Nouche de Salsa, recollection

A few weeks ago I went to this Latin live music show called Nouche de Salsa. The band is really good. The singer is awesome. The Alumni Hall was really packed with students as well as outsiders. They came to enjoy good music and also to dance.

Yes, I was there because I wanted to dance 'salsa'. Well, just by myself though, not with anyone else. And yes, indulging myself in Latin music - my favourite music. Anyway, that's not what I want to say here. The Nouce de Salsa night reminds me to a writing I wrote not so long ago about the passion of dancing. I repost the writing here for your reading leisure.

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Shall We Dance?



"Beverly, dance with me?".
"I don't know how".
"You've been dancing with me for 19 years".
- Richard Gere & Susan Sarandon in Shall We Dance movie.

For many who have known me personally, seeing me dancing in public is the last thing they would imagine in their mind. I must say the passion to dance is not exactly something I have for public display but it is more for my private life. They say, to dance is to have rhythm in your life, feeling energetic as well as grasping the beat of the moment and subsequently you manifest in physical motion. As for me, dancing is more for personal satisfaction - a way to liberate yourself from mind-numbing day-to-day routine.

I began to love dancing when I enrolled myself in a ballroom dance class last year. The act was purely unintentional. The sole reason I joined the class because I needed to drop the Pistol class (shooting class) due to late enrolment. Anxious to get some adventure, I signed up for men ballroom dance class. I thought the class would be segregated between men and women - unfortunately (well, I should say, gladly) it's a mixed classroom. We changed partners everytime we learn new steps or move. The female would move either clock-wise or counter clock-wise and men were just standing in big circle while waiting for their partners to stand next to them.

First rule of dance - men always lead the dance. Second rule of dance - always start with your left foot.

The first dance I learnt was waltz. Although I signed up quite late for this course, I happened to learn very quickly for each step. Waltz became a physical work out for me because it required a solid motion and stiff body frame drawn from the couple's physical structure. The mistake which I usually did is looking at my own feet. Sometimes I even stepped on my partner's foot. Second style was foxtrot which was introduced by Henry Fox dated before the World War II. It is considered a pure American dance as compared to waltz, lindy and a few others. This style, which I truly enjoyed, has been my favourite all of kinds of ballroom dance I learnt in that class. Later came lindy or swing as many had known it through Elvis Presley's move and style. This dance was very much influenced by the emerging swing band or the big bands of jazz in between 50s and 60s. As far as I could recall, I only had trouble to 'cuddle' part where we needed to pull the partner to us and swing her to the side - cuddle motion. I flunked that part. Period.

Next to lindy was cha-cha. Well, this dance originally came from South America around 1950s where a lot of Havana refugees flocked to America in order to escape from Communist government down there. I wasn't that bad in this style though. After we learnt cha-cha, we were introduced to study salsa. I tell you, this dance is one hot smoking dance! You move your hips and body and gosh, you will look sexy beyond your wildest fantasy. There's even one step for salsa named as Ricky Martin's style. LOL. Although it sounds fun, I must tell you that the counting for salsa is somewhat confusing to me. I seriously put much labor in calculating the step as if I was solving a calculus problem in my head while busy dancing on the floor. Then we moved to polka, an European style of ballroom dancing where you see people dancing in circle, holding each other's hand in Heidi's movie. Okay, that's a bad example. The best example is the one which Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet danced on the table in Titanic movie. But we didn't learn such an advance step like theirs. Oh God, polka really forced me to do some cardivascular work out. That's it, no more polka for me. And the last dance we learnt in that class was tango. Oowhhh, tango is another sexy dance. You need to raise your leg like a stallion and lean your chess towards your partners. To some, it may stimulate their sexual desire but I dont think I got sexual arousal on me when I did that to my partner. We were very professional in the classroom.

Of course like other classes offered on campus, this course required midterms. I am proudly to say that I aced both midterms, the dance test as well as written test. My partner is Melissa Rosol. She majors in Architecture Engineering and she was fifth year student at the time she took the class. I would say that we shared mutual understanding when we became couple in dancing. My instructor wrote a comment in my midterm result stating that the way I danced with Melissa especially in foxtrot style was almost as close to 'real' dance. Maybe because I seriously enjoyed dancing that style and I danced it like no other saw us. My eyes were straightly hooked to hers and we firmly held each other and sailing through the dance floor gracefully. I guess we both deserved the credit for not screwing up the dance because dancing is collective effort, not an individual effort.



I didn't get much time to hone my dancing skill after I finished the class in Spring 2003 with A- grade. Perhaps because I was way too busy working in Fenske Lab for my Ch E stuffs or I was occupied dealing with moronic freshmen in the residence hall as Resident Assistant. At the end of Spring 2003, the Residence Hall Association organized a formal dinner in Days Inn Hotel and they opened a dance floor. Shahida, my date for that night, forcefully persuaded me to dance with her on the dance floor and that was my first dance in public and probably the last one.

And now, every once a while I will put on Frank Sinatra's music and start to dance by myself in my room, imagining a nice lady would dance along with me. Of course I will choose foxtrot style because it's purely romantic steps and it's easy to maneuver as compare to other kind of styles. Uhm, another thing - may I say the lady who will dance with me must be romantically involved with me? LOL. She should be, right ??!

Shall we dance?