Time To Unwind

June 29, 2008

Goodbyes seem to be never-ending. Even in London. I learned that Vera is set to return to the States. I guess it means one less friendly face to look forward to seeing. No doubt plenty of others will miss her too. Seeing her and having one final dance with her was one of several saving graces of visiting what was overall subpar SOS.

I meant to take this SOS outing as a relaxing trip more than anything else. I thought that on the whole I would have more to gain than lose in terms of recovering from a strenuous week or two. Travelling however done and dancing no matter how little effort put in no doubt take some toll physically, but I thought that being able to unwind mentally and for lack of better words spiritually may compensate. I think it was good even though it wasn’t a very good SOS night.

The crowd seemed a bit thin – at least to start with. The Euro 2008 football final may have had something to do with it. Spain won over Germany by the way. I think I watched no more than 30 minutes of the entire tournament. It’s difficult to see why football would interfere with Salsa, but it does seem to happen with big events.

The biggest problem in my opinion was the music. One song of same bass line and percussion with barely audible piano and without melody was one of the low points and seemed to summarize the musical direction overall. The less impressive covers of songs like Agua Limpia Todo, Lady, and a Hector Lavoe cover (not sure if it was El Cantante or Periodico De Ayer) and others did not help much. Some other covers like Sandra Mora and Swing La Moderna (by Mandingo) were somewhat better. The Cha Cha of the evening wasn’t too bad, but the Bachata wasn’t very fun. In my opinion the DJ was trying too hard to look clever.

After being asked for the first dance (I think I was asked 3 or 4 times tonight, which is on the high side for sure), I tried asking a couple of people sight unseen with disappointing and progressively worse results. After that I decided to be a bit more discriminating. Even then there were more than a few worrying dances.

The number of On2 dances was limited to 3-5 tonight. For a change the quality of On2 dances or at least my followers was on average slightly better than the quality of On1 tonight – believe it or not in my experience I find that there are plenty of followers who are not great with On2 timing but insist on it when given choice. For tonight the change probably had much to do with the fact that surprisingly large number of partners for my On1 dances was either not very good or having off nights.

Personal note: I learned that my brother's wife is pregnant this weekend. I guess I'm going to have a nephew for the first time. Funny coincidence - someone told me she was going to be a grandmother late Friday night during a dance.