Hyperreal

Wooo!!!! This salsa is getting to be fun!!!!

This week was a lot more fun than last week!! We didn’t actually do very much more, but what we did do allowed us to go through a few moves in a sequence until it actually felt like we were dancing! Then we got to do Rueda!

We started with some simple Salsa steps, Ceroc Essentials style, just to warm us up and get us moving… We were introduced to this weird concept of moving our hips in a “ocho” – a figure of eight. (Actually, I just thought it was more like a simple circular motion, but I’m not going to argue… ) Then moving our shoulders – again, pretty much identical to what I’ve done in Ceroc, complete with a shake out at the end…

We then went straight onto Salsa, leaving Merengue and Bachata until later…

We didn’t really do much more than we did last week – Guapea (stepping in and out), Enchufe, and Enchufe doble… On my wee card which tells me the names of the moves I have “enchufe doble y quedate“, but I don’t know if we did the “y quedata” bit or not…

Most of the class was based around what you could do from the enchufe… This move is a bit like a travelling return combined with a first move – you end up in a closed position. (The doble version you just reverse the return, and so is much more boring, unless it’s the “quedata” that matters… ) From the closed position you can either just do a “Dile que no” which takes you back to the facing basic position, or you can do a “Exhibela” where first you step forward and lead the girl back, then you turn and step the other way, leading the girl forward, for another step then you turn her clockwise as you turn back and step back towards her and she comes back into the closed position again.

You can do the exhibela any number of times, or you can do the dile que no to go back to the basic move or straight into another enchufe…

We were almost taught a “Exhibela Ronde” (which has very little to do with what I think of when I think of a ronde, which involves big sweeps of the foot on the floor) but although we were shown it once, it seemed that the teacher then decided we weren’t ready for it.

So, we have a routine that we can repeat and go round in circles… Talking of which…

Rueda!!! While teaching us the exhibela the teacher had moved us from a rabble in front of the stage to a big circle on the floor (with an unfortunate pillar in the middle of it.) This helped us get the lines of the move right, making sure we stayed in our own line, and also allowed the teacher to get us to add some style to our movement.

Of course, once we’re in a circle, it’s only natural we do rueda… So… we were shown a simple “Dame“, transferring our partner off to the left on the end of a dile que no, and going straight into a closed position with the next girl round. From there, any number of exhibelas, maybe a normal dile que no, back through an enchufe to go back to the closed position, and this time we’d likely do a dame on the end of the next dile que no.

So, we were really dancing a rueda, with our teacher calling out the moves. Got to say it was fun!!!!

But then it was time for some merengue… We did the turn, the “belly button” turn, the walk-around and the windmill moves that we had been taught last week, but this week we added a “archie spin” style turn, in that as we turned the girl CW, we’d turn ACW under the arch of out L-R handhold. (I know why the archie spin is called that, but isn’t it nice it’s done under an arch. ) So, the turn is a simple slow CW turn of the girl. The belly button involved taking the girl’s RH down round in front of her belly-button (thus the name) and then round her back to meet up with your RH which then continues to take her hand CW into a low then a high turn – quite similar to a move I’ve done loads in Ceroc, but here it’s much slower… After you finish the last turn transfer her RH back into your LH.

The windmill is the move I described last week as very like a pretzel… Start double-handed, LH high, RH low and turn ACW to come back and face lady. (You’ll be in RH nelson.) Now lead the girl into a CW turn and when she’s got her back to you, turn so you’re back to back… Both keep turning to face until you’re in a LH nelson, then ACW turn out of it to face.

I can’t remember if we did this last week, but on the simple walk around we added a wee CW turn for the girl at the end…

Oh, we did another cheeky we move where we lead the girl to our side and duck under her arm to look behind her (or more specifically, to look at her behind) and “check her out.”

And then we’d done enough Merengue! On to the last track of the night (”the teacher’s track” ) which is where we do Bachata… So, lots of stepping to sides, plus some arm actions to go along with the lyrics, and then “a-a-a-a-azúcar!” With lots of hip rolling and thrusting going on…

And that was it!

Again this week, although leading and following was mentioned, it was never clear that the girls should be led rather than just do the moves as called. In the rueda a few girls complimented me on how well I was doing, but I didn’t see myself doing anything different from the other leads, so I can only assume that not only was I getting the moves right (like most others) I was actually putting some measure of lead into them.

Before the rueda I only had one partner and she wasn’t at all interested in waiting for my lead and would step though the move no matter what I was trying to do. Other partners later were never so much of a problem.

As well as style tips on the exhibela, we were told we should be looking at our partner, making eye contact, though not in a creepy way. All the usual kind of stuff…

I had a really good night, got much more into the rhythm of the music which might as well not have been there last week for all I was listening to it. It took a while at the start, but by concentrating on “1, 2, 3, –”, I found the steps much easier to do.

I could really get into this Merengue and Salsa stuff….

Roll on next Thursday!!!

(But see you at the BFG tomorrow first!!!!! )