Learning to dance in circles

Went to Callaghans in the Holiday Inn last night for the second time (the first was months ago). It was much busier than before. This is the only salsa night in Cardiff run by Spanish speakers and it makes a difference: the atmosphere is more relaxed and friendly, the clientele are younger (and very multinational), and of course the teachers dance in circles. Well. Or at least, a lot better than I can. Very few of the usual Cardiff mafia there - I think I was the only one there in Blochs'n'black.

The way they run it is to have fairly short lessons interspersed with short freestyle breaks. Quite a bit of merengue in the breaks as they vary the music according to who's there. At 11 they were starting a merengue lesson for everybody, but apparently the night goes on until 3. You have to keep Latin time if you want to hang around for sustained freestyle!

Very smoky and a lot of beginners or inexperienced dancers. We did the intermediate class run by Jordy and Maria. I discovered that my dile que no (Cuban cross body), which I had fondly thought was not bad by Cardiff standards, is rubbish and learnt how to improve it with a proper Cuban 'frame'. In the second lesson they taught several variations on 'setenta'. I thought it was a really interesting lesson, and that and watching the teachers dance freestyle persuaded me that Cuban salsa actually is something I want to do: it looks great and a lot of fun when it's done properly. I've been taught a few Cuban moves in the past but this was much more vigorous and convincing than the way I've been taught it before.

One or two problems: it was crowded (though no worse than the Toad) which made organising the class a bit tricky, and the standard of the dancers in the class wasn't all that good: of the participants only Clare and a Spanish man were actually good Cuban dancers already. I got my dodgy wrist yanked about by a couple of women who (a) couldn't get the sequence and (b) had never learnt to follow. But I did learn a lot. Might be nice to try and persuade the teachers to run a crossover class for teaching experienced CBL dancers to do Cuban style.