Dance par-tay
Thursday night, while I was out dancing to my beloved band, Nosotros (http://nosotrosmusic.net), I was approached by a woman who was marketing the dance competition for the Santa Fe Rape Crisis Treatment Center benefit. I was already planning on attending the event for work. This woman complimented my dancing and told me that I simply HAD to enter the competition, as she was trying to encourage entrants who were not studio-trained.
I thanked her for the compliment, and told her I would think about it. I don’t like dance competitions. In my opinion, they breed hostility between dancers and suck the fun out things. When I dance, it’s not about having precise and choreographed footwork; it’s about having a good time. I have very little accuracy in terms of technique. I know the basic steps and the rest comes from feeling the rhythm.
Well, between going home that night with a foot that looked like an elephant had seen a mouse and tried to tromp it to death (that is to say, a very big man wearing cowboy boots planted his heel directly on top of my unprotected right foot, leaving the entire thing black and blue) and a sore throat, I assumed the decision had been made for me. No dance competition for Liz.
So I showed up Saturday, wearing shoes to cover my poor bruised foot, and the lady pounced me as soon as I walked in the door. I showed her my foot and told her it was unlikely I’d be doing any dancing. Well, she persisted. And persisted. And persisted. And I finally agreed to sign up simply to get her to leave me alone. Luckily, one of my dance partners, Eloy (who is 72 years old), had come to the event so I had someone to enter with. I also happened to have my kick-ass red and white stilettos in the car.
The competition had cash prizes for three categories: costume, technique, and style. There were 22 couples total. Eloy and I made it through the first elimination round, which left 7 couples to dance one more heat of salsa.
We freaking won. We took the prize for best dance style. $200 cash, so we each got $100. I was flabbergasted. I was thrilled just making the first cut, I didn’t think we’d actually land any of the categories. Now, I must admit that Eloy and I had a potentially unfair advantage: Nosotros was the band playing music for the competition, and we've danced to pretty much all their songs before. The salsa they played was nothing new. How much changing the music would have affected our performance, I can't say.
But, hurray for that. The only downside was that (of course) someone stepped on my foot again. The same one, and it swelled up and all that lovely mottled-ness. I think I’m going to have to either take a few weeks off of dancing (yeah, right) or invest in some steel-plated shoes to give my foot a chance to recover.
Whew. I’ll be lucky if I make it into work today.
I thanked her for the compliment, and told her I would think about it. I don’t like dance competitions. In my opinion, they breed hostility between dancers and suck the fun out things. When I dance, it’s not about having precise and choreographed footwork; it’s about having a good time. I have very little accuracy in terms of technique. I know the basic steps and the rest comes from feeling the rhythm.
Well, between going home that night with a foot that looked like an elephant had seen a mouse and tried to tromp it to death (that is to say, a very big man wearing cowboy boots planted his heel directly on top of my unprotected right foot, leaving the entire thing black and blue) and a sore throat, I assumed the decision had been made for me. No dance competition for Liz.
So I showed up Saturday, wearing shoes to cover my poor bruised foot, and the lady pounced me as soon as I walked in the door. I showed her my foot and told her it was unlikely I’d be doing any dancing. Well, she persisted. And persisted. And persisted. And I finally agreed to sign up simply to get her to leave me alone. Luckily, one of my dance partners, Eloy (who is 72 years old), had come to the event so I had someone to enter with. I also happened to have my kick-ass red and white stilettos in the car.
The competition had cash prizes for three categories: costume, technique, and style. There were 22 couples total. Eloy and I made it through the first elimination round, which left 7 couples to dance one more heat of salsa.
We freaking won. We took the prize for best dance style. $200 cash, so we each got $100. I was flabbergasted. I was thrilled just making the first cut, I didn’t think we’d actually land any of the categories. Now, I must admit that Eloy and I had a potentially unfair advantage: Nosotros was the band playing music for the competition, and we've danced to pretty much all their songs before. The salsa they played was nothing new. How much changing the music would have affected our performance, I can't say.
But, hurray for that. The only downside was that (of course) someone stepped on my foot again. The same one, and it swelled up and all that lovely mottled-ness. I think I’m going to have to either take a few weeks off of dancing (yeah, right) or invest in some steel-plated shoes to give my foot a chance to recover.
Whew. I’ll be lucky if I make it into work today.