After having done a good morning's work, I decided to pop by the salsa classes in town on Saturday afternoon.
Unusually, both Helena and Nicolai were there and while the latter beguiled the first class, I siezed the opportunity to catch up with Helena. It's not something I get to do very often, maybe once a year, and we did whilst she was making up for a serious lack of sugar.
It didn't last because soon it came time for the students to partner up, and the class was a person short. The look on poor Helena's face - her hot chocolate had just arrived, and she knew that it would at best, be a 'tepid chocolate' by the time she was able to acquaint it with her taste-buds, caused me gallantly to volunteer instead (and partially redress the gender imbalance).
My reward was being invited to join the more third class; you can tell these participants are much more intent - they all pack a change of shoes. I felt this nagging itch, it felt a little like one was being thrown to the wolves, only friendlier(!) and to music.
Now this was the first time I'd been an advanced learner in ages, and nearly as long since spring-cleaning my dance vocabulary to just the most polymorphic of elements. It was a shock to the system, I can confess: things were happening thick and fast, and in the back of my mind I was thinking, 'we're practicing this right now at 150bpm, how on Earth am I going to get this working at 190bpm?'
So I took a student's prerogative and I cheated. Unashamedly.
After years of dancing the way I do, I'd found myself lately peering over the fence and wondering how well the 'non-me' salseros were experiencing salsa. The teaching was good, spiced up by some badinage between old friends, and sprinkled with proclamations of "my partner wants a new partner" (much to my then-victim's embarrasment); the afternoon passed by most entertainingly. But fun though as it was, I'm happy with my decision, and happier still with my curiousity assuaged.
Yeo Loo Yen
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