Hot and sweaty session at the LDA

July 4, 2006

Mario said, “This week’s class is going to be like last week except more complicated. Everyone was here last week, right?”

Uh oh.

I wasn’t here last week of course. I explained the situation about fire at Kings Cross station last week. Some of the students were able to confirm my story. In any case, I was probably extra nervous and self-conscious about being behind everyone else.

More than couple of times, Mario repeated, “We did something similar last week,” and proceeded to demonstrate the move very quickly. I had to ask him to repeat the move one more time on at least two different occasions.

During the warm-up, I thought I impressed my dance partners with recently learned moves from Joe Davids. It felt like all this work was undone mostly by my lack of confidence stemming from feeling behind the class after missing last week’s class.

1,2,3,5,6,7 CBL with 1 1/2 traveling counterclockwise turn ending with leader ending positioned to R side of follower with L-R slightly extended and free R hand on follower’s L waist
1,2,3,5,6,7 allow follower to step forward on 1 and bring her back using R hand with L-R ending on follower’s neck and stay close – do not look at follower at this point but look forward instead and lead follower to turn (double turn) in spot stationary counterclockwise (lead comes on 4 I believe) with L-R staying in same position (do not readjust hold!) with a scooping up motion on 6 ending with drop catch ending with R-R with leader positioned facing away from follower and slightly to L of follower
1,2,3,5,6,7 open break – slight dip downward (as opposed to a big one) on 5 and bring R-R straight up and straight down (rather than bringing it backwards) to lead follower into traveling 1 1/2 counterclockwise over and under turn (I'm not sure if it was referred to as windmill - one of my partner thought this was 2 1/2 but now I'm thinking it's really 1 1/2) with R-R ending behind follower’s L waist
1,2,3,5,6,7 allow follower to recover (no open break) and bring follower forward (as if this is going to end in a free traveling turn for follower – keep L hand out of sight to start with) and switch to L-R bringing it straight up to have it end behind follower’s neck – offer R hand in front
1,2,3,5,6,7 turn follower 1/2 counterclockwise (similar to Copa but leader moves into space to block Copa – I think the lead is with L-R on 2) and lead follower into stationary double clockwise turn with leader turning full counterclockwise at the end

It was one of the more nerve-wrecking classes I have attended. I found myself requiring a lot of adjustments. Some of the students like Helen (not one of the assistants) were especially helpful – so much so that she made me a little envious of her boyfriend because I could easily imagine her being very helpful for improving his dancing.

Quote of the day – Mario to the class as a whole – “If you were to end up teaching Salsa, look at the reaction of the ladies first instead of [or perhaps before] looking at what the guy is doing.”

Well… Some of the students are pretty darn good and may very well end up as teachers some day.

After the class, I was briefly involved in a conversation with one of the student and Susana about Frankie Martinez. Susana thinks Frankie is marvelous both with his body isolations and his choreography. In fact she said she was a little annoyed (?) with Frankie because she can never think of anything better than what Frankie uses for his choreographies to any part of the music he uses for his performances. Susana named Eddie Torres, Nelson Flores and Frankie Martinez as the must-see instructors in New York – the conversation started because one of the students was going to be in New York and wanted opinion on instructors to check out. I was mostly nodding my head and made comments about his seemingly impossible body movements and some people I know going to New York to see his performances, etc.