We are big fans

June 3, 2007

I think it was Friday when Cyrille asked me if I was going to SOS today. He said he wanted to dance with Sasha again. Who doesn't? On our drive there, I warned him that I don't always see Sasha at SOS - certainly not every week and probably not even once a month.

Thus it was a somewhat of surprise - a very pleasant one I might add - when we entered the north side of Royal Sonesta Hotel (where SOS was moved to once again for reasons I never bothered to find out) and spotted Sasha at the far corner. So with Cyrille in tow I walked over to say hello to Sasha and her Flemish friend Lise, whom I had met and danced couple of times at Scala last weekend.

Naturally the topic of conversation drifted to On2 and about where Sasha (and Lise too it turned out) learned Salsa. I say naturally only because the only time I ever danced Salsa On2 in London was with Sasha. Anyhow the place turned out to be Guildford where there was some big-name teacher whose name I did not catch but Cyrille recognized. Apparently the Salsa scene is quite good in Guildford, and they suggested that we could visit this Friday for some big event being organized in Guildford. Remembering that we have some other obligation (which presumably will be revealed in good time), we expressed regret at not being able to go.

Apparently it was first time at SOS for Lise, and I ended up having my (and her) first dance with her - On2 no less. So I can now say that I had more than one Salsa dance On2 in London. Hooray. I thought I was decent given my limited repertoire. Over the course of the evening, two Cha Cha were played, and I managed to get dance for one of them. More On2 practice - good news all over! I tried to find someone for the second Cha Cha for some time but no luck.

The room was very warm and crowded. It was not quite the sauna level steamy hot as it had gotten in the south side of the hotel, but it certainly did not make for an optimal dancing condition. It also seemed like there was a bit of an imbalance and excess men compared to women - or at least such opinion was expressed to me by two different guys including Cyrille. My guess is that the numbers were very close to even, but that there might have been more men standing around rather than dancing compared to a more typical SOS evening.

A side note. I'm usually not in the habit of watching other people dance at SOS (although I suppose I did watch Ania last time - and I guess I also watched Eva briefly this evening along with Sasha - which in turn led to talk about Neeraj - really getting off topic here), but I spotted a really stylish Japanese lead tonight and pointed him out to Cyrille. I ended up talking to the Japanese guy briefly - alas he said he's going back to Asia shortly. Probably the biggest name among out-of-town guests I spotted visiting SOS tonight was Emma Moore.

Music was alright considering that Amir was not the DJ. Only about 1/3 of the songs made me not want to dance, and luckily I avoided dancing to pretty much all of them. On the other hand, I danced to at least 90% of the songs which sounded good to me. Cyrille was less lucky - he got stuck dancing to several lame songs.

The only time I was put in a bad position because of the song was when I finally got around to dancing with Sasha - supposedly On2. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I heard the beginning of the song. I should and perhaps might have begged to dance On1 except Sasha said, "You have to dance On2. This is perfect for it." Perhaps - but I also had some fantastic time dancing On1 to this song. Anyhow, it was a disaster and it was all my fault. I was terrible and was trying things I had no business leading given I really had no idea what I was doing. I was off time so often. It was ridiculous, and I thought I was quite decent earlier with Lise and with Cha Cha. In any case, I'm really hoping that help in on the way - less than a week away.

At the end of the evening (11 because of change of venue), the four of us got around to talking again. I noted that I never saw Cyrille dancing with Sasha. Sasha was like, "Yeah! What happened?" "Well... Next week." "You'll be in France next week!" "Oh yeah." "Too bad about this Friday." "We'll have to think about going to Guildford sometime." "I suppose I'm probably here next week. What about you?" "Well, it would depend on my ride."

On the drive back, the subject of Guildford came up again, and I was surprised when I heard the instructor's name again from Cyrille. I must have misheard it because I recall saying something like, "I don't remember that name," when Sasha or Lise named him. The instructor? Marchant Birch! Now it made perfect sense that Cyrille responded, "You are so lucky." I completely agree - Salsa dancers living in Guildford (tsk. tsk.) indeed are very lucky. We agreed that we definitely should try to make it to one of big events at Guildford sometime even if it's quite far away - only 20 minutes off M25 (haha).