Monday, July 17, 2006

Good week

How do women stay so good without practising? My lead starts deteriorating after a week or so, but on Thursday night I had a terrific dance with Gail who hasn't been around for months. Then on Saturday I did Andy's advanced workshop with Sarah who hadn't danced for at least six weeks and it was like she'd never been away. That was a good workshop, with some really nifty moves, but it was definitely advanced: I felt better about struggling when a much better dancer than me admitted during the break that he was finding it 'challenging'.

Just heard from Andy that Sunday at the Wharf is being replaced from 30 July by a night in Newport, at Burleigh Hall, Llanthewy Way. Shame - the Wharf was handy for me but Newport is a bit too far for a Sunday night.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Changes

Didn't sleep much last Thursday night. Hardly surprising after dancing with some lovely dancers, including the best dancer in Cardiff (she's far too good for me really) and finishing off with an exhilarating fast rueda led by Gorka.

Changes in Cardiff? No more Wharf, sadly - I really enjoy Sunday nights. As a consolation there is now free dancing on Fridays (though only from 7.30-9) after Nathalie's classes at St Peter's Rugby Club off Newport Road.

But I'm going to try to make the effort to get to Swansea instead on the rare occasions I have any energy on a Friday night: I've been told by a reliable source that for serious rueda I need to go to Gorka's classes, which run from 7.30 at Cafe Mambo in Kingsway.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Sabado

Salsa Celtica seem to be flavour of the month lately so I thought it was worth going to see them on Saturday. Not many dancers there (I believe there may have been some kind of sporting event earlier that evening) and the band had been delayed by a burst tyre on the drive down.

Maybe they didn't have time for a soundcheck: the sound balance was really rough in the first half, too loud and painfully trebly. You can't fault the musicianship, and the fusion of celtic and Latin music worked a lot better than I expected – to listen to. But the dancing wasn't that great. When the tempo was right they were fine, but that only applied to a few of the tracks: the rest were either chachacha (not really my thing) or just that bit too fast to dance to comfortably except with a really light and experienced partner.

Thinking it was just me having a bad night (everyone else seemed to have enjoyed it) I nearly didn't go to La Tasca afterwards. But actually that was great: laid-back, nice people - though none of the usual Spanish/Latino crew - and consistently danceable music. I danced with a couple of women who'd been at the SC gig and enjoyed myself a lot more, even though the lack of space and the need to protect the partner from flying elbows meant I couldn't do anything fancy.

In fact that's probably why La Tasca is so much fun if you go there in the right mood: everyone knows there's no space to show off so you can just get into relaxed, easy dancing. I had intended to leave by midnight, but I didn't actually manage to drag myself away for another hour.