Carnaval

Friday was the big monthly salsa and samba night in Glasgow School of Art. It was supposed to start at ten but didn't get going until closer to eleven. I was dancing a lot better than the previous night: after the first dance I got a kiss on both cheeks and “Eres un lider fantastico” - a bit of an exaggeration but a pretty good start to any evening.

The music was very good and the venue wasn’t bad. There seemed to be plenty of space, but being in the students’ union during Freshers week brought predictable hazards; at one point a pair of beer monsters turned half the place into a no-go zone before knocking a pint over in the middle of the dancefloor.

Once you’re warmed up it’s always good dancing in a new city because you’re bound to have a few moves that will be new to the locals. I certainly managed to surprise a few women (mainly in a good way, I think – at least, one asked me for a second dance and nobody turned me down). At one point I surprised myself by sticking together a couple of moves into a flash combination that I hadn’t done before but worked well: unfortunately when I woke up the following morning I couldn’t for the life of me remember it.

In Cardiff, apart from the Latin crowd, you can pretty much assume that people will dance CBL style. Here it was predominantly Cuban, so I had to wait and watch to find out who were either CBL dancers or Cuban dancers who looked as if they were compatible with CBL style – and the good CBL dancers were in demand.

Duncan’s excellent music got a large number of muggles up dancing later, which meant that a fair bit of my attention had to be on keeping my partner out of danger rather than thinking which flashy move to do next.

Tumbao, the Scottish rueda champions, did a spectacular display. After that quite a few of the dancers started leaving, and I could feel myself beginning to lose the plot, so I left and got to bed at a relatively sensible 2am.