Club Salsa at Sorrento Hotel

March 21, 2009

Until Vish sent me an e-mail saying he would be okay with the music-wise tonight, I was under the impression that today was a Thursday. This makes sense taking into consideration that I thought yesterday was Wednesday. There have been countless times when I couldn’t remember whatever the date I was living in, but mistaking days of the week was something new.

Why should it matter? Isn’t every day like another just as any date is like another? Not quite. I go out Salsa dancing on Fridays like clockwork when I’m in Cambridge. It used to be Fridays and Thursdays. Before that it was Fridays, Thursdays and Mondays. Sometimes Sundays – usually to London. Occasionally Wednesdays or Saturdays. Rarely Tuesdays. Maybe it happened because I didn’t go out dancing last Friday?

Anyhow this mistake threw a monkey wrench into my plan for the day. I picked the clothes in the morning thinking it was Thursday. I planned my work for today yesterday night (feeling harried) thinking that today was Thursday. I considered my chores (when to go buy groceries, gasoline, what’s for dinner) with the idea that I would be going out dancing tomorrow night, not tonight. I waited on mentioning a new interesting result to Derek until he left early for the weekend.

I didn’t change a thing.

After a couple of road works and wrong turns, I drove into the Hotel Sorrento car park. It was bigger than I expected but tight in space nevertheless. It was past 10 PM. Vish exclaimed that I was late in arriving when he saw me coming in through the hotel reception door. I guess they were serious about trying to start the lessons at 7 (and finishing at 9 … although no doubt there were some delays). In any case the social must have been going on for at least a little while because the showcase started about 3 songs after my arrival.

I had not had a single dance when the lights came on the showcase (Miguel and Mayana barefooted to old time music). I was preoccupied checking out the new digs. White tile floor. Lots of brick columns and arches. Compared to the 1 Station Road, the venue was airy, spacious and highly presentable when the lights were on. The speaker and DJ mixer looked unfamiliar. Sound quality seemed decent enough – at least at the volume used tonight, there were no shrill moments one got from time to time at the old location.

Will people miss the old grungy venue? I imagine some will have fond memories of it – flooded floors, blown circuits, floor of glue-like stickiness one minute and ice-rink slipperiness another and more. I suppose the foot traffic between the train station and town centre and maybe a somewhat more central location might be missed too. Anyhow the past is behind us to be buried and forgotten, and this is the future.

I guess I had a little over 90 minutes of dancing – one of the announcements before the showcase was that the party will end at midnight and also that they applied for a license to play music beyond midnight. The turnout for the launch was quite good so it meant I had to try to pack a lot of dancing into a short time. Dan mentioned that he never saw me looking damp at CS. I suppose he might be right – although I thought I danced quite a bit last time or not so long ago on the night when I did not act as a DJ.

Lotsa old faces. Sebastian and Katya were visiting from Switzerland/France, which brought out her close friends all together as well. Sally, Lindsey and Nicola visited. Polly was there – I think I got her on the verge of mental breakdown on the dance floor a couple of times (some bystanders seemed to enjoy the dance though). Johnny. Serap. Rajiv. Mark. No Haihan. The last dance was with Abbe.

Early end to the evening apparently left too much unspent energy for many. I hung around joining the stragglers reluctant to go home so early. I ended up joining Vish and a large group for an after-party outing to the Fez Club – apparently a possible landing spot for the next CSE night. Vish directed me through a maze of streets to end up parking at Market Square (not sure but I may know a less confusing route). In any case, it kept me up until past 2.