H. Mijail's Blog

A number of times now some friends have asked me for advice about starting "some salsa or dance course", and of course they are surprised when I ask back what kind of salsa. I too had no clue that there were different kinds when I started. So I'll write the answers down so next time I can just point people here. For history and dry reading I could just point them to Wikipedia, but I know that it didn't help me to understand things better. Now it is more interesting, but when I was absolutely starting, it was pretty much useless. Even the videos don't say a lot; it's a bit like going to a restaurant for some cuisine type you don't know, and having to choose a dish by the ingredient list or by some photo: hardly ideal. So I'll write about what I feel can be more interesting / practical for someone wanting to start and choose. Will also be interesting to check how my opinions evolve in a future. My credentials: I am still mostly a beginner. I only st...

(sounds better than Aikikizomba... ;P) The Bachaturo festival was not exactly very well organized. In fact if I had came from far away I guess I would be pretty pissed off. I've heard that last year it was much better, and that this edition was problematic because it had to be rescheduled after the Smolensk plane accident... Anyway, the high point for me has been Kwenda. He was funny and interesting just as a Kizomba teacher. But then it got stranger / more interesting: there was a class called "Kainzen Dance". Looks like that was a typo and the real name is "Kaizen" (shitty organization!). Sounded like something japanese, and I half assumed some Noh-style dance or similar (read: not interesting ;P ). So when I finally went in because some other class was overcrowded, ... surprise. Incense, and some mix of afro bodymovement and... exercises that reminded me the strangest Tai Chi class I had, so long ago. I wouldn't say I liked it (it felt a bit rushe...

3 months ago, I started a Salsa course.  In fact it was an unexpected and (supposedly) quick experiment. I had played percussion for some years in my hometown's music band; that was about 10 years ago. So when I saw a short weekend minicourse in a dance school about how to play latin percussion in salsa music, I went in. At the moment, someone I knew was asking me to play percussion in their oh-so-amateurish group, so I thought it could be a quick way to regain some practice and have a go at playing with them. The percussion course ended up being not too interesting. Like the group anyway. But, that same day I found that a Salsa (on1/linear) crash course was about to start, just after the percussion course. I was already there in the school, with no other plans for the weekend, and the Salsa course would be in fact almost gratis for me. So... why not?  That night there was also the periodic saturday latin party in the dance school (Salsa Libre), which started with a dan...