Afterglow

March 5, 2007

About an hour after using a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher to put out an ethanol fire, I was back at Club Salsa listening to Joe dividing the classes and trying to determine which one was the largest, etc (what a geeky starting sentence, no?). After some shuffling, the intermediates with Joe ended up by the DJ booth while the beginners with the new girl (I remembered her from the Sunday workshop a little over a week ago) took over the main floor. Danie had the improvers by the staircase. Because the numbers were skewed towards men for the intermediate while the opposite was true for the improvers (and also because I figured that I was unlikely to see too many new things in the intermediate class), I decided to partake in the improver class. Among other things it gave me an opportunity to check out Danie teaching the improver level class for only her second time. Overall I thought the way Danie taught the class was closer in content to Joe than either Tiz and (especially) Russell are to Joe.

Improver with Danie

The material itself was nothing new – not surprising at this point. The classes started with some shines (typical) followed by some turning exercises (less typical). Partner work done were as follows.

CBL
CBL with inside turn (1 1/2 counterclockwise traveling) for follower (optional haircomb for follower when ending in closed hold)
CBL with inside turn for follower ending in L-R hold for back-to-back basic
Leading follower to right turn on the spot (full clockwise stationary turn) followed by a right turn by leader or followed by a broken left turn for the leader

On second thought, I am not sure if I ever ran into a class where leader performed a full broken left turn On1 – especially with appropriate timing. Possibly Sergio used it at CDC couple of years ago, but I don’t have any notes to show this. In any case, I ended up using broken left turn a lot tonight.

It was quite relaxing.

I didn’t know what was going to happen with the social hour after the classes. No one from the usual group was there. However, I found that I was in a pretty good mood – with no built-up frustration of not being able to lead more difficult moves (perhaps because I got this out of my system by going to SOS last night). I felt patient and content to lead whatever was going to be easy for my partners. In the end I probably did some things most of them did not expect, but things were quite under control most of the time.

Speaking of SOS, one of the guys there last night was here for the social hour. We greeted each other and made mention of seeing each other last night. I’ll have to ask him his name next time though. Somewhat later in the evening, Raj made an appearance too.

I danced with about 10 people altogether. Most were singletons – with more than one dance for the evening with only two people.

Vishal was using the same old CD again. However, this time he played the CD through Montuno Street and Tambo. When Temba Tumba Timba came on, I started wondering if we’ll get to the end of the CD for a Cha Cha (Chin Chon Chow by Louie Ramirez – I like this one). To stack things in my favor, I approached Vishal and asked if he was going to play the CD to the end for the Cha Cha. And he did. I figured I didn’t need to pick a partner based upon knowing a lot of moves or being able to spin well, so I picked an elegant-looking girl with pretty good sense of timing. Supposedly she had a couple of Cha Cha lessons before, but I don’t know if it came into play much. Another decent On2 practice (Cha Cha)! Nice...