Time for a break?

June 24, 2007

I arrived shortly before the end of the classes. The first people I talked with Sean and Roger - we all wondered how long it will be before SOS goes back to Mary Ward Hall. One of the spoken thought was that having the event at the hotel (even the nicer North hall) makes it less likely for many of the better dancers from showing up. It did seem like there were less than usual large number of superb followers. It seemed like such thought on other people’s mind too - Rico also wondered when SOS will be back to Mary Ward Hall. In a later conversation with Ed, the “JV” talk came up again. I don’t think this was one of the better SOS nights, but an even more troubling thought is that SOS also was not very good for pretty much all of April before improving in May (at least on the days I attended and not affected by Scala). Things have been generally poor after moving to the hotel (although I did enjoy the one 2 weeks ago) or so I have been told on days where I wasn’t here. What if these lesser nights become the norm for SOS? From the earliest part of the evening, things did not look very promising tonight, and many times during the evening I wondered if I would have been better off staying home tonight. This is not to say there were no good moments tonight, but that’s not really saying very much.

I ran into Domenic, who apparently came here for the first time in a very long time. He and I talked about a couple of dance competitions he is entering (as a semi-pro at Vauxhall and as a semi-pro/amateur at London Latinfest) as well as some TV dance program to be shown around Christmas time. Also we both agreed that the end of the Friday at Club Salsa was great fun – Domenic said he hadn’t had such great time in a long time. Too bad many of the people who made it fun won’t be back until September or October (yes, we talked about you).

My first dance was nice enough, and my second dance was even nicer – arguably my favorite dance of the evening and I was quite happy with it.

Things went downhill from there though. Convergence of a good song and a good dance partner did not happen for a long time. I suppose that’s bound to happen when both are in short supply. I don't recall needing to scramble to find a dance partner so much at SOS - if you didn't have a partner after about 5 seconds after the start of the new song, finding anyone at all let alone a good partner was very difficult.

I did enjoy the opportunity to dance to Aguardiente (Mark Dimond). I don’t think it’s a great song, but it still was a pleasant surprise. The dance was only okay though. Okay dances are okay - there were some awful ones tonight.

For next hour or so, there were only a few partners I connected very well with, and these dances were marred by the fact that the songs were rather dull. I skipped songs like Caballo Viejo. A version of Agua Limpia Todo was played too – I wasn’t completely won over it and I did not dance to it. There was a Cha Cha for which I wasn’t able to find a partner – I don’t think the song was so hot. I did not feel like dancing to a Bachata (a version of Lloraras).

I ran into Liam for the first time since the week after Brit Salsafest. Apparently tonight was the first time Liam went out for Salsa dancing since last time I saw him. He finally gave me most of the petrol money for the Blackpool drive.

During the last hour, there finally was a dance with a nice enough song and pretty good follower. The dance went quite well until I bumped into one of the neighboring dancers and drew a complaint and making me feel like an idiot.

Next to the last song was Philadelphia Mambo (Cal Tjader), but again the dance was just okay rather than great. I was too tired and too uninspired by the last song and my decision was to dance to it was probably a mistake. It was my third dance in a row – the first one was danced to a song I’m guessing as Salsa Romantica (Louie Ramirez), which was unremarkable at many levels but still okay.

Over the course of the evening, I fell close to losing all interest in the dance – wanting the dance to just end. By the end I was just too tired and too uninspired.

I thought I had a very good control of my lead for the first couple of dances (or at least I felt I did). However as not-so-great dances piled up, I became less sure of myself. Over the course of the evening, I had maybe 3-5 occasions where I longed for the dance to end soon and had to struggle mightily to not look bored – I might not have been successful in some cases. In many cases, I think I was bored with myself (an alternative is to say that I was bored with many of the songs).

Perhaps the problem was that I went out dancing too much this week. Perhaps the fact that it was unusually interesting and/or unusually good all week long (for me Tuesday and Friday especially) in Cambridge made this subpar London SOS outing seem worse than it really was. I hope things will get better soon. Meanwhile, it might be a good idea for me to take a little break until they get back to Mary Ward Hall – or perhaps find out when Amir is DJing in advance so that I would at least know that the percentage of good songs will be higher.