One dip, with sprinkles

Last night was our last salsa class. It's been real. Real fun and real good for my blog, that is!

I actually did better last night than last week. It's like all the stuff that wouldn't gel last week sank in this week. I worked my way around the circle, nailing the steps like a pro with only a few flubs here and there when I quit concentrating. It's not exactly muscle memory yet.

I danced with Rico quite a bit just because I was willing to - he's a tool but he knows the steps, and I wanted to get some practice in on them since this was the last class. I asked him to practice two particular steps with me, and that was fine, but then he couldn't stop himself from critiquing other aspects of my performance. "Shift your body weight. Shift your body weight. Hold your hand up higher. Hold it loosely. Let all the movement be in your hips - don't move your upper body." This last one was particularly ironic since he favors moving his upper body around like someone has dropped a baggie of bugs down the back of his shirt. But I held my tongue.

Angela got to dance with him, too. She got the "Bah, bah, BAH, bah, bah, BAH" treatment as he mouthed both the rhythm and the countdown our the instructor did each time as we switched partners to tell us to start. The real fun for Angela came not with Rico, though, but with the instructor. It came with the new element we added this week - a dip at the end of the sequence.

The dip is harder than it looks, because we were told at length that the dip is not the man holding us and dipping us. The dip is us, the women, leaning back on the right leg and pointing the left toe out, so that you're actually holding yourself up. If the guy walked away, you'd still be in the dip. It's an illusion.

So, we practiced a bunch of times without a partner to get the feel of the position - of holding yourself up in this diagonal position on one leg. Not easy. Then it was time for partners. Angela had the misfortune of starting the partner phase with the instructor. Apparently, Teacher Dude had ingested some kind of (a) caffeinated beverage or (b) testosterone-laced aggression chemical, because when he proceeded to do this move, instead of allowing the woman to strike the pose herself, as we'd been taught, he essentially threw his partner around like a rag doll, completely throwing her off balance. Angela was the first to find this out.

Teacher Dude threw her backward, then jerked her back up, as her legs splayed and her arms flailed. His manhandling was completely unexpected. Worse yet, because she'd planted her foot in one spot, to hold herself, and then he shifted her into a different place, her leg couldn't hold her in the new spot, and she may have pulled a muscle as her body tried to make the sudden adjustment to keep her from smashing to the floor. She seriously felt like she had a pulled muscle as we left class.

I had seen her having trouble, so I was kind of prepared that something might be awry when it was my turn to dance with Teacher Dude, and sure enough, I, too, flubbed the move as he unexpectedly threw me around. It took me until the third try to not look like an MS patient when he did it. I was thrilled when I was able to move on to a new partner. I think the guy has got some kind of suppressed anger. "You want to dip? I'll dip you. I'll dip you right into the hospital, WOMAN!!!" Decaf, Teacher Man. Decaf.

We declined to go dancing with the class after class. I was tired and didn't feel like going out, Julia had plans with her family and Ang decided she'd rather go see a band she knows. So, Ang and I grabbed some food at Moe's Southwest Grill, and we all went our separate ways. Jules was lucky to miss Moe's. The food was fine, but they had some sensory overload going on. They had 3 televisions on the wall, each with a different game on, which was fine, but then they had a live band that seemed to think it was a Pink Floyd reincarnation (were the band members even alive when Pink Floyd climbed to fame?), except...bad. I don't mean to be a hater on some youths trying to learn their craft, but damn. So very loud and...bad. And yet, they had some guys (presumably drunk) actually standing and hollering support. Go figure. In any case, we had a hard time maintaining conversation with all that going on.

Tonight: quiet night at home.