Brum

Got sent to Coventry with work yesterday and had to travel up on Sunday night. This time I managed to get them to book me into a hotel in Birmingham so that I could check out the salsa in G2, which was just around the corner.

I was in two minds as to whether to go to the class or just turn up later for the free dancing (only £2 after 9). I went to the class and was glad I did. Michael's teaching was very clear and good-humoured and he knows the importance of repetition. He started off with some nice footwork and spent enought time on it for us to get the moves (rather than just doing a footwork warmup as an exercise in speed-learning which leaves half the class behind). His style of partner dancing is exactly the sort I'd like to learn: sophisticated but follower-focused rather than 'look at me' narcissistic.

I don't know if this applies to Birmingham generally, but this class and the free dancing would have had one big advantage over Cardiff from a women's point of few: all the men seemed reasonably presentable, unlike some of the odd people women in Cardiff have to avoid. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to dance with someone if you don't like his dubious motives/lack of social skills/strange aroma/violent leading (delete where necessary). Maybe if more people realised this, some of the stranger and creepier individuals would stop coming, or at least learn to be civil. (Mind you, if you're looking for strange men try Pontins - the first class I went to I thought it was a Munsters' convention!)

There weren't a whole lot of people there for the free dancing, but I got asked for a dance early on and the only person to turn me down had a broken toe (best excuse I've heard yet). Bloody hot in the club though! I didn't find all the music easy to dance to, but at least it wasn't the same old stuff.

A couple of nice dances but not a lot of eye contact. It's always a bit odd when you dance with someone, you think they're not impressed because you don't get any eye contact, and at the end they're very friendly and positive. I think this varies from region to region - a friend of mine went back to her home town, danced with the usual eye contact, and was told (imagine this in a Shropshire accent): "You don't do that looking thing, do you? We don't do that here."