Ringers from Cambridge at Ealing Town Hall ... err Joice's Bar

December 16, 2005

There were two candidates for our London outing; Bar Rez and Ealing Town Hall. From what I read in the Salsa Mafia forum (which has been down for a long time and may be going defunct) and London Salsa website, I was leaning towards Ealing Town Hall. Because Johnny had enjoyed some Mambocity Saturday events, Johnny & Serap also favored Ealing Town Hall. Sean was okay with either venue; both offered novelty value. It probably didn't help Bar Rez that their club probably would not have started until nearly 11 PM as they had classes starting at 9:45 PM.

Route taken was M11 to A406 (North Circular) to Uxbridge Road. Traffic was mild for the most part (we didn't have delays at M11/A11 junction for a change!) except for a stretch of A406 from High Green Road to Bounds Green Road, which was extremely slow. From the way the road was laid out, that short segment will always be a trouble spot. It might be better to take M25 and A1 to avoid that spot even though M25 also has poor reputation.

It took us a little over 1.5 hours but under 2 hours to get to Uxbridge Road after hitting M11, which left us with about 30 minutes for a meal. We chose Pizza Hut located across the Town Hall for a quick meal, and I was feeling pretty good about how the journey was managed when we entered the Ealing Town Hall at 8:35 PM.

Unfortunately, we found out that there was a problem with the hall and that the venue was moved to another location called Joice's Bar about 5-10 min drive away. There were other stranded visitors who were in similar predicament except without a car. We would have offered them a ride except it would have been impossible to fit six people into Johnny's car. Later, I looked at the underground map and saw that going from Ealing Town Hall to Joice's Bar would have involved going to a tube stop 3 stations away and involving a change of train (going from Ealing Broadway to Park Royal).

We arrived at Joice's Bar shortly before 9 PM to find there being only two Salsa classes (beginner and intermediate but no advanced) and a Bachata class (by Tony & Claudia). After watching the intermediate Salsa (which looked pretty simple - not more difficult than second most difficult lessons offered by any of the Club Salsa teachers), Serap, Sean and I opted for Bachata, which had some new elements compared to the Tony & Claudia's Cambridge Bachata class while Johnny sat out altogether for the lessons.

Side turn into wrap and out
1,2,3,4 travel to left basic
5,6,7,8 lead follower to travel and turn ~3/4 counterclockwise with L-R high and R-L low to end in wrap - R-L ends on follower's R waist while L-R is kept at shoulder level fair distance away toward follower's left
1,2,3,4 lead follower to travel and turn ~1/2 clockwise keeping connection at same heigh and ending with another wrap with L-R on follower's L shoulder and R-L at waist level fair distance away towards follower's right
5,6,7,8 lead follower to travel and turn ~1/2 counterclockwise to get back to same position as before
1,2,3,4 lead follower to travel and turn ~3/4 clockwise with L-R raised to unwrap
5,6,7,8 travel to right basic

Side turn into shoulder wrap and wrapped basic
1,2,3,4 travel to left basic
5,6,7,8 lead follower to travel and turn full counterclockwise with L-R starting low and ending on follower's R shoulder and L-R placed behind follower's back waist (requires turn of wrist)
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 basic side-to-side
1,2,3,4 lead follower to travel and turn full clockwise to unwrap
5,6,7,8 travel to right basic is one option ... another is to get both hands on follower's shoulders to close in

Syncopated basic (requires a little more room compared to plain side-to-side basic)
1 L to L
2 R close
3 L to L
4 R cross behind L and quick L step slightly forward R
5 R to R
6 L close
7 R to R
8 L cross behind R and quick R step slightly forward L

Because of simulateous Salsa and Bachata lessons, there were couple of breaks in the Bachata lesson for free-style Salsa. During one of these dances, my follower at the time said to me, "No one here dances like you do," which seemed like a positive comment and a compliment but also slightly worrying nevertheless.

After the lessons, the organizers decided to get the women in the venue to follow Claudia for a Reggaeton demonstration with the winner getting a Tony & Claudia Bachata DVD. Serap decided to join in, and after watching the demonstration for a few minutes I turned to Johnny and asked, "I don't suppose you bought Tony's DVD last month by any chance?" Johnny replied, "No." Lo and behold - Serap won the DVD (and a Bachata CD?).

