Valentine Girls: Katherine Rosati, Vicky Gouldbourn, Jack Mellor (photos by Lydia Oslejova)
The next SALSA REPUBLIC at Chorlton Irish Club will now be on 27 FEB (not 20 Feb as previously announced)!!!
My Valentine (caught by the paparazzi AGAIN!!!)
If you were watching BBC 1′s So You Think You Can Dance last night, you were surely enchanted by Yanet Fuentes’ performance. She and her partner may theoretically have been dancing Ballroom, but every move she made was a lesson in Cuban dance and how to do it right in Salsa.
For me Yanet is a delight in all sorts of other ways. That accent - the rough, husky voice; the wide-eyed and just slightly fierce smile; the ear-piercing squeals when she greets a friend; the frantic little hops and skips when she’s happy – all these are quintessential Cuban female. Looking at her, I see my wonderful Havana dance teacher Geldys Morales looking over her shoulder and shrieking in unison from that top window on the corner of Aguila and Trocadero!
But watching the fluidity, relaxation and control of Yanet’s movements is the real lesson. Her spinning is precise but very relaxed: she’s worked on doing it without tension. Notice also the ‘spotting’: she fixes her eyes on a point and returns to it after each spin. But she also avoids that clockwork ‘click’ you often see, when ladies snap the head back into position too pecisely, so it looks mechanical. The spotting isn’t allowed to dominate. The fluidity of her hips is of course typically Cuban but you don’t need to be born with it. Yanet has spent a huge amount of time working on her reggaeton moves and also teaching body isolation. This is something everyone can practise in front of a mirror, and it involves just doing it and doing it and doing it, pushing the joints and muscles a little further every time over the weeks and months, so it aches a little. The next video will show you that salsa isn’t about steps and arm movements, it’s about body isolation : that is, how you move your bits!!!
Yanet’s work also tells us a lot about Cuba. I haven’t studied her biography but she was probably spotted as a potentially great dancer when she was a small child and given free, specialist training and education. This would have included not only modern dance but Russian-tradition classical ballet (you can see this in the fluid, balanced movement of her arms when performing) and also Afro-Cuban sacred Orisha dancing – the dance-moves that express each of the West African-descended Santeria gods and goddesses.
Yanet thus has a whole encyclopedia of dance under her belt. Add the typically bubbly Cuban personality and no wonder she’s doing so well.
She also embodies the paradox of Cuba: the wonderful education system and culture that value the arts so much that even in a poor country they will go all-out to train the artistically talented; and the fact that life in Cuba is so hard, such a daily struggle, that almost everyone wants to leave – and yet having left, will remain fiercely patriotic and convinced that Cuba is the best country in the world.
I don’t normally watch these dance shows on TV. But I’m watching this one for Yanet and I hope you will watch it next week, if you haven’t already. And, of course, VOTE FOR YANET!
Well, I promised to report on the Towering Inferno salsa event at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool yesterday. Oh dear. By 8 pm the freezing fog was so thick that visibility was down to zero in south Manchester, and we heard it was just as bad further north. I didn’t fancy the drive up (nor the drive back down a possibly icy fogbound motorway at 3 a.m.) So we stayed at home. Call me chicken if you like. Though I’d prefer pollo. Well, you win some you lose some. El mani es asi as they say in Caracas.
Shiver me timbers! we never made it to the Tower
For months I’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen that the best and most authentic Cuban salsa night in Manchester is Republic of Salsa. Last night (Saturday 5 Dec 09) I felt totally vindicated. It was pure dynamite: seriously, the best salsa night I’ve been to anywhere outside Cuba.
Lorraine mixes her salsa magic
I’ll go further. Last time I went to Republic of Salsa I just caught myself heading for the bar to pick up another Cristal, and realised that for the past few minutes I’d truly slipped into thinking I was back in Havana. These club nights are that good.
