Clarendon Grill One Week Later

January 5, 2009

This time I arrived shortly before 10 as the second Merengue was being played – I am under the impression that the 2 Merengue followed by 2 Bachata around 10 PM is more or less fixed into the program at Clarendon Grill these days.

While in topic of music, I was struck by variety of Salsa music (not Bachata or Merengue or Cha Cha) played. If anything, tonight’s music was more inclusive than what I would have used in Cambridge or elsewhere. For example, Boogaloo Blues by Johnny Colon would not have cracked top 50 Cha Cha for me as a DJ. There was a definite Cuban possibly Timba track at one point. A couple of Charanga were played as were a few old-time pre-70s sounding songs. There also were some Romantica and some Colombian. Combine tonight’s party with my last two DC parties, I had little reason to think about lack of variety in Salsa music. Thus I felt even more puzzled about the seemingly atypical and deliberately obscure and difficult music choices I found on my first night out. My confusion was cleared partially when it was explained to me that the DJs at DC Dance Collective try to emulate Frankie Martinez’s Abakua Friday socials in NYC. This was a new to me - I had not considered that there were DJs emulating Frankie like the legion of dancers emulating Frankie. I’m now guessing that the musical choice would have been less puzzling to me if I had seen the social without the large number of beginner dancers from the meetup group – a party of a small group of people practicing their craft so that they would be able to blend in with Frankie’s crowd.

While I enjoyed all the dances at Clarendon Grill once again, it was somewhat anticlimactic following the Resolution Jam especially in terms of absolute number of dances and dance partners. I missed the luxury of glancing around the room for few seconds and picking out prospective dance partners and dancing whenever I want. Phrases like "I just can't get enough" and "What I got was just enough to make me frustrated" partially summarize my thought for the evening - I guess that makes it two in a row. I also never got a sense of concrete improvement in my dancing – not surprising given a trip like this is not conducive to such efforts. All this makes me wonder if my priorities are all out of whack.

I had some chat with Tanya, Josh and Earl. Jimmy was around too for greetings etc.

Usually I don’t pay much attention to other leads, but tonight was something of an exception – possibly because I had too much down time. There was at least one performer type lead of note (leading a lot of broken left turns repeatedly and seemingly giving his partner a challenging exam – with his partner doing quite well in following … it was all quite intimidating) – I wondered if this was Psyon, but I did not try to find out his identity. Yet another very smooth lead with very good control caught my eyes a few times – no introductions there either.