Burrito West Blog

The 5 week salsa course Peter and took ended last week so this week we decided to go out to a salsa club to see if we could hold our own yet. This meant we had to peel ourselves off our couch on a Friday night and go out into the world.

We went to the Polish Hall which has 2 floors of salsa on Friday nights. We arrived as they were finishing the complimentary lesson - it was reassuring to see a ton of people there for the lesson, meant there were lots of relatively new salseros, which made it less intimidating. The night started off okay - but as it got more and more crowded, it just started to be annoying. Not enough space to do much, constantly getting slammed by other dancers. And we're used to dancing 6 different dances - if you go out ballroom dancing, you'll be doing foxtrot, tango, waltz, swing, chacha, rhumba - so I found it kind of boring to be doing 90% salsa with the occasional bachatta and very rare chacha. (Also, I hate bachatta - witness the terribleness.)

We were just about to leave when we saw people going downstairs (we had been told the downstairs wouldn't be open that night). We decided to check it out. It was cool and refreshing and uncrowded and we sat and watched people dancing for a bit. I liked the music better and it was neat to see guys dancing on their own - as though there were there to dance rather than skeeve on ladies. Cuban salsa is different from the salsa we've learned, so we were just watching. This one guy with crazy moves asked me to dance - that was an adventure, but it went well! When he handed me back to Peter he said "your girlfriend dances like a latina" which I believe is a pretty nice compliment for a super white girl like myself.

So, we ended on a high note and perhaps discovered that we like cuban salsa more than latin salsa. We'll have to ask our instructor to show us the difference one day.

Sometimes it pays to leave your couch. Not always, but sometimes. =)