Hyperreal

This has to have been my best night of dancing ever.

What are the ingredients of a good night… As before it’s the venue, the music, the dancers, and me. Of course, it’s not in that order of importance.

But before getting into that, let me talk you through the night. I turned up at about quarter to 9, I had get crunched my way through a lovely blanket of fresh snow, so I needed warmed up. I was glad then I managed to get a couple of dances in before the “fun” class…

• Contact-less mambo steps. This was leading by posture, eyes, and physicality. The idea was that you could shift your weight and the girl could follow, then by maintaining a connection in the eyes and such, you could step forward and the girl would almost automatically step back. Then your could step back and the girl would follow… Do that a few times, then one time literally draw the girl in using an imagined thread that hold you together. Once she’s drawn in, take both her hands and step her back.
• Break-though – the first part of an octopus. The thing here was for the guy to stay side-on to the girl (RHS towards the girl) so that you could lead her back in a cross-body lead kind of thing…
• Cross-body lead kind of thing. Lead the girl with both hands across in front of you, R-L, snapping her round to face. To go back to the beginning again, just let go and assuming you’ve got a connection established you can straight into the mambo steps, otherwise, use weight changes to re-establish the necessary connection.

Simple, straight-forward stuff. Later in the freestyle I didn’t try the cross-body lead, but of course I did lots of breakthroughs… As for the contact-less leading… Tried something similar once or twice though on one occasion I couldn’t persuade the girl to come back towards me when I tried to lead her in. She insisted I went to her! (Well, what can I say? She was worth it… )

The freestyle was interrupted briefly at about a quarter to 12 to wish happy birthday to two individuals whose birthdays it was yesterday and today. (Just so happens one of those individuals was me… ) So we got “Happy Birthday to You!” sung to us, and then we got a birthday dance with lots of girls round me in a circle. I danced a few moves with each of them before moving on to the next. Didn’t manage to get all the way round the circle before the song ended though, so sorry if I missed you.

There been some debate over how a birthday dance circle should operate… The one I’ve seen before worked the way I did it, the guy going round the circle taking each girl in turn, but I’m told it’s more normal for the girls to do the taking over from each other without me fetching and despatching them… Not that it’s important…

After that the dancing went on until 3 am, although quite a few folks left between 12 and 1, there was a hard-core group that stayed until the bitter end. Interestingly enough, I think that of the maybe 2 dozen or so people still there at the end, all of them are on the Ceroc Scotland forum. I wonder what that says…. (*whisper*nutters*whisper*)

(Also have to say that depending where you were it could be a bit crowded earlier on in the night. Think the best place to dance was up at the back, where it was less crowded, and as the music was quieter, it was also easier to talk to your partner. Things got much easier after about 1 am anyway.)

After we got kicked out most of us went off for “noodles”, though a wee confusion meant some of us went to the Noodle Bar, while the majority went over the road to another place for “breakfast”. I was with the Noodle Bar group (had some really yummy Thai Sweet and Spicy Chicken, with Boiled Rice. Mmmm….) After that the Edinburgh folks I was with went off home, and I went across and joined the others for a bit more banter.

Got to say, this has been one of my best ever birthdays, and it’s hardly started!

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Let’s go back to the venue, music, dancers, & me stuff…

I’ll miss the HWH. Although it has its faults, it’s such a great place. It’s big and roomy, with a rather good floor, (if you excuse the fact it slopes and has a hole in the middle of it!) plus it’s very local for me. The GUU in comparison won’t be quite the same. It’s not as big, and it just lacks that grandness of scale that HWH has. On the plus side, it is even more local for me, there’ll be two rooms, and the bar policy seems to be more relaxed – though the security staff do get a bit obnoxious when the night’s over and they’re trying to clear the place out.

But I hope that after the HWH is renovated we’ll be able to use it again.

The music through the night was pretty excellent too. Sure, some things that weren’t to my taste were played, but not too much, and it was never too long before something else good came on. Thanks to all the DJs for playing so many of my favourite songs (either deliberately, or not?).

Dance Demon played the song I mentioned earlier in the week, “Voodoo Child” by Rogue Traders. Thanks for doing that. The Tramp played PEBs, “Don’t Phunk with my Heart” for me, and I know that Tiggerbabe tried to play “This is my DJ” for me, but even if she didn’t manage, she did play lots of other stuff I loved dancing to.

On to the dancers… As I said before, it’s the dancers that make the night, and I don’t care what anyone else says, Scotland has the best dancers anywhere. And Glasgow has the best of the best. Oh, that includes the visitors from elsewhere in Scotland of course!

There were a few dancers I made sure to have lots of dances with. A few more got two dances. There’s probably some girls I either didn’t manage to dance with, or only got one dance with that I’d liked to have had more with.

If we can pretend that tonight was actually the start of the new year then I hope 2006 continues in this fashion, as I had some fantastic dances with girls that I want to spend the whole of the coming year, and more, dancing with.

Without mentioning names, I want to give a big thanks to my Filthy Gorgeous partner, and my proto-Tango partner. I’m sure we’d make great Tango partners if we could just stop grinning at each other so much.

I danced with a few beginners. All quite good, but a couple of them were really something special. One girl who claims she’s never danced before, and has only been doing Ceroc for a couple of months, is a better follower than some of the folks I’ve danced with who’ve been doing it for years. The other wasn’t quite as amazing as that (but I don’t think the first one is telling the whole truth about her dance experience.) She’s been dancing a similar period, but again is better than some dancers I know with a fair number of months more experience.

I look forward to dancing with them more in the future.

Last thing to talk about before all the thanks is me, and my dancing. I thought I did really well. Sometimes it takes dancing with unfamiliar partners to bring something extra out in you. Perhaps because they are not as familiar with my lead, they do different “wrong” things, which leads me down unfamiliar paths into exciting new territory. When I say “wrong”, of course, I don’t really mean wrong, because as we all know, it’s never the woman’s fault…

Anyway, I enjoyed every single one of my dances. I did begin to feel a bit tired, and the muscles in my back can get a bit sore, so perhaps later on my dancing wasn’t all it could have been, but I hope you all enjoyed dancing with me.

Now that I think about it, I hardly got a chance most of the night to sit out for any length of time before I was asked to dance. Only by being “deep” in conversation, or going outside to hide, did I manage to get any sort of rest. I guess the fact that after midnight everyone in the hall knew my name, and that it was my birthday, might have made it easier for them to ask me for a dance. Dunno.

So we get to the thanks and stuff…

I was worried I had over-hyped this party to myself, what with the extended hours, it being my birthday, and all the great dancers I knew would be there, but the funny thing is that it turned out to be a better night than I had expected. How about that?

Thanks again to the DJs for some great music, to Franck and his team (especially Sheena) for putting on a great night, and once more, thanks to all the wonderful dancers.

I had hoped to get to chat more with some of the guys, but with so many demanding women it was hard to get more than a “hi!” before being dragged away… But a big “Cheers!” to all the guys too.

Hope you all have a great new year (especially if you’re dancing in the new year) and I’ll see you all soon in 2006.