Tony Lara 7: The Undiscovered Country

June 3, 2008

Stinky weather strikes this week. It’s last week all over again. I guess there was a brief reprieve this weekend. Or was there? I am not sure.

The drive to Club Salsa was quite bad. Heavy traffic. I thought I was going to arrive very early. I was barely on time. Then again I got to thinking that Tony and Daniella could be delayed as well. I was right about that. Pretty much everyone else was late too.

I was saying hello to Vish and Raj when I spotted the biggest surprise of the evening. I would like to say that no one could have been happier to see Nina back in town than me – except I suspect there are one or two stronger candidates.

There were plenty of people taking part of the class presumably to make the evening profitable. Of course quality does not equal quality. What was with people not understanding that in place basic is possible taking upper level classes? I guess the trouble is that there are always many more inexperienced people than experienced. Once people decide that they are too good to be taking classes, it’s hard to bring them back.

The warm-up was run a little strangely especially with the footwork. Perhaps it was done to make the going forward with R foot first move less foreign.

It was amusing to hear Quiero Enamorarte be used so extensively in the class during the first hour. I though I might be the only person who liked that song.

Bachata Improver/Intermediate with Tony & Daniella

1,2,3,4 side-to-side basic with slight turning of body but not feet (no more than 1/8th of a body angle change)
5,6,7,8 forward starting with R using R leg to lead
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 primarily using chest (feet more or less staying in place except for weight transfers) back-forward-back then forward-back-forward … could do this indefinitely
1,2,3,4 back starting with L
5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 spot turn continuous without pausing on 8 and on 4 (back-forward-back-forward-etc) ending with not-quite-dip like lead to bring follower around onto R and back into normal closed hold for
1,2,3,5,6,7 in place basic

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 side-to-side basic ending apart with switching to crossed hold R-R on top
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 lead follower to walking turn ending with sombrero finish briefly [note: I thought there was a in place basic for another full 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 but I suppose this is not really needed. I think it was the reason why Daniella might have been trying to backlead this later] and get R-L in and out of sombrero position right away while getting closer – R-L gets out of sombrero position probably between 7 and 8
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 bring R-L down and do a leader’s turn keeping L-R around leader’s neck and then close in during 5,6,7,8
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 let go and get into “double” closed hold and do in place basic
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 a slow long gentle dip
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 in place basic

I ended up as an assistant at the DJ booth for the second hour with there being excess leaders for the second hour of Bachata class. The balance was closer to equal for the Reggaeton class.

There was a slight quandary for the music because Tony had not brought a lot of music along with him. Maybe he assumed that Vish and/or I would DJ more. I had considered bringing my collection but ultimately opted not to do so. This meant that the main source of the music was the large but poorly organized one of Vish’s. I thought Tony did really well with what was available. In fact I thought it was quite refreshing to hear Tony use a lot of songs in Vishal’s collection never used by Vish himself.

Mark, Polly and Andrea came by for the social. Still rather few people from the class stayed long for the social so there was plenty of room.

I ended up dancing four times with Daniella. Two Bachata and two Salsa. Luxury! I particularly liked the first Bachata and the last Salsa done to On2 timing. There were other highly enjoyable dances too – easily better than all those artificial and forced dances at SOS this weekend (which of course happened mostly because I was doing the stupid contrived alternating between On1 and On2 dances).

I also had a better view of Tony dancing. He has quite a few nifty moves. He plays with the music. It’s good. He even threw in fair bit of Dominican moves while dancing to one of the Bachata. He said it was the song that inspired it. Cool.

Apparently La 33 is doing a UK tour. Birmingham on July 6th hosted by latinmotion.com is probably a better bet than Leeds on July 4th - at least among the ones involving Tony. [note added after checking: La 33 is also performing in Cambridge on July 11th. I must say that the Cambridge gig does not make the idea of a trip to Birmingham less interesting - oh… maybe a little, but not that much.]