Bar Latina - There is a lot more Cuban style Salsa in London than I expected

December 24, 2005

On a last minute whim, I drove through thick fog to Bar Latina in Tottenham (North London) for their Christmas Eve party hosted by the Latin Collective. Bar Latina is a short walk from Tottenham Hotspurs home stadium and seemingly in a less hospitable part of London as I gathered from spying a signpost warning motorists of thefts in the area as I parked my car one street away. The bouncer in front of the bar told me I should have a flier or a printout of an advertisement for this free event, but he eventually let me in without forcing me to pay a £5 entry fee.

I arrived more than 3/4 hours after the start of their lessons - which mattered not one bit as they were doing a very basic Cha Cha Cha lesson. The Cha Cha Cha lesson was a little different from the CDC (Cambridge Dancers Club) version in that men stepped backwards with R foot on 2 rather than stepping forward with L foot on 2. Also, New Yorker was initiated with R foot to L on 2 and a turn from New Yorker was taught with L-R connection left intact and positioned high. I watched the lesson but did not participate. Cha Cha Cha was not played during the rest of the evening.

The setup of the venue was as follows: the main dancing area was a ring surrounding the cavernous bar - although not all parts of the ring was useful as I found many parts of the floor tilted or cracked. A small elevated area in the far right corner (from the entrance) was okay but could only accommodate 3-4 couples and some spots in the far left corner (another 3-4 couples) and some spots step below the aforementioned elevated area in the far right corner (another 6-8 couples) was also not too bad. Middle of a separate back room (sound might have been slightly worse here) several steps above the main floor was also fairly even and could accommodate another 9 couples.

I estimate that 90% of the people were dancing Cuban style Salsa with a small minority of LA stylists occupying the back room. There were some followers who were dancing mainly Cuban who also could follow CBL credibly. So this was almost like a repeat of Joice's Bar (replacement venue for Ealing Town Hall) couple of weeks ago.

Music was pretty standard overplayed Salsa fare early on. I thought things hit rock bottom when a song based on theme to Rocky came on (and started again about 30 seconds later). Unfortunately things got even worse thereafter, especially after a DJ switch, which led to a whole lot of what some may consider shapeless and non-melodious tunes which seemingly drove people from stop dancing.

I had one dance I enjoyed and 2-3 alright dances in the beginning of the evening. This unfortunately was followed by a couple of painful dances (one too stiff and one too fancy) and couple of no's, which put me off from dancing for quite some time (maybe over an hour). This situation was exacerbated by my observation that 90% of the dancing was Cuban and seeing someone who looked like someone I had a bad experience with (meanwhile the music selection became increasingly worse). I seriously contemplated taking a loss and leaving early, but I forced myself for few more dances - one of which went well enough to revitalize me for several more dances (including a request for a non-consecutive encore, which is still somewhat rare for me outside of Cambridge) before they stopped pretending to play Salsa altogether after 2 AM.

There were some LA stylists at Bar Latina but I think I ended up preferring to dance with some of the mainly Cuban followers who could follow CBL tonight. I daresay in general people there appreciated qualities of my lead more than I liked Bar Latina in general - people were generally okay but I didn't think the larger floor was enough of a factor to alleviate unevenness of the floor and the music was often not fun to listen to.

The Latin Collective website is not well-maintained right now. It had no advertisement of tonight's events and also contains a lot of outdated information (e.g. it still lists SuperMario/Susanna Montero Thursday classes at Our Place in its list of classes while failing to mention another class they organize at Bar Latina on Thursdays). I also learned that Scala Latina for January 1st 2006 is cancelled only by looking at a flier left on a table at Bar Latina tonight.