There I was, contemplating the “truths of being” and I got it, a profound revelation: Bachata is life!
Don’t you feel it? When you are dancing cheek to cheek and the sweat is running down your spine; when you know exactly how to best lead or follow your dance partner, when your bodies are so united that they are part of the same cluster of Universe… hearts racing, eyes closed and heavy breathing are sure signs that you are a bit more than simply alive, you are enjoying the moment to its full extent!
We are part of a very privileged few, able to enjoy this particular pleasure of bachata dancing.
Looking deeper into my philosophic jump I was then capable of identifying four types of bachateros.
The “Nice to meet you”…
The first type are the particular “Nice to Meet You’s”. These are people with a little bit of a memory problem. It happened to me recently, this guy that danced with me four or five times, that made my legs go all wobbly, to whom I’ve been introduced at least twice before, that is in my facebook… well, he said “That Phrase”, destroyer of self-esteemed worlds:
– Oh! Nice to meet you!
I have to confess I don’t think I was very gracious about it. I’m pretty sure my face fell and I said:
– But we danced before!
We girls prefer to be remembered for any reason than being a good dancer, especially because we will probably not know why a guy remembered us from a dance and therefore we can make it up. We just choose the best reason to make us happy, something in the lines of: he remembers me because we had such a great, perfect, amazing dance! Or because I’m beauuuutifullll! Or because of my almost topless top. Or … whatever, I will stop now, the feminine mind is able to create an endless list of nice things to think about one-‘very-her’-self.
I bet you can name a few “nice to meet you’s” in your dance floor, but before you judge them too hard pay attention to see if you haven’t done it yourself… said “nice to meet you” and then thought “hummm, didn’t I meet that guy/girl before?”
The “Us and them”…
The second category is the “us and them”. “Us” are the ones you are used to dance, normal room-temperature bachatas, “them” are the other people on the dance floor, the ones you have not danced with before. I have to add here a little thing for the guys:
– Do ask us to dance! Especially the girls you haven’t danced before!
I’m always asking guys that I haven’t danced before to dance, but I only do it once, in the hope that they will ask me back later. Sometimes it works.
One thing that does upset me a bit is this thing human beings seem to have: this habit of clustering in groups and being a bit reluctant of exploring new horizons. I can’t but hate these little groups around the dance schools they come from, where they don’t dance with the people of other schools. Honestly, it is the guy’s role to ask the girls. That is how dance was created hundreds of years ago!
The “Friends with a flair”…
The third type, I call “friends with a flair”. “Bachatar” is something so sexy that it is hard to name it as proper or innocent. I have a female friend, for example, that refuses to dance it with her brother. I really can relate to that.
So, I have these friends in the dance floor, these dance partners that we always meet and dance and every time we dance the room temperature raises a bit.
It sounds funny to say that when the music is over we say thanks, we hug, we smile and we go our own ways finding a new partner for the next song. More than once I receive some comments from the watchers, and it is common to see the watchers breathless. But truth be told, the moment is done and gone as the last accord of the song dies.
So couples dancing like that are to me a bit more than mere friends or colleagues, the dance connection is too intense… “Friends with a Flair” seemed the right way to classify them.
The “Bachateros with a fling”…
The last group is for the “bachateros with a fling” a bit more than just a flair that ends with the end of the song… something that goes longer in imagination or simply goes somewhere else 🙂 It is said that there is nothing that compares to the pleasure of extending bachata skills to the after party…
You know what they say: “dancing it’s the vertical expression of a horizontal desire”…
Written by – ‘Louca por Bachata’ Tania Crivellenti. Tania’s blog: The dancing bug. You can find Tania at various latin venues, LDA and facebook!