For those who don't know me well, I may not seem like the dancing type. After all, I admit to coming across rather reserved, mostly composed and chill and generally fairly earnest. I have noticed a fun phenomenon as a result of this; people who meet me in everyday life, whether in class, through mutual acquaintances, or whatever, don't seem to pin me as a danseuse. But when I get out on the dance floor - well, I get a real kick out of surprising people, who generally get the where did that come from look on their faces and ask me where I "learned how to dance like that?" In this case, I'm speaking mostly about dancing in pairs - salsa, bachata, merengue, kuduro - although I definitely don't mind letting loose in the clubs either!
And where did I get this from? To tell you the truth, not entirely sure. I only learned the absolute bases in any dance course I took back in Tuscaloosa, back at that beginning social dance course that appears to have started it all. After that, I did a lot of watching...better female dancers, Dancing with the Stars (yeah, yeah, I liked that show way back when!), youtube videos...and trying to imitate what seemed to make them good. I think that's something I seemed to do easily, and part of what I now know makes you a pleasure to dance with - following well. Takes time to develop, and you definitely step on a lot of toes along the way (and maybe even make somebody bleed...), but eventually you can get there.
So, point? Well, Montpellier, besides all its other wonders, is seriously like one big playground for me in comparison to the relative dryness that is Tuscaloosa. It'll be tough going back to that! For example, for the past month a group of people from my salsa course, led by the instructor, had been practicing a choreographed group salsa routine for the past month in preparation for a big day of dance at the university. The whole day involved introductions to various genres of dance, culminating in the evening with a big event - a recital, if you will - showcasing all kinds of dance talent, to a full crowd! Off the top of my head I remember a classical ballet scene between the white and black swan from the Lac des Cygnes, danse oriental (belly dance), danced Egyptian style, and by a male!, a group of marvelous tahitian dancers, kuduro, contemporary, hip hop, and an amazing couples dance that's Angolan in origin that I can't remember the name of but all I know was that it was smokin' - and the female was blindfolded for half of it!
Oh, and of course there was us - the atélier de salsa (salsa workshop), a group of about 10 of us who volunteered from the larger weekly class to work on this performance with our instructor! The group contained everybody from the truest beginners who had just joined that semester, to pretty seasoned dancers who know what's up, and everybody in between! Though mostly French, there were a couple internationals sprinkled in as well. And let me say, we really did bond as a group, and doing this has made me some wonderful friends. Our collective nerves on the day of the performance transformed afterwards into ecstasy when we realized we'd actually done it! We were so giddy that the lot of us went out, all dressed up in our matching attire and high heels (for the ladies) to the latin dance night at Cargo. The lot of us showing up like that definitely caught attention, and though I'm a modest person, we definitely earned ourselves some fans that night! And I pretty much killed my feet dancing in those heels of mine for hours on end, but I was having so much fun that they only really started feeling it at the very end on the way home, so good luck there.
Look at us go! (I'm the white skirt on your right) This video is of the performance itself: being one of the more reasonably experienced dancers, I picked up the role of the cavalier for this one - so now, anybody who wants to learn back home, I can teach! Needless to say, well worth all the rehearsal time and running back and forth between my classes - so rewarding, and we're planning a reprisal tomorrow at another latin bar in town!
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| Us in action, this time out in the field! |
Now I can move on to another dance related topic, this time of a more posh nature - I went to the ballet! Thanks to some lady friends informing me last minute, we put on our pretty dresses and went to go see Boléro - a one-act ballet, about an hour and a half long and like nothing I could have imagined. The introduction was done by a man singing in Algerien Berber, and the costumes and musical background reflected that. About a man going off to war and never coming home, it was emotional, passionate, and so so colorful - though I don't pretend to be savvy enough to really follow the story, it was magnificent - an absolute treat, and well worth the weeknight outing!
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| Photo taker said be silly - something I do well, and subsequently look like a goofball in photos like these! |
Even better, immediately after the ballet, the same company (Russian, from Moscow) put on a célébration de danse - and if the ballet before was excellent, this was astonishing! Scenes from the Nutcracker (I wanted to squeal, I go nuts to the music from that ballet); the death of the swan from Swan Lake; a traditional Russian winter's dance with flowing robes and voiles; a ukranian men's dance that you had to clap along to and made everybody in the audience cheer and laugh; dark pieces that left everyone silent as a stone; everything you could want and more. Got home somewhere around midnight, the lot of us completely giddy and flabbergasted. It's too bad there weren't more students who came, I felt like the entirely elderly population must have come out to join us! It was nice to be amongst mixed age groups, again though.
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| Boléro, singer in the middle |
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| Ballerinas twirling out for their encore at the end of the show! |
And since I'm quite pooped here, I'm going to call it a night a little abruptly to this public love session to dance. You don't want to know the level of work I've got to do this weekend - a huge scientific field report in geology, a lab final in physiology, on top of final preparations to depart for Rome and Morocco - all on top of spending time with the people in this town I've come to love! A little stressful and sleep-deprived, but otherwise happy. Until next time, if anybody still reads this! (hi, mom!)
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