Several items for this post:
- Bahia Salsa Club in Hongdae
- Recommended online video clip
- We need to get our program kicked off soon!
- I'm going to be the 'correspondent' for.......
I went over Bahia Salsa Club in Hongdae tonight. I liked it. It was not too crowded, the air conditioning was perfect, the music was good, the ladies were very nice and the iced tea was great.
I also had some words with the manager (i.e. interpreted through a salsa dancer patron) and it seems to me that we could practice there just about any night we wanted. Tonight the crowd started to thin out around 11:30 pm. That tells me that we would probably have room to practive either early in the evening. Or, it would be a good place to come to later in the evening if we'd been somewhere else already.
As I think about our options for practicing vs. dancing I'm keeping in mind that we probably won't be able to practice anywhere during peak hours. We might be able to get in a few ruedas during peak hours but I think that would only be practical in the larger clubs like Caliente or Gachi or Son or maybe Turn. Of course, we won't know til we try, right?
I went to check out the website for Dirty Guide To Salsa tonight. I've got their 3 DVD set and it is one of my favorites because among other things, it's very well filmed and easy to navigate. In my search tonight I discovered that their site doesn't look like it used to. Matter of fact, all they've got on it now ( http://www.dirtysalsa.com) is a video teaser for the set itself but even that doesn't actually link to a place to buy it. You have to figure that out for yourself.
But there were a couple of things on it that I'd like to call your attention too.
First of all, disregard the fact that they don't start on '1'. They're starting on the 3 or something wierd like that but that's not a biggie. The valuable thing you'll see there is some good examples of 'dame', 'guapea', 'enchufla', and 3 new patterns I wasn't familiar with.
The three moves are 'bullita', bulla alta, and pa'al media con dos. Here's what they are:
In Spanish, 'bulla' (pronouced 'buyah') means 'shout'. That's a fairly common call in ruedas. In this video teaser they use a variation called 'bullita' which means 'little shout' (in Spanish when you add an '...ita' to a word it means ' a little.....' whatever).
In this video teaser, she called 'bullita' and that's what the group does......a little shout. Then she calles 'bulla alta'. 'Alta' mean high. Or in this case......louder. So they give a louder shout.
That's an example of what I mentioned in an earlier post about how there's lots of simple little patterns and/or things we can do as a group that look or sound cool but are really pretty simple.
The other move they did that was new to me (but again pretty logical and plausible in rueda practice) was called 'enchufla pa'al media con dos'. That means 'enchufla towards the middle with two........(claps)'. And that's what they do.
It's a short teaser video. Take a look and you'll see it.
Also folks, we need to get our meetings started pretty soon. I'm going to officially invite everybody to the Monday practice at Macondo. It starts at 7:30 pm. I anticipate going to the Tuesday class too but frankly I don't consider that class as the same priority. The primary value of going over there is actually that I'll have a chance to meet other dancers that have an interest in casino style and casino rueda (they're inseparable). If we can meet over there to practice our stuff then picking up whatever we can from that class would just be an 'extra'.
I'm not officially involved in any of the teaching at Macondo yet although I would like to be. Whether I do or don't, I think you cold benefit from what the Monday night teacher does and we can still do 'our thing' after the regular class is over on both Monday and/or Tuesday.
If we'll get our act together I think we can 'smoke' any of these other groups in town. ('Smoke' means 'to rapidly excell beyond').
I went to Caliente Friday night and I think that would be a good place to have a practice on Friday nights....probably early. I remember the first time I went over there. It was either a Friday or a Saturday. There weren't really many people there until til later in the evening.
Regarding Caliente, there would most probably be some other patrons watching us. If my previous experience holds true, those spectators would want to get into what they see us doing. But once we get through the basics we'll have to not allow beginners to come into our original group because they'd just hold us back. What we'd have to do would be to start another beginner class.
That's basically what Sandra does in here classes (in Austin, Texas). She has 4 levels and she doesn't allow anyone to move up a level until they pass a test. She also requires her assistant instructors to know both the leader and follower parts of the patterns.....not just in English but also in Spanish.
Personally I'd like to be able to teach our basics in Korean. I think it would be possible because the words used to teach dancing are really a pretty finite set. Toward that end, I'm anticipating startng taking Korean lessons with a private tutor here in Seoul on the weekends (I got a referral from a girl I met in a coffee shop in Itaewon today).
Next, I've been given the option (pending some administrative preliminaries) of being the Seoul correspondent for www.salsapower.com . If you don't know, there are just two or three primary international salsa information websites. One is SalsaPower and the other is SalsaWeb. There might be a few others but those are the two main ones that I know of which have international status and coverage.
SalsaPower, even though the names doesn't say it, is oriented towards Cuban salsa and casino and casino rueda. If I can get plugged in there it might give us some advantages in meeting new dancers who come into town and are looking for a casino rueda dance community to join.
My friend in Austin, Texas, Sandra Sleeper of www.streetsalsa.com , is their correspondent in Austin and she recommended I see if I could be the correspondent either in Houston or here. So.....I did.
The other thing I want to mention is that I think we have an excellent opportunity to gain some notoriety and publicity in the international casino rueda community if we'll pursue my idea of making videos of the basic patterns as we learn them. Nobody else has done that on the internet.........yet.
Some sites have a few videos of one couple doing individual casino patterns. But nobody has a site with a comprehensive group of videos of an actual rueda group (i.e. 4 or more couples) doing the patterns in a systematic way to show new learners what they look like.
It's a simple idea so I don't know why nobody has done it. I can see why the professional instructors haven't but you'd think one of the university groups or even somebody like StreetSalsa would have done it.......but they haven't.
So that's all for this post. I'm gong to go over on YouTube and post another video or two for you tonight too.
Keep those feet moving!
P.S. As soon as we starting doing some dancing within our group, I'll have some pictures and videos to put here on our site.
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