Late night Scala post

May 25, 2008

By the last dance of the night with Polly, which by the way happened to be the only dance I had with Cambridge-associated person all night, I felt quite listless. Strange because I probably danced less than usual and without expending much energy all night long; my shirt was fully tucked in still at the end of the night at 4 AM. I wasn't exactly tired unlike say Polly and Andrea, who were complaining of being dead tired when I met them at the entrance of Scala shortly after 11 PM having been through the all-day long workshops like all of the Cambridge folks who came with Vish. Constitution is not exactly the issue here - I don't think being at work 10 hours earlier in the day affected anything either. Now if it were 12 to 14 hours of higher intensity variety it would be another story.

The real reason likely was because I felt I peaked quite early - most of the best dances came during the first 10 dances or so. As matter of fact some of them were so good that I knew right away that things could only go downhill from there. After the first hour and half or so, I thought I had already exceeded my prediction for today made back on Thursday. For the most part the best dances happened with people I already knew and were friendly with although I don’t' even know the names of most of them. Chances are even the ones I know the names of will be remembered more for how I met them or such - e.g. I might think of one as CTU or for Ahora Si, another as really friendly Nordic curly blonde from SOS and Scala, another as the one who moved to Oxford, or a new one who probably will be remembered for her ecstatic responses followed by repeated excuses to say goodbye to her friends.

Even though it was a fairly crowded night - although not a record-breaking one - the number of prospective dance partners felt quite limited. There were a lot of people, whom I would like to have danced with, but quite a number of them were avoiding the floor because of overcrowding. Scala has a lot of air space, but its main dance floor below the stage really needs to be two or three times larger than it is to properly accommodate 1000-2000 people. I think large late-night parties with the number of stars and wanna-be stars like tonight and having good amount of space to go along with it is difficult to achieve in London.

As usual many of the performers for tonight were less than full participants on the social floor. I imagine most of them are used to having a lot more space than is available at Scala when it's busy. Still there were many more of them visible on the social dancing floor than usual (e.g. Mauro & Eva, Helen, Albert, Miguel & Mayana, Niko & Annette, Mel C, Moe, Marchant & Davina, Shelley (but not Lee), Fritha, Laith, etc). I think the foreign visitors from Europe probably had the biggest trouble with the venue getting bumped by neighboring dancers etc. I stated European because Veronica, who is American seemed quite in control - at least when I happened to look at her direction (I think she also had no trouble at even more crowded Club Salsa as long as people didn't actually crash into her).

The showcases were broken into four groupings. The power group was the third one with Osbanis solo show followed by Ye Mambo followed by Nelson & Veronica. Of those, Nelson & Flores was the big ticket of course, but I actually felt that their show at Club Salsa on Friday was more fun to watch even though the execution and intricateness was still of very high standard. It might have been the angle because I was stuck on the side of the stage rather than in front of it as was the case for all other groupings. Vish interestingly said he liked the Friday show more as well in our conversation on the way back. The show I liked best of all night was the one by HP & Stefanie, which had a heavy shade of Tango influence. The rest ranged from pretty good to boring to a bit embarrassing.

It's a small world and the Salsa scene feels like it's getting smaller. I don't mean that it's getting less popular but that I seem to recognize more and more people and be recognized in turn by surprising number of people - even by people I have had minimal interactions with.

Music played tonight included Primoro Cantar, Ay Amor Cuando Hablan Las Miradas, La-La-La (Curbelo version), Swing A La Moderna (Mandingo version?), Fantasia Cubana?, Tu Amor Hace Bien, Salsa Y Control, En El Balcon?, Guaguanco Del Gran Combo, Hace Tiempo?, Rumbon Melon, La Palomilla, Geisha Girl (or similar???), El Matrimonio.

I had two or three On2 dances. Probably two. The earlier one complained that she couldn't follow me. No such problems with the second one, which was a highlight of the second half of the evening. I had danced multiple times with three different partners. I don't know if that's a record, but it's quite unusual. Obviously none were with Cambridge folks as I only had one such dance all night as I mentioned earlier. Yeah, definitely unusual. I'm sure there was never more than one or two with non-Cambridge people and zero is also quite common. Aside from the night peaking too early (not counting the repeat dances), it was a pretty good night.

I had a pseudo-spontaneous burst of laughter, which might have been noticed. It was very amusing but it might have been all in my head.

No heat once again.

Apparently Vish paid for my entry (to be paid back by me later) but did not inform me about it. I guess that's an extra £10 or £12 for Joe.