SOS with Cyrille and Zern

December 16, 2007

With help from Ali, the headlight bulb was replaced – it only took about 50 minutes. This was important because this made going to SOS a simpler decision. Cyrille decided to come along. Zern would meet us in London. Traffic was unusually light so we got there in record time.

SOS was on time too. I was half expecting to see class still in session, but no – the social was underway by the time we arrived. I was so surprised by this that I ended up not dancing until the third or the fourth song. A part of the indecision was caused by my inability to spot quickly good prospective dance partners.

It was great once I got started though – surprisingly so. Things were great until around 10. Everyone I danced with was at least half decent and even the not-so-good ones were fairly enjoyable for one reason or another. The only exception was a Cha Cha – poor timing issues. My dancing mood tended toward leading more spins and more complicated moves compared to typical recent SOS outings.

Unfortunately it was a performance night. Even worse, there was a raffle, which went on for a rather long time because about half of the winners were not there to collect. The performances were decent. I had a good view too – central and 2-3 rows behind seated on the floor. The first to go were Mauro and Aiste – same routine more or less as the one at Club Salsa couple of months ago. The second was by Leon Rose Project – a new one for me. Some of the finger pointing antics by Leon was pretty funny. There was too much sitting on the floor still.

Even worse, the dances after the shows were considerably worse than ones before. I must have had about four quite unsatisfying dances in a row before having a pretty good Cha Cha followed by a reasonably good Salsa. The last dance was not too good unfortunately, and I wasn’t able to get another for the last song of the evening – maybe I could have but I thought the options were pretty slim generally after the shows.

The drive back (joined by Zern) was dominated by geography quizzes.