The Bachata Weekender

I've been in Oslo about 7 weeks now and am definitely learning my way around the city. Since I don't have a job here I've had to get a little creative to find things to do during the days while Lene is working. Usually I occupy myself by reading, playing the guitar and going for walks around the city. Sometimes the parents of the 10month old boy I nanny need some help, but since the mother hasn't had to go back to work yet they don't need me that often. I've also been working at a dance studio in exchange for salsa, merengue and bachata lessons. You can check out their website here.

Lene and I were walking around Oslo one night when we saw a sign outside a dance studio saying they were having free lessons that week; we went to a salsa lesson and a cha-cha lesson and I ended up speaking with the owners about working at the studio in exchange for classes. They are very nice and flexible people and were happy to make a deal. Usually I go a couple hours before classes and open up the studio, making sure everything is clean before people arrive. During the parties I help serve drinks and generally man the reception. In exchange I've been taking around 10-12 hours of lessons a week, focusing mostly on salsa but also a taking a little merengue and bachata as well. As each of these dances has a Latin-American origin, learning one helps you build on the others. The footwork is a little different but the body movements and turns are very similar.

Dancing at one of the parties. This was the Salsa room, since it was a Bachata weekend the other room was much more crowded:

I've mentioned all of this to get to the main topic of the post, The Bachata Weekender that we just had at the studio. Guest artists from Spain were flown in to teach intensive workshops for the weekend. The workshops were held during the day and parties were held at night so people could socialize a little more and practice what they'd learned during the classes.

Before this weekend course I had only taken three one hour classes of Bachata whereas some of the other students had been dancing it for years. Needless to say I was in a little over my head but it was still had a great time. Since all the moves and routines were new to everyone I was able to keep up to some extent, but the people with more experience picked things up much faster. In all, we had over 12 hours of classes the first of which started on Friday. Each day became a more difficult to the point where we were doing advanced acrobatic Bachata on Sunday. This involved doing various kinds of lifts and dips which were surprisingly easy if you used the correct technique and nearly impossible if you didn't. I'm hoping muscle memory will help out some with the learning since I can hardly remember the dozens of steps and routines we practiced.

Reiza, the owner, talking to us before the show on Saturday:

There were always breaks between the workshops and the parties later that night so people could go home, grab some dinner and dress up a little. Even with these breaks though, we we rushing around trying to get the studio cleaned up again for the night. It's amazing how much dust and dirt a group of people can bring in with them in such a short time. We also had to make sure all the dishes were clean, candles were lit, the furniture rearranged properly and the lights and music were ready to go.

The instructors, Gabryél and Begoña were great even if they seemed a little over the top sometimes (I suppose that's pretty common in the dance profession). Their instruction was very clear, they made things fun and they gave you plenty of help if you were struggling. One of my favorite steps that we did was called the rueda. In it, all of the couples collected in a loose circle around the room. Gabryél taught us various steps and their names which he would shout for us to perform. This would have dancing in unison (as long as we could remember the names to the steps) and moving around in a big circle. Changing partners generally caused the most chaos as you scrambled to get to someone else and stay in time with the music. Since there was one more guy than there were girls it ended up being a little like musical chairs. By the end of the weekend I was exhausted but had a fantastic time. These dances take years to learn properly and I have much more respect after trying my hand (feet?) at them.

Reiza introducing Gabryél and Begoña for their

dance show on Saturday night:

I've included a couple videos, the first is of Gabryél and Begoña demonstrating one of the steps we learned and allowing us to video tape it so we might remember it better. The second is some of the students doing another step that we learned. Fortunately, I managed to avoid having any videos taken of me dancing so you won't have to witness that.