Tuesday, June 20, 2006

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.)

Friday, June 16, 2006

Flying lessons

Andy and Lucy will be doing a lifts, dips and drops workshop on July 29th. If it includes the aeroplane impression Lucy did last night it should be exciting stuff. Unfortunately I'll be in Ireland (fifty miles from the nearest salsa).

There's a whole series of workshops coming up, and amazingly my hectic schedule seems to have space for the advanced one on 15 July. Would have liked to do the aerial stuff as well, though - I think we may have to book a private lesson.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

La Rueda

Kate is hoping to run a new la rueda course soon. You don't need any experience of la rueda but you do need to be a competent salsa dancer. It will probably be a five week course, with the first hour for rueda beginners and the second hour for improvers. (I think I'm a deteriorater rather than an improver - in other words I used to know quite a lot of rueda but I've forgotten most of it.)

I went on the course she did a couple of years ago which was excellent. We learnt a lot of cool Cuban moves and we all got to try calling the moves, swapping roles (ie women leading) and two-couple rueda. Kate's style of rueda is fast, lively and a lot of fun.

An improver I know told me that he found the rueda session she did at Bar Risa recently had been really useful for his dancing overall - it teaches you to dance dynamically and to pay attention to the rhythm, and quite a lot of the moves can be used in ordinary dancing.

If you're interested, email her - it'll only happen if enough people express interest.

La Rueda

Kate is hoping to run a new la rueda course soon. You don't need any experience of la rueda but you do need to be a competent salsa dancer.

I went on the one she did a couple of years ago which was excellent. We learnt a lot of cool Cuban moves and we all got to try calling the moves, swapping roles (ie women leading) and two-couple rueda. Kate's style of rueda is fast, lively and a lot of fun.

An improver I know told me that he found the rueda session she did at Bar Risa recently had been really useful for his dancing overall - it teaches you to dance dynamically and to pay attention to the rhythm, and quite a lot of the moves can be used in ordinary dancing.

If you're interested, email her - it'll only happen if enough people express interest.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Fiesta Havana

Helena and Nicolai are teaching this Wednesday (14th) at Fiesta Havana in Bristol; encouragingly Stevie has passed on comments about the length and difficulty of sequences to all his teachers, so the classes should be more useful for everyone. Helena and Nicolai teach particularly nice moves: the moves themselves aren't difficult but they are unusual, and the length of the sequences meant there was too much to take in (for a slow learner like me, anyway). So I'd be looking forward to it, except that I've got to work this Wednesday night : (

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Men who salsa

There's an amusing thread on the Salsajive forum about the types of men who salsa:

Type one: The shy ones who like a structure and stick carefully to what they have learnt and do jobs like computing. They feel comfortable relating to women without having to engage in conversation. They often get quite reasonable at dancing because they work hard at their moves but never take risks.
Type two: The extraverts who like to have a good time and enjoy salsa being a bit different. They like to experiment with moves and have a laugh. They can be a real pleasure to dance with.
Type three: image conscious, they know they look good and tend to dance mainly with the attractive women and do lots of close in moves or extravagant footwork.

Not sure which category I fall into - I probably used to be 1 but am now more 2 (I'm more of an extrovert dancing salsa than I am the rest of the time).

One of the posts in the thread also mentions Type 4:

Type four:- Those who see salsa purely as a means to get up close and personal with a girl... so they go to a few beginners classes then describe themselves as experts - and insist on picking on unsuspecting beginners and throwing them around the dance floor (usually off time) - before throwing them into a dramtic dip whereby she bangs her head and see's the light so runs off to warn all her friends! lol

I think we all know the kind of person they mean - although there are only a handful in Cardiff they've managed to put quite a few beginner women off salsa (and they give the rest of us older men a bad name).

Friday, June 09, 2006

Sweat

I need to get some more obedient transport.

For example, I really did mean to go to the Spanish conversation group at Chapter last night, but for some reason my car went straight ahead - towards Bar Risa - instead of turning left.

