It's still possible...

May 10, 2007

Instead of going to Sally's class, I decided to do get a little more work done and then give a colleague a ride home. Since I was already pretty late, I decided to stop by home for a quick bite to eat. I saw a whole bunch of people hanging out at the Sauce so I joined them. Perhaps not surprisingly someone (Zern?) asked, "Where were you?"

This is what I meant by whole bunch. My table had Sebastian, Zern, Rajiv, William, Cyrille, and Andrea. Another table had Alison, Clare and two or three others. Third table had four more people from Salsa. Fourth table had another three or four including Clara and Steve. In addition, there was another big non-Salsa table with at least three people from work.

The most amusing remark came from William. He wanted standardization of Salsa - everyone to dance the same way - even if it is On2. The topic also moved onto something that reminded me of my musing from about 1 1/2 year ago and a ridicule it elicited.

People arriving later included Euvian, Zhenzhi, Stephanie, Haihan, Ivan, Nina as well as Diana, Jay and their family and friends. Other people present included Brendan, Phyllis, Jane, Lindsey and Nicola. Another person I recognized from work was there with whole bunch of her friends I did not recognize.

The evening did not start off well for me. It seemed like I wasn't on the same page with everyone I danced with for the first hour or so. In some cases, I tried to simplify my moves but it seemed like once my partners were confused they stayed confused no matter what. It went bad enough for so long that I began to wonder if my leading had gone to hell.

I felt a little better after dancing to Ritmo Pa Borinquen (Grupo Latin Vibe). I was less certain after another song (unknown to me but it had some long bits reminding me of Si La Ves (Willie Colon & Hector Lavoe), which left me wondering what the heck do I do with this bit? It doesn't make me want to do anything) - a little annoying because it was a rare opportunity. Sally also played a quite nice sounding Cha Cha (apparently called Tumba Palo Cucuye done by Wayne Gorbea) with small number of people left over. Aside from having to scramble and wait to get a partner (Nicola was my victim) and the song being a bit overlong given I don't have a great deal of moves for On2 or Cha Cha, it was nice.

It's still possible that my lead was crap for the first hour.

Anyhow with pretty much everyone gone, it looked like it was going to be a somewhat underwhelming and arguably disappointing evening for me. The only ones left dancing was Rajiv and Stephanie. Stephanie motioned to me that I was her next victim - apparently she danced non-stop tonight - I think that would be for about 2 hours to enable her to deal with no more dancing opportunities til June.

I had three dances with her in a row. It worked that way because the first dance went really well - to a song I didn't hear before (Pedregal by Justo Betancourt according to Sally), and then the next two songs were liked by either Stephanie (Picadillo by Cal Tjader and Eddie Palmieri - I like it too but not as much as Stephanie or some others like Haihan and Agnes) or by both of us (Mambo Gallego - apparently an early Tito Puente - it was only the second time I have heard this song - according to Stephanie, Mauro and Eva used a part of this song for one of their routines). All three of these dances were quite good fun - with the whole floor to ourselves and a small number of spectators.

It's still possible that my lead was crap for the first hour.

Earlier in the evening, I had a pretty weak dance with Stephanie to Merecumbe (Johnny Colon). I wonder what was the deal with the first hour? I don't think it can be blamed on there being couple of so-so Cuban people amidst. The last time I went directly from London to Cambridge Thursday wasn't very good either. Maybe I need a buffer between the two. I don't know.

I need to get a new laptop. Dealing with this blog is getting difficult to manage without one. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Apple is going to do me any favor with their updates.