Coventry - Collier's Club

November 17, 2007

Flood of texts and phone calls continued. I had to rush to get work related stuff wrapped up and deal with dinner quickly to meet everyone on time. Final line-up in my car was Zern, Steph and Liam - Zern's friend Katie dropping out at the last minute. We also made rendezvous with Sebastian and the occupants in his car - Kate, Cyrille and Rajiv at Fitzwilliam College with the idea of caravanning together (although this idea was abandoned). Other than getting lost at the very end - Google Map led me astray - the drive was uneventful. The chatter on the other hand was a bit colorful - dominated early by Liam dealing with his credit card and bank card passkey fiasco and later by Lori's center of mass.

Still we were in the Colliery Club by around 9:40 - not much over an hour after a brief stop at Bar Hill for petrol, food for some and memory loss for others. It looked like a veritable army had descended upon Coventry from Cambridge. I think there were well over 20 names on the list - although not everyone from the list made it (notably Ivan and Katie). Among others arriving separately were Sally, Charlotte, Nicola, Annette, Jane, Mark, Ed and at least two others whose names I did not know (or for that matter their face). There certainly were more but not necessary from the same list. I think Steph mentioned later that she danced with someone from Cambridge for the first time tonight.

The dance floor of Colliery Club was comparable in size to Mary Ward House. It was quite busy - presumably the event attracts people from Birmingham in addition to Coventry. The number of non-beginners at the event was significantly larger than at Chilford. Coventry has population of ~300,000 and Birmingham nearly 1,000,000 while West Midlands Met County has 2,555,000 people according to 2001 census (by comparison, Cambridge has ~100,000 and Cambridgeshire ~550,000) so I suppose this is not surprising. My thought was that it was a very middle-brow event compared to events I have seen elsewhere. If I had seen it two years ago, I would have thought it great. Now it seemed alright although nothing spectacular and not especially compelling compared to London - with caveat that I don't find London all that exciting anymore also.

Music too was fairly middle-brow - Se Formo Rumbantelo (Javier Vazquez - played twice?), Esa Mujer (Tony Vega), Fragile, Todo Tiene Su Final (Willie Colon), El Menu (Gran Combo). There was nothing particularly memorable. I tried to see if I could get Mauricio to guess the song Liam asked me about last night. No luck. Liam later mentioned that Juan Matos likes the song, and I was able to identify it later as Rumbon Melon (Joey Pastrana) - I actually had a copy of the song because someone had sent it to me a while ago [note added later: I talked about this song a number of times this summer on this blog. I guess the problem is that I don't own an album with the song.]. Surprisingly high number of Bachata was played. One Cha Cha was played apparently because Liam requested it. They also played a Los Van Van - not a heavy-duty Timba though.

Dancing was fine. Nothing spectacular, but there was one stretch where I had a string of more than five very nice dances including the one with the showcase performer of the day and including a pair of dances with two Black women no one else from Cambridge likely noticed. Sometimes seeing someone I just danced with get picked up by the one of the highest profile dancers next can be quite gratifying, and another such instance was seeing the latter of the Black woman dancing with the showcase lead Miguel next. The lead she danced with before me seemed nice too, so I'd say she got her money's worth. Pretty much all of the dances were singletons with a two cases of Salsa plus Bachata (someone asked me) or Cha Cha and two more cases of multiple Salsa.

The party ended at 2:30 - no real effort to make it go longer, but they did give you plenty of warnings - 30 minutes to go, 3 more songs, 2 more songs, last song. I had left my car unlocked with valuables inside, but no one ventured to break in cold dark windy evening in the boondocks of Coventry. I think a hole formed in the muffler while the car cooled down, so it was a bit noisy on the way back. Topics for the drive back included common dancing partners throughout the evening, nearly getting my fingers broken while dancing, counter terrorist unit, impressions and microanalysis of Natalia (they're real!), comparing fingers with nipples, badmouthing London, etc. before people started falling asleep. It was also interesting to hear about Liam asking a stranger about how I danced and the response he received.