Salsa night

My Chinese teacher, Rachel, wanted to take some salsa lessons and planned a girls’ night-out yesterday. One of her students has been learning Salsa, so she took us to a Salsa bar in Roppongi. They have a free lesson and after the lesson you can just stay in the club and dance.
Well... Salsa is not quite my area of dancing. I can dance to hip hop, house, techno... but salsa....You have to dance with someone. Also, the guys have to lead the dance. hmmm... It doesn’t sound too good to me :P well, I like dancing with a partner, especially if he is my friend and can dance well, but I couldn’t quite imagine what it’s like dancing Salsa with someone who I don’t know.
But well, just for a hell of it, I decided to go with them. I was a bit curious to see what kind of people show up.

It’s been a while that I’ve stayed up all night dancing.
I could’ve left around 2 or 3am since I drove there by my motorcycle, but Rachel left early after she took the lesson and it was just me and the other girl who actually took us there and she basically had to wait until the first train starts, so I stayed with her till morning.

The lesson was OK. It was about one hour and our teacher was cute :) He taught us basic steps and we were ready to go.

Now... What kind of people were in the club...?
If I compare the crowds with a normal club, people there may be a bit older. Sometimes you see a very nerdish looking Japanese guy dancing salsa crazily. Some people don’t look like dancers but when they dance, they are actually pretty good.
It was kind of interesting.
One thing I’ve noticed was many Japanese dancers were more into “skills” (steps and turns, etc.) and they are good at it, but then they are not quite into the “rhythms”.
There were some Cubans and Peruvians (actually, there were many Peruvians in this club) and they were dancing more naturally. (Although... It is really depend on a person... )

At the beginning, I was kind of avoiding dancing, but it’s not so polite to turn down when somebody asks you for a dance, so I tried. I was hoping not to step on somebody’s feet. You can basically dance Salsa if you know the basic steps, but guys lead the dance and they always give some signs for the next movement — like which way you need to turn, etc.
Understanding those signs is hard! Also, for a little bit more advanced Salsa, there were a bit more movements I needed to know besides the basic steps that I learned. So, sometimes I could feel that my partner wanted something different but I wasn’t understanding and doing different things. Sometimes there were many many turns and at the end the arms and hands were all twisted which I’m sure my partner didn’t plan :P
Well, overall, it was kind of fun. Some people look strange and you almost don’t want to dance with them, but if you just get rid of your prejudice against people, then they are generally nice and some people patiently gave me some lessons while we dance together.

Although.... there is a dance called “Merengue” which is slightly different from Salsa and a guy and a girl dance very closely. And this music is played in a Salsa bar a lot between Salsa music. So, if you don’t like that, you need to escape and go buy a drink or something :P

Will I go out for a salsa night again? ... hmm ... maybe not...
I kind of prefer free style dancing which you can just move your body whatever you want. (not waiting for someone’s signs ;P) and just enjoy dancing without worrying about who to dance with.

Although, I think Salsa is good for men. They can dance with girls naturally. It’s not so obvious that you are picking up girls and you can change partners after one song...
If you want to be popular with girls, you should learn Salsa :P