BsAs 2009 - Day 1

7:05am – still in the plane and bored out of my mind. I can’t sleep in the plane, so I’ve been up the whole night. We will be landing in a little over 1 hour. Damn, this is a long flight. Any interest I ever had visiting Australia (or Japan or any of the other places on the other side of the planet) vanished…

They are serving breakfast, gotta go.

9:20pm – We got to the apartment around 11am, walked across the street to get some pastries, and then crashed around 1pm. We were going to get up at 4pm, so I set the alarm. Yeah, that didn’t work. The alarm did work, us getting up didn’t. I don’t even remember shutting the alarm off…We woke up around 6pm, still exhausted. But hungry, so we went and had some food at a café a block away. I think I’m going to like BsAs, it reminds me a lot of home. Around 10:30 we’re going to be heading out to the first milonga in BsAs (well, it’s a practica but you know what I mean), Praktica8. More then a few people asked me in the last few weeks if I’m nervous. Umm, no, not about dancing in BsAs. I just don’t really know how is going to work chatting with people when my Spanish vocabulary is limited to “Hola”.

3am – Got back from Praktika8, where I went alone, as Debbi wasn’t feeling well. Initially I was supposed to meet some people there, but that didn’t happen, so, there I was, my first time out dancing in BsAs, in a place where I don’t know anyone and no one knows me. That was weird, as I can’t remember the last time when that happened. It was probably the first time I went to Montreal. Anyway, I just got myself a glass of wine and sat and watched for a little over one hour, trying to figure out the ways of the land. My first observation was, holy crap, ALL these people can dance! Well! As they arrive, people get attached to "packs", and when they don't dance, they chat. So, if you go ask someone and get turned down, you will do it in front of an audience and everyone watches everything. Sweet! Cabaceo doesn't seem to be used here, so you have to go ask people verbally. The music at the Praktika8 was actually really good even though the DJ seemed to hate valses, as he didn’t play any. Well, I wanted to dance at least one tanda on my birthday, so I went and asked one of the girls that did not seem belong to a "pack", who seemed to move well and who sat for the last few tandas. The strategy worked, she accepted and off we went. She was a good dancer, I’d say at the level of the better dancers in NYC, and it turns out she spoke a little bit of English too. When she heard I was from Boston, she seemed slightly surprised “But, you are a good dancer”… I don’t think she meant it the exact way it sounded, but it was funny nevertheless. After that I danced with another 4 or 5 people and except for one, they were all good or very good dancers. The one that wasn’t that great, just moved back to BsAs from LA where she lived for the last 7 years. All the women I danced with were from BsAs (though one of them moved to BsAs from Germany) and based on their comments at the end of the tanda, they seemed to enjoy the dances. They all spoke some English, so even though I should learn some Spanish, not knowing any doesn’t seem to be a big problem so far. All in all was a good night, although it would’ve been a lot nicer if Debbi was there. I think I’m going to like dancing in BsAs.