Wednesday as new Friday

April 5, 2006

At least for tonight, Wednesday had a feel of Friday – except that Friday no longer feels like Friday much of the time. The dance floor was packed for quite some time – over an hour – rather than for just few songs at the beginning of the night. Many of the Cambridge’s finest Salsa dancers were present – many of who were present to bid farewell to one of the Salsa team member going on a long overseas trip. The party lasted to nearly one in the morning. I would have called it a very good night for me except for an unusual string of bad luck (or perhaps a punishment for hubris or perhaps because I simply couldn’t pick decisively with there being so many choices with pros and cons to mull over) that led to me not dancing at all for the last hour or so. On the bright side, I did socialize more than usual.

Another Bachatathon happened when Vishal took over including another stretch of four Bachata songs in a row. At one level, it was interesting and even nice to see how much influence I was exerting on the choice of music. Fairly large number of people was still dancing during the fourth Bachata song. At another level, I was cringing and was feeling quite embarrassed and was thinking, “Oh no! What have I done?” What followed was essentially a repeat of Monday except with a lot more people participating, watching and recording the spectacle. My aforementioned dance draught had started sometime before the start of this Bachatathon and it unfortunately did not end when Salsa made its return.

Speaking of Bachata, I received an e-mail from Tony Lara this afternoon. He informed me that Claudia is not going to be able to make the tour due to an unforeseen circumstance. In her place, another professional dancer named Daniela De Francesco will step in. Daniela is one of the teacher and/or performer for London Heathrow 5 Star Congress at the end of April, and Tony assures me that she will be excellent. Anyhow, I started informing people of this change, but I don’t think I will be making new posters, etc. By the way, this news was spread and distributed even faster than I predicted.

One of the Salsa-related news I heard tonight was about the Salsa dance competition held at Peterborough last weekend. Because I never made it to any of these Peterborough events organized by Cristian, Dee, et al., I was barely aware of the competition. Apparently, there were 7 couples in the competition in the beginning. After the first round, the number was reduced to 5 couples for semi-finals and then to 3 couples for the finals. Now that I think about it, people have been giving me hints me about this competition but I guess I was too dense or preoccupied to figure it out. I guess I don’t really care much about these competitions, and my emphasis is more on becoming an adept social dancer who would be considered fun to dance with anywhere in the world (a big reason to learn on-2 would be to dance in New York). I suppose entering a competition might be fun too, except I probably would take it too seriously and trying to find a suitable partner alone might be more trouble than it’s worth. The winners by the way were Lindsey and Chris.

Vishal talked to me about possibility of me DJing on Friday after Enrique finishes his set. I told him that I will think about it. My main reservation is that by the time Enrique is done, often there are not many Salsa dancers left to take advantage of what I might want to play. Of course, it might be interesting to see is if playing Salsa very late at night would keep people dancing.

Vishal is organizing a coach to take people to and back from Scala Latina. I suspect I will be quite satiated with quality and quantity of dancing there. Several people have spoken to him about the coach already so it seems quite likely to happen. With the roadwork on M11, I don’t feel like driving to London very much. One speeding ticket (on the way to the Rocket last month) a year is more than enough.