The Bliss of Cubana

How many moments do you have in your life when you actually have that feeling of "bliss"? When you know you are happy and nothing exists outside of that moment?

I have had a few in my life and if you just muttered "Lucky duck!" you are absolutely right. One recent moment that I want to share with you happened a couple of months ago in "Cubana".

In case you don't know it, Cubana is a Tapas Bar in Sheffield. This is where I used to go for my dance classes. I learnt to dance salsa there, and also learnt to dance Kizomba. At one point it became such an integral part of my life that I could not imagine a Tuesday night without Kizomba at Cubana. If I started driving from my home without thinking about it, my car would drive to Cubana on autopilot!

Of course, I must give part of the credit to my dance teacher Richard Chongtham who taught the classes and DJ'ed the after-class socials. The Cubana provided a nice backdrop but Richard made it come alive with his classes and his music. The lovely people populating the dance floor helped a lot as well!

So, the moment. This was one of these Tuesday nights when I was there after the class enjoying the social. At this precise moment, I was plopped down on one of the sofas like it was own my living room and watching the dancers dance. I had had some dances already and I knew I would have some more soon. There were my lovely friends around me and my favourite DJ was playing Kizomba music (Shhh..don't tell Richard, he gets airs!)



At that moment if you had asked me to rank my life on the happiness scale, I would have put it at precisely 100%.

Now, Cubana and RCDance (Richard's company) are changing it up. Cubana will do something different on Tuesday nights and Richard will hold his classes someplace else. Nothing lasts forever in this ever changing world.

But I have the memories of the wonderful moments, that one and a lot more moments in Cubana. So, thanks to the Cubana management (they are genuinely nice people) and thanks to Richard. And, of course, to my dance family!



Here's to the moments of bliss and the people who contribute to them!

Why everyone loves a Salsera

Ever since I started to learn salsa I have been meeting so many new people. By the very nature of salsa you get to meet and greet more girls than guys. In the class you dance with them and after the class you want to practice with them. When I was good enough to go to the socials I met even more. So, in the course of less than a year I have had the good fortune to meet many remarkable women.

There are some things common to all salsera's no matter what the age, background, colour etc. I wanted to write a post on the salsera's but I didn't know how to go about it. I was worried that it might come across as cheesy or sleazy or even sycophantic but then while browsing about salsa I came across this fantastic article on that very topic. Although the article is about "Why you should date a salsera" I think it's an excellent character sketch of a salsera and I am really glad that I found it. Now, I don't have to write it and the author has done a much better job than I could hope to do. In addition to being a better writer, she's a salsera herself and as such has insights that I would not be privy to.

As you can guess by now I really love this article and would like all salsa people to read it. So, with that much ado, here's the link:
https://cairogypsy.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/date-a-girl-who-dances-salsa

Salsa is a woman!

My reasons why I think salsa is female:

1. Has various moods and speeds. 
2. Is sexy and spicy with a lot of glamour. 
3. You need to find the right music for her. 
4. Takes work to first get familiar with her. 
5. Is complex but fun if you love her enough to put in the time and effort. 
6. Needs constant attention from you. 
7. You love to dress up for her. 
8. She keeps you on your toes. 
9. Is more intoxicating than any wine imaginable. 
10. Makes your heart beat fast. 

And... 

She does leave you all hot and sweaty ;) 

Salsa Addict in Action

Jinke hothon pe hansi paanv mein chhale honge,
Haan wahi log tere chahne waale honge.

Translated from the original Urdu it means,
"Those who would have laughter on their lips and blisters on their feet,
Yes, those people would be  the ones in love with you."

Obviously a sher as deep as this can have multiple meanings where "you" could refer to a multitude of entities or concepts. But today, I would like to have it refer to Salsa.

5 days and evenings. I knew this was going to be a long streak of dancing and it was. I knew it would be legendary weekend+ if I survived it. And it was and I did! Barely.

Here's how it played out. Friday night, Tapton Hall social with SalsaBeat. Amazing night, lots of dances. That was a masquerade ball so some added fun there. Plus they have a regular Kizomba room at the same time so you can imagine that that makes me happy as a dog  with two tails.

That finished at 2 AM.

