Salsa Rueda!
At long last, the salsa club performed at Google on Thursday. Pics, pics, pics, and more pics. Also, someone from the crowd took a video of the advanced rueda group performing, which I was in. You can see it to the left. The style of salsa is Salsa Rueda. It's danced in a circle with rapid partner changes in time with the music. None of it is choreographed. The people in the circle know a set of moves, and one person calls out the next move to the group. It's a ton of fun if you can get people together in a club to do it. I'm not sure exactly what makes it so much more fun than partner dancing. Chen proposed the following hypothesis on Thursday. "When you are dancing as a couple you only get to laugh when you screw up. When you are doing a rueda you get to laugh when anyone in the circle screws up. You laugh more." The style of music is Timba, which is a Cuban style of salsa that features a lot of syncopation. I highly recommend "Marcando la Distancia" by Manolito Y Su Trabaho or "Esperanza" by Calle Real if you'd like to check it out.
The lot of us went to Cascal afterwards to celebrate and wish Iliana good luck in her life after Google. I'll be taking over her role of organizing the club, and I've got monstrously huge shoes to fill. The paella was great, as was the sangria, and the company made the evening. If people are up for it and I can manage to organize it, I hope to have another performance in 6 months or so.
Dobromir (my teacher) has graciously uploaded videos from the DVD of moves he made to google video. Here are a few of my favorites.
