Hyperreal

Glasgow party tonight at the GUU… First one with two rooms…

I had a really good night. Maybe my best party night this year…

When I arrived I was a little distressed to find out the party was upstairs – not in the main hall. The upstairs room isn’t as big, and no-where near as nice as the usual place… But then there was the second room, so I figured that would make things better…

I had expected the second room to actually be more of a nuisance than a benefit… A second room splits the dancers which means you’re less likely to get the dances with the folks you want, when you want. The other problem I anticipated was having to spend time climbing the stairs, as I expected we’d be upstairs and downstairs. I’m glad in a way that we were all on the one level as it meant it was easy to pop across to the other room, maybe even bumping into a friend or two on the way…

But, yeah, being in a smaller room was a problem – it got fairly crowded at times… The blues room helped a bit, though there weren’t actually many people in it. Maybe Glasgow isn’t quite ready for a full-on blues room yet?

Could it be that the biggest impact of the smaller room though, wasn’t, as you might expect, that it was too crowded, with lots of collisions, but that a lot of people just weren’t dancing very much? I sometimes wonder whether the folks who come and sit and chat most of the night are actually desperately wanting to dance, but don’t have the nerve to ask anyone, so they just sit there with their pals…

My own usual behaviour is that I’ll tend to ask only people I know quite well to dance, though when I’m not on “home” territory I do have to become more adventurous and risk asking folks I don’t know. Sometimes that leads to some great dances, sometimes to awful ones, but I’ve gone and taken the risk and got a dance. And even the few times I’ve been turned down, there’s always someone else keen to dance, so I’m not too bothered…

I’ll dance with anyone who asks me. Really. (I was asked to dance by a couple of beginners last night, one of whom said I was a wonderful dancer. ) So if you were one of the girls sitting at the sides wonder why you never got asked, maybe you should try asking…

There is another set of dancers that I don’t ask to dance very often, even if I do know them, and they are the ones who I don’t think I can give a good dance to. Either because I think they are too good, and I’m not up to their standard, but, or maybe also, when I dance with them they don’t seem to be enjoying dancing with me. Dancing on my own can be fun, but so much of the reward of a dance is seeing that the person you’re dancing with is also having fun.

Anyway, I don’t know why I started talking about that now… Ah, I remember now… People who didn’t seem to be dancing much.

I guess another factor was that I’m told there were lots of extra women… I don’t tend to notice that so much, though I was certainly in quite high demand through the night, but I was still able to take some rests now and then…

The evening didn’t actually start well for me. I managed to just miss the “fun” class, which is a shame, as I had wanted to do it, but I was up dancing as soon as it was over. I enjoyed my first dance, but by about the third in a row, I just didn’t feel comfortable. I wasn’t connecting with my partners much and it all felt very mechanical. Fortunately I then had a couple of dances with two of my favourite dancers and that seemed to turn things around. From then on the night just seemed to get better and better. My dancing maybe wasn’t at it’s best, but I was happy enough with how I was performing.

As I said, there weren’t many folks in the blues room – when I first went over to check it out there were exactly zero couples dancing. It started getting a wee bit busier soon after that, but I don’t think I saw more than maybe half a dozen couples dancing in there all night. I had a few dances there, but given that most of the dancers I wanted to dance with were in the main room, and I was much more into that music, I didn’t linger long… My only regret was that I didn’t manage to get a dance with the DJ…

Back in the main room, the music was pretty much just what I was looking for. If there’s one thing that I’ll like about the two-rooms arrangement is that the main room will be able to have more up-beat music right through, and not need to get more bluesy later in the night.

I had lots of great dances with lots of my favourite dancers – who could ask for more? The night went on for a long time, but I could have danced for a while longer, though this morning I had a bit of a dance hangover – still not totally recovered…

Strangest sight of the night were a couple who were doing ballroom dancing in amongst everyone else. There were doing some cha-cha, ballroom jive and rumba. No idea how good they actually were, but they stood out from everyone else…

Afterwards a bunch of us went to the Noodle Bar in town for food. When you’re dancing all night, sometimes you don’t get a chance to chat so much to folks, so this was a good chance to relax and get to know some folks better. (Note to self: stop buying the Thai sweet and spicy chicken – it’s very hot, and without a knife the chicken bits are too big, so you always end up taking too large mouthfuls!)

It did mean a late night for me… Which is why I’m posting this on Sunday afternoon – ok, evening… But I think I’ve said everything I need to say about the night…

Thanks to everyone for the dances, sorry to those that I missed. At least three ladies were on their way out the door as I was getting round to dancing with them. (Maybe they saw me coming!)

Thanks to Linda for the cake, it was just what I needed – I was starving!

Cheers!

(BTW, anyone want a lollypop?)