After a night (early morning) of a little sleep and a day of "cleaning my room" I was back in Sheffield on Saturday night for another social - this time by Parranda. Not as crowded as Friday (some people just can't handle two nights in a row - lightweights! :P ) but still a lot of fun.

So, that finished at 0100 or so. After half an hour of saying farewell to everybody, then I tried to find the Kizomba after-party that was happening in another part of the town. That was supposed to last until 4 am. Well, didn't exactly find the club but found the area and didn't like the looks of it. No good place to leave my car.

Missed that one then. Another night of short sleep (I find it hard to fall sleep quickly when my mind is all keyed up.)

Back on Sunday to Sheffield for a  3 hour Bachata workshop. That was quite an awesome workshop and overran by half an hour.

A quick supper and then off to my regular Sunday evening Salsa classes with Richard, followed by social dancing.

By now my left ankle started to hurt where the edge of the shoe touches the foot. But kept on dancing. Exit from there was almost at midnight.

Overslept on Monday morning and had to miss breakfast to make it to work on time. But still went to the Monday evening classes and social at Clowne. That was another great party. Even though the ankle was still hurting, I kept dancing and enjoyed it so much that I did not want to leave even at 23:30.

Overslept yet again on Tuesday morning. Yet again, missed breakfast to make it to office on time. But still went to the Kizomba classes and social in the evening. That was also fun regardless of the ankle that kept hurting. But I knew I could rest the next two evenings.

The moral of the story is, well, there is no moral, I am just proud that I made it through this long schedule and so happy with all my dancing opportunities that I had to share this since I could not create Facebook posts for all the fantastic events.

Now looking forward to the next weekend after 2 nights of rest!

Why Salsa people are good people.

One of my reasons for loving salsa is that it gets me to socialise and meet a lot of nice people. I am not one for socialising or going out to meet strangers. But going out to learn salsa has the great side effect of meeting a lot of lovely people. In this post I want to quickly list out why I think Salsa people are nice people as opposed to say going out to normal nightclubs.

- Salsa people are social
Why else would they be out dancing and chatting with other people? Even the introvert people (like me) enjoy meeting other people and having nice conversations. Even in the short time that I have been learning salsa I have a lot of salsa friends, not because I am such a great guy but because they are such friendly people. They reach out to a stranger, reassure a nervous beginner and are friendly as a rule.

- They are open to new experiences
They come to the salsa class because they are open to doing something they haven't done before.

- They are about self-improvement.
Learning a new skill like dancing Salsa I would count as self-improvement. It takes a lot of practice and perseverance to learn salsa so essentially salsa people are the kind of people who are willing to dedicate their time and effort (and money) to learn a new skill. I am not counting those who give up after a few classes but I am counting those who realize they have got the bug and come back to Salsa to try harder (I am one of them.)

- They are capable of laughing at themselves.
Even in the beginning of the learning process you find out that learning to dance Salsa means making a lot of mistakes while you learn. And all the successful Salsa dancers learn to laugh at their mistakes and keep trying. (Those who don't learn this cannot be successful in salsa. It's just that kind of dance.)
[Caveat: I have heard about these "LA" style dancers who take things very seriously and are irritated by mistakes. I haven't met any of these myself so I will stick to my point.]

- They are not heavy drinkers.
At least not when they dance. Although it's not a teetotallerian environment, alcohol doesn't flow as freely around a Salsa dance floor as in a normal club. Some people abstain as they find it counter-productive for their learning in the class while others (like me) get high on the dance itself. Whatever the reason, I haven't seen any drunken behaviour or bar-fights in a salsa event yet.

- They come from varying ages and backgrounds
And variety being the spice of life it makes it things very interesting. Doing salsa I have met people from 20 and younger all the way up to 60 and above. And I have loved chatting with all of them.

- They are usually modest
During the early period of learning salsa we come to realize that it's not a quick and easy skill to acquire. On the way to learning this skill we go through a period when we are not any good and we watch more experienced dancers burning up the dance floor. I think that makes us humble.
That's not to say that there is no vanity on the salsa dance floor but that's not the norm. Most salseros are modest, friendly people who salsa because they love to dance not because they want to show off.

- They are good dressers.
This is a given considering that half of the salsa people are ladies, but even salseros make an effort to dress well for the occasion. The result is that in any salsa social you spend an evening with a bunch of well-dressed, friendly, fun people.
What could be better?


