at the last minute possible.” and “I’m going to have to skip my Salsa lesson this week – meaning no Salsa lessons in Cambridge for an entire week for the first time in over a year or since I started taking Salsa lessons in September of 2004, not counting few weeks I was not in Cambridge.”
I placed the posters and fliers in strategic locations with help from Vishal, I said a quick hello to Johnny as I explained to him that I’m going to have to miss his lesson tonight, and then I headed home for a quick dinner. Vishal mentioned that he had gone to see Lady Salsa earlier today and found it excellent, and he seemed excited by the prospect of some cast members stopping by later in the evening at Club Salsa. As for me, I have been far too busy to see Lady Salsa although I would have liked to see it very much – this became an oft-repeated statement for me tonight.
As it turned out, all sorts of Salsa personalities in Cambridge area showed up tonight - this meant there were many good dancers. This meant there were quite a good number of good dances for me personally although not as many as I would have liked to have had. Then again, I had thought it possible that I will get almost no dancing done tonight because of the start of the advertising blitz for the Bachata project – I was quite wrong about this as I ended up talking remarkably little about it throughout the night. When I did talk about it, I felt so awkward that it didn’t take any time to remind me that I’m just not cut out to be working in Sales.
Tonight was also full of weird conversations. One went somewhat like this –
X – “I saw Y use these moves. Do you think these moves were from Johnny & Serap?”
me – "Where is Y?”
X – “Y is not dancing right now. I just saw that cross body lead was used a lot. That’s the style used by Johnny & Serap, no?”
me – “Well, other teachers like Sally and Cristian also use a lot of cross body lead.”
[Also, a lot of people in Cambridge learn things from watching videos and also going to London for Salsa instruction and practice.]
X – “Hmmm. Do you think cross body lead difficult to lead and follow?”
me – “No, why do you think so?”
X – “Well… it’s not something that can be lead well if the follower doesn’t know how to follow cross body lead, no?”
me – “Sure, but pretty much everyone knows how to follow cross body lead.”
X – “…”
me – “You could go to Johnny & Serap’s class on Fridays, Sally’s class on Thursdays or Cristian’s classes on Wednesdays. They all use it all the time.”
Maybe this line of questioning was driven by trepidations about trying something new - not completely unlike how I sometimes think about when considering learning to dance on-2.
Here’s an even weirder conversion, which makes me wonder what people think of me.
Z – “So have you seen Lady Salsa?”
me – “No I haven’t had the chance. I’ve been way too busy, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it.”
Z – “Well you should. Maybe after seeing it, you’ll go on a tour with them.”
me (getting confused) – “Oh I don’t know. I suppose I’ve gotten better with my Salsa dancing but surely you’re joking and exaggerating my progress by a mile. I’m not that good and probably will never get that good.”
Z – “No no no. I didn’t mean that. Some of the ladies in the show are really beautiful. I thought you might end up following them around the country.”
me (getting even more confused) – “Oh I see...? But that sounds really creepy.”
Here’s an odd one initiated by me. I had decided to change my shoes later in the night. When I sat next to where I left my backpack and change into my dance shoes, I noticed a group of young men and a woman with very striking appearance sitting next to me conversing in Spanish.
me addressing one of the men – “So are you from another country?”
man #1 – “I don’t speak English” and he points to the woman
me addressing the woman this time – “I heard you speaking in what seemed be Spanish. Where are you all from?”
woman – “Many of us are from Cuba.”
me – “Really? Cool… How do you like Cambridge?”
woman – “I like it. It’s very nice.”
me – “Good. Are you here in Cambridge vacationing?”
woman – “Not exactly. We’re doing a show in the theatre downtown.”
me – “Oh! … You must be the cast of Lady Salsa! I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to see it yet.”
woman – “You should come tomorrow – it’s our last night.”
me – “God I wish I wasn’t so busy. I’ll try my best. Very nice to meet you.”
I must say I felt pretty stupid when I learned that they were from Lady Salsa. I didn’t think it very likely that anyone from the show would show despite what Vishal had said earlier.
Just before closing time as I went back to the same spot to retrieve my backpack and coat, I ran into the same people again and had another short conversation with the woman.
me – “Hi again. I’m curious. What are your names?”
woman – “My name is Janet. He is (sounded like Haikay or something like it).”
me – “Oh! I’ve heard of you at the Salsa Mafia website. They say a lot of good things about you. It’s really nice to be able to match a face to the name.”
So far so good, then…
me (turning to the guy) - "Very nice to meet you too. I can't say I've heard of you… Urr, I'm sorry… Then again, I don't really know very much about the dance world, and I'm sure you're a wonderful dancer. Mmm… Anyhow, I'll try to make it to your show tomorrow. Maybe I'll be able to find some time for it. I'll try my best."
Perhaps I shouldn't think too much of other people making strange comments to me considering that I also put foot into my mouth all the time.
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