Good nights

I was discussing with Debbie (while dancing at O'Neills) what makes a good night. Basically you need an evening with plenty of dances where the right people are available while the right tracks are playing.

So you've got a better chance of having a really good night at Bar Risa (if you can handle the heat). But I did score one bullseye last night, managing to grab the most exciting dancer (Teresa) for the best track of the evening, the Go-go's This will give you a bad head (I think there's some subtle Spanish idiom I'm missing in that translation). It's a cracking track anyway but I was doubly inspired because the last time I heard it I was watching Moe doing a stunning salsa trio to it.

On a Thursday a lot of the music's not exactly new (Andy's been playing Tu Cariñito ever since I started going to his classes nearly five years ago) but it's almost all good to dance to, from Colombian boogaloo to the faster and more dynamic Cuban stuff. And almost all the best dancers go to Risa: the other week I went home after a busy night's dancing and realised I hadn't even got round to asking a couple of my favourite dancers.

It's not just about who's technically perfect though: some people may not get every complex lead but they're great to dance with because you can make a real connection, improvise - in fact, what you can do with them is play. It was one dance like that a couple of months ago in Que Pasa which got me back into really having fun with my dancing again (I had fun with the same dancer in Risa last week as well).

Andy and Lucy's June and July workshops are online at last - highly recommended.

(BTW the links for the songs are to iTunes - they work for me in Firefox and Safari but not in Explorer. If they don't work for you, the first reference is to Los Van Van's Esto Te Pone La Cabeza Mala and the second is to a track by Puerto Rican Power.)