So there you have it in a nutshell why I think Salsa people are some of the best people you could meet socially.

I would love to hear what you think...

Sunny's Salsa Saga - The Beginning

So I finally decided to write about Salsa. Let's start with why I didn't want to write about it at first and why I decided to write now.

Why not?
- Because when I started to learn Salsa I didn't think I had much to say.
- Then it took over all my spare time so I didn't have any time to write about it.
- Then I found that I had way too much to say about it and didn't have that much time.
- I didn't think I was qualified to write about Salsa, especially things that would sound like advice or teaching.

Why now?
- I just gotta!
- There is so much to say about it that I can't keep it in and can't say it all to all my friends for fear of boring them.
- I am really passionate about Salsa.
- All the advice and teaching stuff is just my experience and opinions based on my learning journey. If I can make that clear to my audience and not pretend to know more than do I will be fine.
- I have a lot to share and who knows some of it might even be useful to somebody somewhere.

What next?
There's way more to say than can be done in one post so this will be an ongoing series on my blog.
I would absolutely love to hear from my readers about what I write. Any comments, criticisms and above all their own experiences on this topic would be very welcome.
I am hoping that salsa people will comment and share their thoughts.
In this current post I will only give the background of Salsa in my life.

So we start...
I first started learning Salsa about 5-6 years ago. Why did I start? There's a story.

Once in a while I used to go to clubs with friends. Like normal nightclubs. And even though I could not dance to save my life, I still used to get on the dance floor and "dance". No, alcohol was not involved, I just get more courageous when I am with friends and the music is good.

Every time I went to a club, there would be one brief period, like maybe a few minutes when I would be a dancing and I would be totally in the zone. At that moment I connected so well to the music that I disconnected from my surroundings. Even at that moment, I wasn't doing any amazing "take back the streets" steps, in fact I don't even know what steps I did, if any. But that few minutes period was worth the whole effort of going out...call it Nirvana, meditation, happiness, what you will.

After a while I started thinking about how I could extend that period to more than a few minutes and achieve it more frequently. I don't really like going to clubs, so when I started looking for dance lessons I didn't look for that kind of dance. Salsa was very popular at that time in the UK and a friend of mine told me about this place on Charing Cross Rd. where you can have an intense one-day class in Salsa. Kind of like a crash course. A good place to start.

One Google search told me what there was to know about Salsa Rapido at Bar Salsa in London. I took the first 5-hour long beginners class and loved it! After paying for the class once, it was free to repeat during the next two months and I did it a few times.

Then I found a 10-week Salsa course with City Academy with a weekly class. After the intense-information-overload type class with Salsa Rapido the one-hour a week class that taught one or two moves every week seemed too slow even though the teacher was really great. I did meet several good people in that group though and it was then that I created a Meetup group called "City Academy Salsa" to connect with my classmates and other people who wanted to go out and practice together. The group still exists even though I dropped out of the course after 6 weeks. I made it open to join by anyone so it has more than 150 members today.

But, my Salsa journey did not continue that smoothly. After dropping out of City Academy I dropped out of Salsa. Honestly, I don't remember what changed. But I work as an IT contractor and move around a lot. So something like that happened and my Salsa stopped. I never forgot it though and wanted to get back to it. Recently when I moved again and it seemed like I would stay in one place for at least 6 months this time, the first social thing I sought out was Salsa.

Fortunately there was a local class every Wednesday and it was close enough for me to walk to it. So my Salsa journey started again, and this time for realsies.

More in the next post...

A beautiful song - Como Me Duele

Currently absolutely in love with this song. It's not Salsa, it's Bachata, but such a sweet and haunting song that I don't even care that it's Bachata.

Gloria Estefan's voice is enough to make it a great song, but after I found that I was falling in love with this song, I looked for a translation of the lyrics and they are heartbreakingly beautiful!

The title of the song is "Como Me Duele Perderte" which means "How it hurts me to lose you." The damn thing stirs up so many memories and emotions..:-)

I haven't seen the video though, I bought the MP3 from Amazon and have listened to it many, many times, almost non-stop on Friday in a loop.

I'd like to know what my readers think of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMVaEvq0JA