I think, after spending quite some time on YouTube looking for it, I have unearthed a vid of the best rueda ever.
Filmed in one of those shabby, dilapidated-yet-once-grand Havana buildings, it’s easy to miss how great this is (if you didn’t read the title), because of the lack of an audience and the very plain dress of the dancers – just crisp white cotton dresses for women and shirts and trousers for guys.
But watch for more than a minute and you’ll see what I mean. Unbelievably cool, stylish Cuban dancers full of AZUCAR! and SABOR! and incredble choreography.
Watching this, frankly, makes me feel like:
a) I have basically wasted my life so far by not being able to dance like this, with people like this.
b) The rest of my life will be wasted if I don’t drop everything so that I can dance like this, with people like this.
Not saying I HAVE wasted my life, or that I am about to drop anything. I’m just saying how it makes me feel.
If you adore Cuban salsa, you will understand. Also how badly it makes me want to go back to Cuba. WAHHH!
I’ve been getting ready for the Edinburgh Book Festival, much excitement, yay!
My event is on Wed 21st – sold out, I’m surprised and impressed to see. It’s a heck of a marketing machine, the Edinburgh Festival. Most of the Schools Events are sold out.
I have been getting my multimedia stuff up to scratch, cutting DVDs of my videos and rejigging my Powerpoint slideshow with one new slide – all about 2012. Apart from that, I have now booked my schedule solid between seeing friends who are visiting the Festival and hanging out at parties and lunches with my lovely publishers.
And I’m flying there! I will feel rather fabulous…
Meanwhile my sister has made us all very proud by giving birth to a bouncy boy, Benedict. I’m seriously thinking of going to his christening, all the way in Australia. Since we all live so many squillions of miles away from each other, my brother and sisters, these sorts of events are starting to be the kinds of excuses we can use to justify the increasingly terrifying expense of meeting up.
But maybe Scholastic Australia would like me to do some book events and schools visits….
That makes it much more justifiable, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile despite some very good news (apart from a new nephew) – which I’ll share in the next few weeks – I’m feeling rather melancholic. It’s been far too long since I went dancing – not since the Oscar D’Leon concert on July 12th. I think the doctor may order a trip to Mambocity soon. Damn salsa for being so addictive! I’m good and hooked.
Listened to BBC Radio 4 last night; Grevel Lindop reading from his book Travels On the Dance Floor – also on listen again. For a UK-based salsera like me his experiences are very familiar. It made me think nostalgically of Cuba. Especially when he played a song which played often when we were in Cuba. Whenever I hear it I feel a kind of desperate, romantic ache for Havana.
Well I listened to the lyrics, searched for the first line on Google and found this video: it’s the late guajiro Polo Montanez singing “Un Monton de Estrellas“.
Very romantic song. And turns out he’s dead – in a traffic accident in 2002, when he was 47. *sob*
I NEED TO DANCE TO THIS SONG SOON OR I WILL BURST!
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I finished editing the clips I filmed of the son band playing and people dancing at Carnival de Cuba last Saturday in sunny London. Featuring my friends Becs (in white with turquoise top), Deborah (red cardy, dancing with me), Nicola (white top and trousers, flowing blue-and-white overshirt) and Mel (halter-neck, brown-and white polka-dot dress), all of whom I’ve previously blogged.
Seems implausibly cold now…an artic breeze in blowing through my window at exactly the right angle to torment my wrist, which already throbs with strain from typing and the computer mouse.
I dreamt such a great idea for a story last night. I really should have written it down but as usual I thought it so vivid on waking that I wouldn’t need to. But as ever, an hour or so later and all I remember are fragments. In the dream I was shown a photo of a bunch of people who were known to have been behind the funding of a particular scientific project – a project that later had was found to have sinister connotations. The photo was an unexpected capture of all the suspicious parties together. And those faces were indeed surprising. I could identify some of them from my scientist days. One in particular was someone I hadn’t liked at all. In the dream, I had that delicious thrill of Aha!….followed by hmmmmm…
I’ve forgotten all the details, except the faces of the scientists that I recognised.
That’s right guys. I know who you are. I’ve seen ya!
Ah, the lovely boys of Charanga’s front line. Cuba’s finest, playing for free in Southwark Park.
We missed them by two days in Havana…and also in Cancun. Well worth the wait…rumour has it they’ll be at the afterparty later tonight at the Colosseum in Vauxhall. This is where it really would be an advantage to be JK Rowling. People in their 20s adore her…they grew up on her books. Bet she’d get to dance with anyone from Charanga she likes.
Well I’ll still try my luck…
Emailed from my BlackBerry®
Ah, the bliss of a return to Cuban salsa after many weeks, oh really far too long without a proper session. Last night’s Buena Vista Club in Oxford offered the bonus of a rare appearance by a total salsa diva, Cuban dancer Yanet Fuentes.
Watching her performance, I said to my friend Becs, “Is it just me, or would you give up all your education and job and talent in exchange for being able to dance like Yanet.” Becs considered. “I’d pretty much sell my soul to be able to dance like that.”
It would be a very reasonable deal. Yanet is extraordinarily good and has trained since being a little girl with top dancers in Havana. And she’s risen to be the best of the lot!
Now if Mephistopheles happens to be around, let’s talk. It would be the end of the adventure stories, probably. But look at what I would gain…
