Christmas Party at Club Salsa

December 9, 2005

Now that was an interesting event; packed, sometimes frustrating, sometimes disorientating but ultimately thrilling and fun.

It started with a large dinner at Tandoori Station Restaurant. There were fair amount of hiccups and grumbling but I think most things worked out in the end. It is difficult to coordinate and execute a large dinner flawlessly unless you do it all the time. I arrived at Heathrow at 9 AM from Washington DC and had around 2-3 hours of sleep in the plane and another 2-3 hours of sleep on the bus (both sitting down), so by the time I got up from my chair at the end of the dinner, my back was already in tatters.

Despite worries from some dinner guests that we were missing opportunity for dancing, there was another 10 min or so of lessons left unfinished when I arrived at the club. Because I remembered that the event was packed (and Friday in general is packed), I started dancing immediately without taking any breaks. I then proceeded to do the same when it became really packed. However unlike usual Fridays at Club Salsa, I was quite pleased to note that I managed to string many very nice dances in extremely crowded conditions. I think this was partly becasue I am better but also because there were a lot of good dancers period. Also although I didn't really learn much from class-type setting in Washington DC, simply dancing with many people with different style with novel approaches in many new settings improved my abilities.

Vishal had said the club will be open until up to 3:30 AM. Actual closing time was around 3 AM, but I thought it highly remarkable that so many people stayed late. I managed to dance Salsa for about 40-45 songs with approximately 25 different partners as well as dancing to about 2 songs of Bachata. Towards the end of the evening, I felt as if I was sleep-dancing. I also estimate that I received 20-25 rejections for dance - about half of the rejections were from people who I ended up not dancing with tonight. Percentage-wise, frequency of rejections was about norm; for some reason I get so many no's in Cambridge compared to anywhere else.

Other snippets. There was a show by four couples from the Salsa team; their routine was supposedly practiced for 2 weeks only. Salsa competitions (couples and same sex) were judged by popularity (who's supporters can make louder noise?). Not surprisingly, same sex competition was won by two males - I wonder if it is possible for two women to beat two men in this type of setting. Men seem to have inherent advantages in terms of humor and in creating antics that draw attention to themselves so it would take quite a stunt from a pair of women to make it out of the preliminary round.