Last night was a solid feast of Cuban beats: non-stop hardcore bailable Cuban salsa tracks at the son and timba edge of things, with enhanced edge and depth added by Jack McCarthy playing congas up there alongside the DJ deck. (He also had a set of timbales but mysteriously never seemed to touch them). Plus the usual garnish of reggaeton, bachata and merengue. The sound-system was superb, and the Irish Club’s new (or resurfaced?) dancefloor, which started off feeling a bit sticky, wore in nicely as the evening went on.
A rueda moment: !Arriba!
The session kicked off with Lorraine organising a huge beginners-friendly rueda and relentlessly heated up from there on.
The place was heaving and people danced their feet off. There was that intent, glistening, hypnotised, sweaty feel you get in Havana around two in the morning – though here it set in about eleven p.m. And pretty much everyone on the Manchester salsa scene was there, including two of the contenders for ‘coolest guy in the city’ in the form of Cuba Cafe’s Mo-ji and Baby Salsa’s Andre. Mo was resplendent in black beaded Native American buckskin and a shiny top hat; and Andre forsook his usual pose of pensive observer to dive in and dance by the hour. The sheer friendliness of everyone was tangible: laughing, smiling, kissing, grabbing hands. Was it possible, I wondered, that Chorlton really was becoming an outpost of Cuba?
Andre and Mo-ji: Cool or what?
Maybe the Irish Club’s refurbished bar and table area are a little too smart for the purist. I used to feel the tatty plaster and horrible curtains added to the sense of authenticity, giving the place that inimitable not-touched-since-1959 Havana look. But the newly smooth ceiling made a great arena for the lightshow. And for those who miss the grainy black-and-white Cuban movies on the rear wall, Lorraine tells me they’ll be back as soon as the new projector has been installed.
Jack McCarthy on Congas (and who's that beautiful girl?)
Republic of Salsa (promoted by Mancuban Salsa and Baby Salsa – see Facebook) runs first Saturdays of alternate months, so the next one should be 6 February. Do not miss it. This is a total-immersion Cuban dance experience you won’t find anywhere else. One day people are gonna wish they’d been there. You can. All you’re waiting for now is February.
Though if you can’t wait that long, you might still get to La Habana for New Year: check out key2Cuba.com
I’ll be reporting on Rohan Brown and Mojito live at the Tower Ballroom Blackpool (Fri 11 Feb) straight after the event. Watch this space! And if you still don’t have the two best albums by the best Cuban band, see below!
1950s cars are still common in Cuba but they're disappearing fast
Salsa isn’t something you talk about, surely? it’s something you do. But tonight I’m going to break that rule, because I’m off to speak to the Marple Arts Group about what it’s like to dance salsa in Latin America.
In 2007 I travelled through seven countries (Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, the Domnican Republic and the USA – well, Miami Fla. to be precise) learning the local styles and dancing in the local clubs. And there are people out there – in Marple and many other places – who may never dance, but who want to get a little of the flavour of what it was like.
It’s made a bit easier by the fact that I can play some of the music, and show some pictures – Latin America and the Caribbean are a gift to anyone with a camera because the light’s so good and the colours so rich.
And when I wrote my book about the journey – Travels on the Dance Floor - I put a lot of care into making the words as vivid as possible. A lot of people who’ve heard me read from the book say that it creates mental pictures which are like a movie in their heads.
Sharing the colours and textures of an experience like that with others is a great delight. And maybe it’s possible to share some of the romance as well. In salsa every dance can be a little three- or four-minute love affair with your partner. It opens your heart up.
Every person you meet, in any country, is a whole new world. And when they’re the opposite sex as well, then they might as well come from another (friendly) planet. Mars, Venus, wherever. To hold that lovely alien in your arms for a few minutes and dance is an amazing experience.
Telling people about an experience like this is a privilege, and the magic communicates itself. I enjoy these talks, and the audiences seem to find them great fun and respond warmly. Maybe some of them have already been inspired to pack their bags and jet off to Cuba or Colombia: places that need tourists and truly appreciate the kind of visitor who makes an effort to get into the local culture.
So Marple here I come, just pausing to choose a good salsa track to play in the car on the way!
