Annoyed with Ivan

September 13, 2007

Sally was worried about getting beginners to dance more than usual and making sure I played slow songs especially in the beginning. I am not as convinced that playing slow songs help very much even though it was my plan to play a number of slow songs in the beginning with or without her concern. Why do I think that it doesn’t help much? Most beginners have nothing to fear from the music because pretty much every song will be new and strange to them. The big intimidation factor is not the speed of the music (at least up to a certain point) but rather the people who are around them. I might add that a room full of people who took lessons for 3-6 months will do nearly good job of intimidating beginners as a room full of people who have been dancing for 5+ years.

Thursdays are especially difficult for beginners because it attracts the most number of better dancers in Cambridge, and enough of them show up at the very start of the social ready to pounce as soon as the class ends. More often than not, the more experienced dancers will start off dancing with people of similar ability. Many of the “better” leads will simply use slower music to put in extra spins – instead of single spin, a double and instead of a double, a triple, which is especially flashy and intimidating to those who have no practice in spinning, etc. Why does this happen? Possibly because many people are used to spinning at one speed - as fast as possible. I personally try to start the evening by dancing with relative beginners – usually people who are not picked off by the established crowd. I think what I try to do helps to break in new people into the scene, but I wouldn’t ask or expect other people to follow my example.

Most people are elitists (myself included) – in regards to dancing I mean most would consider dancing with someone perceived to be below their ability as something between necessary evil and unbearable torture. This is exacerbated by the fact that most people overestimate their abilities and thus placing more people as being beneath them. Funny thing is most people also underestimate themselves too, which also contributes to them being reluctant to dance more. I suspect that people are also afraid to dance with less experienced people because they fear that it would look bad (i.e. if you hang out with people who are not considered good, you risk looking not so good also).

Actually it’s difficult enough to try to convince people to dance more, which incidentally is the best way to improve. Everyone has different excuses. It’s too crowded. I say work on dancing in tight space. There are only beginners around. Work on perfecting your lead so that beginners find you easy and pleasant to dance with. I notice that people who are doing best are the ones who dance the most in social settings. My favorite example is Steve. I don’t know him very well – only spoke to him once. You don’t see him standing around during socials because he’s always dancing and with many different people. There are a lot of guys who are trying more complicated moves (often badly I might add) and going generally nutty (and looking silly doing it), but Steve is in my opinion one of the soundest leads in Cambridge (and he danced pretty much exclusively in Cambridge to best of my knowledge).

How the heck did I get into this rant? Oh yeah. I was talking about getting beginners to dance during the social. There is one sure-fire way. Sally has used it before. The method is used at SOS nowadays. The answer? Force them. At the end of the class, ask everyone in the class to the dance floor. Get everyone in a circle. Have them dance with different people rotating every half minute or so. Do it for two songs. Use slow-medium song. I would recommend against artificially slowing the song because I don’t think it helps very much (and I think it adversely affects how the songs are perceived later on when things are back to normal speed). I suppose not everyone agrees with me on slowing songs that are perfectly alright at normal pace, but I am fine with agreeing to disagree on this point. It won’t fix all the problems but then again what will?

Onto my playlist…

Brujeria – El Gran Combo (slowed to –2% upon request from Sally)
Errante Y Bohemio – Laba Sosseh*
Momposina – Santiago Ceron*
Malanga Amarilla – Cachao
Que Quiere La Nina – Kako Y Totico*
La Boda De Ella – Bobby Valentin* (-2%) (1)
El Verdadero Son – Javier Vazquez*
Me Dejo – Oscar D’Leon (-1%) (2)
Lindo Yambu – Santiago Ceron*
La Lucha – La Excelencia (featuring Shanny)
Caballero Y Dama – Celia Cruz & Willie Chirino
Bilongo – Tito Rodriguez*
La Critica – Jose Alberto “El Canario”*
Caramelo – Johnny Pacheco* (3)
Cinco A Diez – Azabache
Sonido Bestial – Ricardo Ray & Bobby Cruz* (-4%) (4)
Chanchullo – Fania All-Stars* (5)
Si Tu Cocinas Como Caminas – Henry Fiol*
Lejos De Ti – Son Boricua*
Hace Tiempo – Angel Canales*
Los Salseros Se Van – Willie Rosario*
No Critiques – Eddie Palmieri*
El Mangoneo – Marvin Santiago (-4%)*
Japan Mambo – Tito Puente
El Abaniquito – Pucho and His Latin Soul Brothers (6)
Aguacero – El Gran Combo
Luna Negra – Rey Ruiz (7)
Gotas De Lluvia – El Gran Combo
Abuelita – Hector Lavoe

(1) A rather gratuitous slow-down and probably ineffective. Same for next song too.
(2) I did not want it to make it seem that these songs were a lot faster than the previous two. I kept things at –1% until Caballero Y Dama, which is a fast song.
(3) I wondered how the crowd would take a Charanga and had an internal debate about which one to play and whether to play one. It turned out there was absolutely no problem.
(4) This was supposed to be my Coro Miyare of the night. A crazy nutty song to be talked about. Too fast and too long. I tried to make it easier by slowing it down by 4%. Somewhat to my surprise, it was quite popular. I hope it doesn’t become too popular. I think it’s okay to hear it maybe once every 2-3 months.
(5) My obligate Cha Cha of the evening. Most people were exhausted after dancing to Sonido Bestial thus I decided to dance to this one to fill the dance floor more. I had meant to try to dance a lot more often earlier in the evening, but I was too distracted until this point. Originally I had planned to dance to at least two song by this point – preferably Que Quiere La Nina and El Verdadero Son. Maybe Bilongo too except it’s a bit too short to make it easy and worthwhile.
(6) Second dance of the evening for me.
(7) I danced to last 3 songs also. Actually picking songs became secondary to dancing at this point so I was using whatever songs available in the CDs already in the CD players.

Total 29 songs. 28 Salsa (17 new) and 1 Cha Cha (1 new). I’m not trying to play new songs for new-ness sake. I simply have accumulated large number of good songs and have had very little opportunity to show them off. Right now I probably have more than 40 songs to ready go, and I’m still buying albums as a brisk pace. So it was nice to get another opportunity to introduce these songs to the crowd. Although it wasn’t as good as it could have been because so many people who would have liked what I played were absent. No Sergio – still in Portugal. No Cyrille – I wonder when or if he will return. No Haihan – school hasn’t started yet. No Ivan. I was surprised and therefore most disappointed by his absence. Somnolence issues? Domestics Issues? Who knows? I would have had much more fun if I could have gauged response from those four and how they would have danced with people who were there (e.g. Jane, Lindsey, Charlotte, Euvian, Sally, etc) as well as people who were not (e.g. Nina, Mimi, Agnes, Stephanie, etc) - they would have been most likely to figure out some of the inside jokes in songs I chose. Don't get me wrong. There were plenty of people enjoying the evening.