I haven't been to one of Andy's classes for a while. This one was really good (one woman described it as 'brilliant') - a series of relatively easy moves (I already knew most of them, but there were also some nice ones which I'd forgotten) linked together with variations.

I'm used to venues that feel warm once you start dancing, but at Bar Risa the heat hit you when you walked in the door. Peter reckoned it was the hottest he'd ever been at salsa. Apparently Andy asked them to turn the air conditioning up but it was already going full blast. You can tell it was designed for a sedentary audience and not for dancers.

Despite the heat it was a good night, highlights including one woman who's improved out of all recognition since I last danced with her a few months ago. Plenty of other nice people to dance with, and when I fancied a rest there was good dancing to watch as well.

This morning I made a firm decision that after a hot and sweaty night I should cycle to work the easy 25-minute way. But after a couple of hundred yards my bike decided it would rather do the 25 kilometre hilly route. Getting there was fine but riding home after a night's salsa and a day in a hot office was less like fun.

Andy will apparently be putting more details of his workshops on his site this weekend. And Kate tells me she has plans for some rueda workshops which should be good.

Monday, June 05, 2006

The curse of Llancarfan...

...strikes again. Last time it was a broken gear cable, this time it was the ford wot did it. Getting wet was refreshing - it was a hot hilly ride - but landing on my hip wasn't. I was limping by the evening and I wondered whether going to La Tasca for Natalie and Lisa's party was a good idea. But I didn't even notice it while I was dancing.

It was a good turnout and the 80s fancy dress was entertaining. (When's the Lisa and Natalie Workout Video coming out?). Sorry for not joining in but as I explained I'm old enough that people might think I really dress that way.

I had planned to be sensible and leave at midnight, but I was only just getting warmed up by then. As I changed my shoes to go at 1am a Spanish woman asked me what I was doing as she couldn't believe I was leaving so early.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Andy's workshops

Andy's Saturday workshops are starting on 17 June - no exact details as yet, check his website (where you can also sign up to his mailing list). Hope I'm not going to miss too many of them - I can't do 17 or 24 June and I really wanted to do the advanced ones.

Moe

Got a week off (having worked the previous two bank holidays), so the plan was to spend as much time dancing as possible, starting on Sunday. So it was a bit frustrating to be sitting in stationary traffic on the M4 watching the time tick away. It took three and a half hours to get moving, and after a rapid change of clothes I ended up in the Wharf at ten thirty. Four dances in quick succession and all the tension had disappeared - it's amazing how effective salsa is for that.

Stuck in another traffic queue last night going into Bristol. (If you're planning a trip to Fiesta Havana soon, you might be better off going down the M50 and through Clifton.) So I missed the beginning of Moe and Helena's class, but soon got into it.

Unfortunately Moe's acquired a dose of routineitis since I last saw him teach - the sequence had far too many moves in it. He had a rationale for this - the usual "you won't remember all this, so just take what you like from the sequence". Trouble is, if you can't remember the whole sequence even as you're doing it you might not even have learnt the moves you'd want to remember. It was useful, though, as it reminded me of some moves I'd forgotten.

Instead of an advanced class we got rueda, and he teaches it very well. I ended up in the inner circle, and was a bit startled when at one 'dame' someone from the outer circle attempted to pinch the woman I was heading for. Moe did a funk lineup later, and then a spectacular display which ended up with some amusing salsa trio.

For the free dancing, the music was great as usual. I don't know if summer has anything to do with it, but I seem to have got my groove back after losing it for a few months: I'm finding myself having a lot more fun and improvising more, rather than feeling as if I'm just going through the motions.

But I'm going to be a bit controversial here and say that (though I danced with a couple of really good, responsive dancers, and had a lot of fun dancing with some charming women) the overall standard is higher in Cardiff. I wouldn't have said this a year ago, but since then a lot of good women dancers have come onto the scene here. (And several women who were OK dancers have developed into good dancers.) Offended Bristolians, feel free to add your comments...

(Last thing - what a difference working airconditioning makes. This was the first time for weeks that I've had a night's dancing without overheating.)