Street Samba, Part Deux

Last night my friend, Kathy, and I took Quenia Ribeiro‘s Samba class at Alvin Ailey (me for the second time now, Kathy for the first). Kathy seemed humorously dumbfounded (like I think everyone is the first time they try the dance!), but she seemed to have fun — at least I think she did! But I thought it was actually harder this time — it seemed that the actual steps were more complicated than last time. Then, I at least knew where to put my feet on the floor, and just struggled like crazy with moving my pelvis and rib cage properly. But this time I couldn’t even get the steps down well enough to focus on body movement. Ugh.

In class I saw an acquaintance from my ballroom studio. We chatted a bit and she said she’s trying to save money by taking street Samba instead of ballroom as well. I guess I’m not the only one overwhelmed with the cost of ballroom…

Anyway, Quenia told us last night that she will be in Brazil for the next month for Carnival (lucky lucky her!), so there will be a substitute teacher at Ailey, which will probably be good for me since the sub hopefully will not know how advanced all of the “beginner” students are (maybe the more advanced dedicated Quenia students won’t even show?…) and will go A LOT slower. Fingers crossed anyway. Well, I bought Quenia’s instructional DVD and am going to practice like crazy over the next month so maybe I won’t be such a sorry sight when she returns! Hopefully by just watching her on tape, SOMETHING will seep in…

Speaking of great Brazilian dancers … the awesome Chimene sent me this link. Funny thing is, though of course I HAD to add it to my blogroll immediately (the link is the exclamation points at the top of the ballet section, because that is how I think of him — in exclamation points 🙂 🙂 ) and know I am going to be searching MySpace for his comments to his friends, I can’t help but feel kind of weird doing so. I remember reading a discussion on Ballet Talk not long ago where people were agreeing that it was probably better not to meet your favorite dancers for fear of disappointment. Not that a huge amount of info is revealed on MySpace, but still, do I need to know that he’s “in a relationship” or that some of his friends seem a little … hmmm … outlandish!? I don’t know… It’s just weird seeing someone who has kind of a celebrity status to you, whom you admire / worship / have a gigantic crush on 🙂 just talking freely in an open forum like that .. and whether it’s actually hanging out and conversing with or just watching in on the conversations of said admiree / idol / crush object — I mean, you’re bound to be disappointed if they don’t live up to your expectations, if they’re not perfect, which they won’t be since they’re human of course…

On the other hand, look at the cute cute puppy! (who looks rather contemplative in this pic). And look at his answers to the profile questions 🙂 … Ugh, how could anyone not just LOVE him?