Ballroom, Mauro and Eva

October 26, 2007

I arrived at Club Salsa around 10:40. This time it was because I decided to go to another Ballroom class at St. Columba’s Hall for an extra reinforcement. It was a smaller class compared to Wednesday’s (about 8 couples) but with better rotation. The quality of followers was in my opinion no different than in the Wednesday fast track class.

Waltz

Nothing new. Whisk was introduced to the class.

Rumba

Same as Wednesday except after the second turn, the couples did a three set of backwards (for the lead) step before leading a spot turn (or 12 o’clock or 2 o’clock turn) for follower

Cha Cha

Same as Rumba except the backwards steps were replaced with three chassis. The instructor suggested that I make my chassis bigger.

Tango

The most puzzling part thus far for me had been timing. There are four beats to a measure. Quick is 1/2 beat. Slow is full beat. The moves are interrelated between measures but are not obvious 1,2,3,5,6,7 or 2,3,4,6,7,8 as in Rumba/Cha/Mambo/Salsa.

I’ll try to reconstruct the routine another time. This session helped to get me more comfortable with Ballroom dances after a long absence and still struggling a little to get back into thick of it.

Back to Salsa...

The show by Aiste and Mauro must have started around 11. Surprisingly Cyrille who indicated little interest in seeing the show was there – as was Sergio and Nat – whereas Zern who supposedly was keen to catch the performance was nowhere to be seen. Also present were many ex-team members like Haihan, Rajiv, Mark, Jane, Sam, Zhenzhi.

I quite enjoyed the dancing this evening. As well as dancing with the usual suspects, I danced quite a bit with a relative newcomer (new to the Cambridge scene but far from a beginner) as well as an old familiar who had been absent for few weeks. I also had a dance with Aiste, which was pretty good but far from being the highlight of the evening. The London folks stayed til about midnight.

The music was plenty enjoyable – at this point I don’t think I have a favorite DJ for Cambridge because advantages and disadvantages more or less balance out. This was not true say 10 months ago. Because I’m writing this a few days after (because of Salsa Del Este), I don’t remember the song selections as much, but here are some highlights. Swing La Moderna (Ray Barretto – actually, this was my selection rather than Vishal’s. Right after Aiste and Mauro’s performance, Vishal opted to do a farewell dance for Draco – first a Merengue than a Salsa, which I chose as the slow-medium after performance pick. He then said choose anything I could find. I flipped through his selections and was pleasantly surprised to find this song. It’s a great song. I don’t have it. I had to play it.), La Palomilla (Joe Cuba), Alabanciosa (Manny Oquendo), La Salsa Nunca Se Acaba (Susie Hansen), Pancho Cristal (Richie Ray & Bobby Cruz - Vish plays this practically every night, but this is a rare song, which I don’t mind hearing so often. I could enjoy it while dancing or while standing around listening.), Aguanile (Willie Colon & Hector Lavoe - Vish being a bit silly again). After 1 AM (close to 1:30 AM), Vishal went into a rare Reggaeton mode. It was like the old times. I ended up staying until around 2:40 along with Cyrille. Some others supposedly lasted til 3 AM. I think Vishal was determined to make people feel that he had the best party of the evening tonight.

Topic of the day - Operation Northwoods.