Mambalsa Dev w/s #2

Just about recovered from the second Mambalsa development workshop on Sunday 30th Nov.
Sorry if this comes out a s a report but ideas have been buzzing around in my head since the moment it finished.

Notable highs for me were:
People came! and more than the first w/s. It was good to see Fliss and Leigh from London Salsa there both nearly recovered from ruptured Achilles tendons. Yves Salmon popped in to take some professional pics

Everyone leading:
I structured the partner dance exercises so that everyone had to lead and follow.
This changed the dynamic in a very positive way. It appeared that all the experience of the advanced female salsa dancers flooded into the room and a new level of equality and support was found. It felt more like a team than a group of students.
I'm convinced that everyone learning both leading and following skills at beginners level will get more people to a higher level faster than learning one roll first.
It will solve the problem of ladies moving through the levels faster than the men leaving a shortage of ladies in beginners.
It also will mix and mingle the group avoiding the 'them and us' cliques, and even help with outdated attitudes e.g. 'good dancers shouldn't dance with beginners'. It's hard to play the 'dance professor' blame game when your in a teacher to teacher relationship.


Contradance
This was my big idea for this w/s and I'm pleased it was a success.

I could have used English country dance or American line dance but I chose contradance as it connected Mambalsa to the time line of Latin dance (see earlier post). I used a You tube clip of a seventeenth century dance but modified it to get everyone dancing simultaneously and added Mambalsa FWS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjf8vp8_54Y
The next clip shows us our first go at contradance. Don't expect baroque polish! Later in the clip it's beat boxed hip hop and then trance versions of Pachelbel's Canon http://youtu.be/hBpexZYMviY


Bolero

Miranda was there and she's into bolero like me.  Just after we broke for coffee I played "Dos gardenias"  sung by Ibrahim Ferrer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT5cNct4sgE
It felt so easy dancing Mambalsa to bolero which is no surprise as the FWS is almost identical as bolero was the inspiration for Mambalsa. http://youtu.be/xH4OE-ySs0Q

Flash mob
I divided the group into two and set them the challenge of creating a beginners grid. Grid is my term for a set piece pattern like line dancing. There were five people in each group and the creative juices flowed,  different solutions came forth and we selected one and rehearsed a flash mob. (can't wait for next year)

Partner work
My focus was not on partner work but we still did a fair chunk. Two versions of cbl.What was significant was how much easier it was on the second w/s now the terms are familiar to me and most of the group.

Contra-versial 17th Century DJ

Sometimes it's just plain hard to smash through the wall.
I heard sir Bob Geldof on the radio pushing Band Aid #4
It seemed like nothing changed since Band Aid #1  thirty years ago.

Yesterday I made calls...
Edinburgh Dance Base - hopefully to host my w/s - Answerphone
Time Out - to get department to invite journalist - Reception then email
Bashed off a couple of press releases to magazines.

In short nothing to show .... except maybe few cracks in that wall!

This morning I had a mad idea! (another)
What happens if you Mambalsa a 17th Century Contra Dance to urban R'n'B????

OOOOOh
1) choose your Contra Dance style.
First there's lot and lots of Contra Dances, from English folk to Peruvian. Then there's the ones with road cones or is that contra flow? Nothing contra-versial in that joke!
I went for a 17th Century French form "I say, is that Mr Darcy?" .
2) rip out that footwork and replace with Mambalsa FWS
3) Choose awesome track (tba)

Why Contra Dance?
There's a direct link from English Country Dancing to French Contra Dance to Cuban Contradanza to Danzon to Son to Salsa to Mambalsa.

There's a second reason. Group dances including country dances are a successful and enduring form of entertainment. They have always reflected the style and music of their time and place, so taking the music of today and making them fresh again is a valid idea.
The beauty of Mambalsa is that the FWS (foot work sequence) is fixed. Once got the group dance becomes a matter of remembering the shape. Maybe not easy but easier than learning different footwork for each dance.
I recently went to a Ceilidh (barn dance) The dances were simple enough with no real footwork. The crowd was assisted by a cheep bar and live band and we did our very best not to fall over.
It was fun and social and mixed everyone up, but I wouldn't sign up for a course.
If we (the crowd) already had the Mambalsa FWS we would have been far more advanced from the outset with a corresponding sense of achievement. If we could dance those old social dances to modern music, they would take on a new life and connect with a new generation. Another niche for Mambalsa!

