Went to “Twelfth Night Salsa Extravaganza” in York last night. Classes all day and freestyling at night. I wasn’t quite myself all day, having managed to get on a nocturnal tip over the new year highlight for me was probably the “threesomes” class which was pretty easy stuff, a little bit different and late enough in the day that I was starting to wake up.During the evening, they stopped the music and Tony the Em Cee asked for couples to get up and enter a “Fun Competition”. On seeing that people were being reticent, I thought I might as well get up to get the ball rolling. By the time I’d found a willing partner we were the second couple up there. In the end a few couples got up.
They shuffled partners by getting the girls to form a circle and the guys to form a circle outside it facing outwards, then rotating the circles for a time. Then the idea was they’d put on a bit of music and we had to dance our patooties off. I asked my partner what style and what count she liked to dance and fortunately it was a perfect match for me, so we went for it. Each of the three judges got to pick a couple to stay in and we were picked. The idea then was that they’d start the music again and decide the order of the dancers.
A few bars into the music, the Em Cee decided that we should switch roles, i.e. the girl should lead… My poor frightened partner, a wonderful follower and with a shimmy almost to match my own :-), had never led before in her life, so I gave her a crash course on the spot. ho hum. The role reversal carried on through most of the “final” so we didn’t get to show what we were really capable of in the right roles. I found out later that the other guys were in the same boat but rather than following sort of back-led womens moves…
We came third, which meant a free bottle of bubbly, a CD of Salsa Dura and a chorus of “you wuz robbed”s from my friends… not bad considering I only did it to try to keep the evening moving and avoid a three hour standoff between the MC and the terrified punters!