Cuba Norte

A good week’s dancing last week: on Monday John played good music all night, I finally got my lead working again three weeks after getting back from holiday (it’s frightening how quickly it deteriorates without practice) and Number One Dance Partner was on form.

Most of the week I was up in Glasgow for a conference and on Clare’s recommendation I went to Cuba Norte on Thursday to try and learn some Cuban-style salsa from Farah and Duncan.

It was obvious that Farah is a remarkable dancer right from her graceful and sophisticated footwark warmup. But unlike some ‘natural’ dancers she can really teach. This was the first really good Cuban salsa lesson I’ve had, and I learnt some stuff that I could actually reproduce on the dancefloor. Only thing that was a bit odd was that we didn’t change partners at all in the first lesson.

In the second class, though Duncan was only teaching a single named turn pattern – setenta something or other – I struggled a bit, and had to admit to a series of tolerant and helpful partners in turn that I wasn’t actually a Cuban dancer. Rueda was good fun, though I didn’t know a lot of the moves.

I hadn’t slept very well for the previous couple of nights, and by the time I got round to a (CBL) dance I was losing my sense of rhythm and my lead: to be honest I was rubbish. So I cut my losses and had an early night.