After 2-3 dances, I was beginning to wonder if having the four of us from Cambridge helped to raise the bar in Salsa dancing at this place. By and large the followers here were no better than in Cambridge. I was also getting enough declines for dance early on, which happens often in Cambridge also. There were a lot of complete beginners who opted to stay out of the dance floor. Most (but not all) people were quite friendly. Even the follower who acted most bored of them all was not so bad as the memorably haughty follower I danced with last weekend at SOS. Then again, I also had one follower who seemed incapable of dancing to the timing of the music even with much effort from me. The middle segment of the evening was getting so bad that I resorted to asking a familar face - Claudia - for a dance to get my bearings straight. This helped, but it also meant this dance was far from ideal and that I missed out on havnig a really enjoyable dance with a super follower. I think that this sacrifice (followed by a second therapeutic dance with Serap) did get me back on right footing and made the last hour reasonably enjoyable. Positive statements from Serap regarding my traveling maneuvers also helped to loosen me up. Having second or even third dance with followers I liked helped, and a lot of space opening up during the last hour really helped. It would have been nice to get a second dance with Claudia but I failed to do so as I lost track of time.

It was nice to catch up with Tony & Claudia again. I think he was pleased to see me and others from Cambridge here tonight. Tony mentioned that he has a show Saturday night and a class at Club Havana on Sunday, and we talked couple of times about possibility of a return tour stop at Cambridge in February. He seemed quite interested in doing another Monday class in Cambridge and told me that he'll get in touch with me in January; I suspect that he enjoyed his Cambridge experience. I'll have to talk to Vishal and others about it to see if there's sufficient interest. I don't think I want to lose a lot of money again so I'll have to keep my expenses down if I were to organize another Tony & Claudia workshop.

We talked about tonight's venue on the way back. Serap enjoyed many of the dances. Sean enjoyed it as well - although he found himself reverting to Cuban style a lot presumably because many dancers here were dancing more Cuban rather than LA. Johnny was not impressed with the dancers tonight. Same for me; the level of dancing was no better than in Cambridge although it was nice to have more space. I told Johnny my earlier thought about the four of us from Cambridge raising the standard of dancing tonight, and Johnny replied, "Maybe Cambridge will get a revenge on London. London Salsa dancers used to travel to provincial cities to compete in and win Salsa contests. Maybe people in Cambridge will start traveling to London to win the contests in London." This will need a lot more effort from people in Cambridge but it didn't seem completely ridiculous tonight. I didn't think it was worth coming back with the caveat that this event was held in a emergency backup venue; Tony told me that Ealing Town Hall is much nicer also. Because we saw some dancers we recognized from SOS, maybe we can find out from them how tonight compares to usual night at Ealing Town Hall on Fridays.

By the way, the floor was about half the size of Mary Ward Hall and capabable of accommodating well over 25 couples. Floor quality was okay - marginally better than Club Salsa in its present condition. I found a lot of purple wax-like stuck to my soles at the end of the evening.

A big part of the conversation on the way back was about history of Cambridge Salsa as remembered by Johnny. Johnny must have been in Cambridge by 2001 in the early days of Cambridge Rueda. Johnny helped in organizing Rueda weekly classes with Steve Reid, which typically included apparently only 4 regular students - Johnny, Peter, Rhona, and Helen. Also by 2001 or so, many of the best recognized Salsa teachers and dancers currently in Cambridge were already established as being very good or showing promise. Teaching venues included St. Columba's and the Catholic Church. Apparently the Catholic Church has been a launching pad for many things, including Cambridge Rueda (see their history section) and Ivan's classes. More recently, there was an attempt to start an on-2 class using the Catholic Church. Other snippets included Sally inviting Susanna Montero to Cambridge few years ago, Special Tee coming to Po Na Na earlier this year - around February (I have a vague recollection of seeing someone like him in the context Johnny's description - this episode must have been instrumental in how my opinion about good-looking Salsa dancing came about), and the identity of the anonymous person who left the comment about Special Tee; maybe we'll meet at SOS one of these days.