Back to hitting that wall :-)

November nerves

It's November 5th Firework night and I'm sitting in a cafe after a filling at the dentist.
This week the nerves have set in re Mambalsa project. It doesn't take much to knock my fragile ego and to be honest I've been waiting for this low bumpy mood to come along for a while now. A cyclical depression or just the onset of winter?
Nothing went wrong, it just feels like I'm wading through mud, towards more mud.

The two words that sum up my progress are avoidance and frustration.
Avoidance is where I find other stuff to do to avoid doing what I need to do.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to getting stuck into my accounts. Nothing like a pile of receipts to bury all progress under. And his gravestone read "At least he got his tax return in on time"

Frustration at the moments when I tackle the next item on the to do list and time seems to stretch so it takes forever. Yesterday two facebook events listed and a draft email. WOW.
Not an amazing output by any means but significant in that it showed I  avoided avoidance and went on to be frustrated by frustration.
Avoiding Avoidance is easiest as it's basically using avoidance  to avoid avoidance. I could argue that avoiding avoidance is hard to avoid.
So how do I frustrate frustration?
What seems to work is to stick to the actual. Real things that are real and present in the world, rather than planning and preparation to do real things. 'Today I did' rather than 'Today I prepared to do'.
Things did happen yesterday. Two events got listed. An email was drafted that I had been avoiding since September. A significant Not Nothing.
To day I will do more.
A friend of mine who had spent some time with mental health problems said the best 'to do' list uses half the page to write what you've achieved.

Conclusion- Everything that makes it hard or difficult is part of the reason why no one else has done it!

The First ever Mambalsa development w/s 5th Oct 2014

Yesterday was the first ever Mambalsa Development workshop. I held it at bar Salsa and many of the regular i2i course gang came along including Robert and Nina, both long standing salsaseros, Lee Knights who was there as a journalist writing an article on Mambalsa for the Dancing Times (Dance Today), and Fliss who was photographing and supporting me having spent most of the year recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon.

The night before we had been at Sarah's birthday party in Highbury. Being a creative she asked everyone to do a turn so Grace and I Mambalsa'ed them. We asked a young man for a track from his phone, he chose  Kiss by Prince and everyone got up and grooved away to a Mambalsa line up. It was Fun and Funky and well received. TO demonstrate the footwork I grabbed a pair of shoes from a lady and used them like gloves!
All in all a massive boost for the next day's workshop.

My workshop report
Pros:
It was buzzy and fun, partly due to the previous night's success and making the concept into a reality.
It was doable, and yes there was a little doubt in my mind that we would all revert to two left feet and the frustration would inhibit any progress.
We danced a lot. Forget the waffle it was track track track.
What a range of music. see list below.
Cons:
Less people than hoped for. That's down to me, got to be brave and shout about it!
Re pace of w/s -We got very tired so the Mambalsa-rueda was a bit beyond our energy levels.
Not every track worked well but all were workable.(notable the ska track)
I didn't use the other teachers to present things. Grace , Lee, Robert and Nina have all taught.
A change of face/voice in the w/s  would have been refreshing and make it come from the group rather than just me. (note to self)

What was surprising:
Before the course I feared that Mambalsa would force itself onto the music in the way that a 'one size fits all' garment often doesn't suit any size or anyone. I was completely wrongabout this. It became an ongoing conversation about the music and why it meant something to the person who brought it.
Devika, an intelligent petite Asian young lady brought two tracks kpop (Korean pop) and heavy heavy rock. When the Rock came on paused the track and said to the group, 'lets take a moment to re-access our image of Devika' everyone laughed but we had gained a massive insight into part of her that hadn't surfaced to us before.
Lee M. and I were chatting at lunch and he said that he had  never though he would be partner dancing to the house track he'd brought.
I had never heard of most of the artists suggested and it felt liberating to connect Mambalsa to so many genres.
At one point in the day we did a combo to a tango track and then the same combo to a country track. It felt completely different. Amazingly so, which means the dance molds itself to the music, complimenting it. Mambalsa has become about the music, our music, which is perfect for a world where we have more access to music than ever before.
On the course we danced to:
Blues
Bolero
Disco
Kpop
Rock
Soul
House
Jazz
Country
Ska
Latin Pop
Tango
and more....


The next workshop has to be busier, but I now have a better idea what works and at what pace.