Miss Smiley and I went to Paris this weekend. Before giving all the details on the salsa nights we went to, I thought I'd focus on our motivations. The plethora of reasons are listed below:
1) Hanging out with great salsa friends and celebrating a birthday
It was my friend K's birthday last week so this weekend felt like the perfect opportunity to go and eat cake! Lalita offered to put Miss Smiley and I up in her bijoux apartment in the 18th arrondissement and I simply could not refuse. Nor could Miss Smiley following a 3 minute selling pitch by yours truly! There's something about salsa friends that makes weekends-away amazing - you get to dance your heart out, talk about and compare your various experiences and spend more time hanging out than you would at a normal congress. You don't sleep much, but that's pretty normal for the average salsa addict. And you never have to worry about where you'll be dancing because it's the basis on which all plans are built!
2) Seeing and dancing with recently made salsa friends
I have met a number of lovely Paris-residing salsa dancers at various congresses. While I am not personally very close to them and wouldn't organise trips with them, they are the sort of people I look forward to running into on a dance floor. So why not make the little trip over to Paris for a not so accidental run-in?
3) Dancing with other, unknown local partners
For all those people who travel to congresses, there are a handful of absolute gems who don't. Or perhaps they simply go for a different type of congress (e.g. only small ones, only French ones, only Eastern European congresses). Any new dance floor is a source of talent and a source of untapped joy to be experimented with. The reputation of the salsa scene in Paris is such that we definitely believed that there existed a series of wonderful dancers who still needed to be tried and tested!
4) Testing the theory that the salsa scene in Paris is better than the salsa scene in London
There is much debate as to where in Europe has the best salsa scene and dancers. The current thinking is that the best dancers can be found in Paris and in the Netherlands, with the most highly qualified teachers living in Milan. The London scene is also to be added to the list on the account of the fact that there are multiple salsa nights of some form or quality on every day of the week. The debate however focuses on how many good dancers there are, by which I mean how many dancers are smooth leads, with original moves and a unique sense of style without necessarily being professionals. Under any circumstance, one would need to caveat the comparison of the Paris and London salsa scenes with numerous side points. What we wanted to test here was the more subjective question: Are French dancers exaggerating when they talk about how brilliant their salsa scene is?
5) Attending famed party nights to see for ourselves whether their reputations are in line with reality
Having numerous Parisian salsa friends, I had heard about a number of "great" events and thus wanted to test them out. On the schedule for the weekend was:
- Phil & Madj - An on2 elitist social in the 15th arrondissement
- Festival de Palaiseau - Small festival half an hour away from Paris - A fully opportunistic choice
- Barrio Latino - The famed Sunday afternoon venue
- O'Sullivans - The best night in Paris according to serious on2 enthusiasts
6) Getting out of cold and rainy London
It was raining. It was January. Why the hell not?
7) Eating good food
Pastries, macaroons, flamkueche were shared and enjoyed by all.
For those who don't know, flams are like pizzas but with a thinner base and less toppings. The original kind has a mixture of onions, lardons (bacon) and cheese. By choosing the "all you can eat" option, in the restaurant we went to, we got to try as many different wide-ranging toppings you wanted, even sweet ones. I think we ultimately ordered 12 flams, 4 of which were desert ones and that I didn't touch. Having eaten a quarter of a flam from each of the previous eight, I could no longer even think about eating another piece! On the plus side, we danced it off and were able to stay up until 5am without feeling remotely hungry!
8) Meeting up with non-salsa friends from childhood
This was actually the most disappointing part of the trip. Out of four friends I notified, only one made the effort to come out and see me, after changing the plan more than three times. Out of those who cancelled, one had a valid excuse, but the other two each led me to believe they were coming to see me, only to change their plans and opt out about half an hour before the chosen meeting time. While I admit that my weekend was salsa-friendly primarily structured around the dancing, I was awake and relatively free during the daytime when the non-salsa people like to come out and play. I usually only go to Paris about once a year and these guys do not (really) travel (in 6 years, one of them has made it to London once!). I had honestly thought that these friends whom I've known for over ten years would make less of an effort than some of the salsa dancers who I'd only met a couple of times! Not that I'm one to hold a grudge, but next time a salsa person needs to sleep on my couch (albeit still an imaginary couch for now), they will now probably take priority over those who have proved themselves to be less than reliable.
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