Shake Your Bon Bon

Back in Bristol, Cafe Havannas run a salsa class every Wednesday but I could never muster up enough motivation to go on a regular basis, and only tagged along a couple of times with Helena and Ellie. The 30 minutes walk down to the centre didnt exactly help matters.

Anyway, I decided I need a hobby in Japan so I've joined a salsa class in Sakae, a 20 minutes subway ride from home but its a really good class. A month's membership is 5,000 yen, which only works out at ₤25 and then I can attend as many classes as I like. I try to go three times a week if I can, and then I usually stay for 2 sessions because the hour-long classes pass by too quickly. I go with Antonio and Anna, but now we're extending the international entourage and Emma and Liz are coming too. The couple who teach the class are really lovely, though I suspect that the guy is gay; he has a penchant for really tight trousers and he has the Maurizio Grioli walk. The lady is tiny, she's about the same height as me but she takes up half the space I do. The strange thing is she doesnt look unhealthily skinny because I think she's just naturally small-boned (is that even a word?!), but still, she's really really tiny.

We have this thing in salsa class which they call 'Shine'. This is when we do solo dance routines and the couple is always encouraging us to shake our ass and shimmy! As the name implies, we're supposed to 'SHINE!' but we can bearly remember the steps let alone work some booty shakin' into it, but we do try and its hysterical watching us do it. In the partner work, all the girls are supposed to be very sultry and seductive so we have to work running our figers through our hair and letting the hand fall down our chest, like Beyonce but a little bit slower and dirtier. We're also supposed to incorporate hip rolls and leg kicks into our steps, while maintaining eye contact with our partner at all time, except I can never do that seriously and end up cracking up and messing up the dance.

The couple have certain phrases that they love saying, like '1 is 1, and 5 is 5. 1 is always 1 and 5 is always 5', 'Keep your space. This is my space, this is your space', 'No spaghetti arms, you are not 15 minutes boiled spaghetti'... What the '1 is 1' sentence means is that we always step with our right leg with the first beat, and out left leg on the fifth. So whatever we do, we must follow that basic mantra. The space sentence makes me laugh just because it reminds me so much of Dirty Dancing, though sadly none of the men at salsa are particluarly sexy. There's one guy who always wear leather trousers and a half-unbottoned shirt. Methinks he fancy himself as a bit of a stud, though Anna and I did wonder if this is his everyday-wear or his special salsa get up. Then the other day I bumped into him at uni wearing the same leather trousers! Come on, there's something wrong about a straight guy wearing leather trousers in broad daylight!!!

Anyway, its all really good fun and its so good to get a bit of dancing in on a regualr basis.