Saturday, April 16, 2005
Salsa
My wife and I went to take our first examination in salsa dancing yesterday. The medal tests are basically blackmailed onto the students, but to be honest, it was a really good evening.
The medal tests were taking place for salsa and line dancing, both of which our teacher teaches. The line dancers were quite impressive, doing at least three dances each, and quite a few doing the dance on their own. Considerably nerve wracking I would have thought.
Having said that, I don't think line dancing is anything like as nice a looking dance as salsa. There were another couple from the advanced salsa group dancing for their silver medal and they looked excellent - really put us beginners to shame.
My wife and I were both nervous. For me it was more the being-watched than the examination. Scary to have 30 people all staring at you (well, we danced 2 couples at a time, so I guess on average half of them were looking at you). I thought we danced pretty well, though, and once we got into freestyle-dance bit we were improvising dance routines using some of the more complicated moves we'd already learnt, but didn't need for the simple exam routine.
I'm fairly sure we've passed, but I'm interested to see the breakdown of our pass - we were scored on general confidence, style, technique, rythmn and potential. I think the rest of our beginner's salsa group did really well too, and I'm sure we all passed.
The evening went on until about 10:30, so we missed out on our usual chip-shop chips afterwards. So, we're having some tonight before going to a celtic music concert in Wimborne.
See? I'm not always grumpy!
The medal tests were taking place for salsa and line dancing, both of which our teacher teaches. The line dancers were quite impressive, doing at least three dances each, and quite a few doing the dance on their own. Considerably nerve wracking I would have thought.
Having said that, I don't think line dancing is anything like as nice a looking dance as salsa. There were another couple from the advanced salsa group dancing for their silver medal and they looked excellent - really put us beginners to shame.
My wife and I were both nervous. For me it was more the being-watched than the examination. Scary to have 30 people all staring at you (well, we danced 2 couples at a time, so I guess on average half of them were looking at you). I thought we danced pretty well, though, and once we got into freestyle-dance bit we were improvising dance routines using some of the more complicated moves we'd already learnt, but didn't need for the simple exam routine.
I'm fairly sure we've passed, but I'm interested to see the breakdown of our pass - we were scored on general confidence, style, technique, rythmn and potential. I think the rest of our beginner's salsa group did really well too, and I'm sure we all passed.
The evening went on until about 10:30, so we missed out on our usual chip-shop chips afterwards. So, we're having some tonight before going to a celtic music concert in Wimborne.
See? I'm not always grumpy!
