08/22/08 – Last day in Bangalore

Being sick on vacation sucks, being sick on a vacation where you’re working out all hours of the day is worse, and being sick with a chest cold in the middle of a place where the air is gross and people smoke all over the place is hell on Earth. I apologize in advance if this entry is a little depressing or pessimistic. Overall, I’m having a fantastic trip meeting all kinds of wonderful new people, but practicing with a chest cold, no voice, and asthma makes life a little tough. OK, enough complaining. I’m in India!

As has become the usual routine, we started our day with a lovely breakfast of something that seems like cous cous (but isn’t) and peanut butter, bread, and bananas. I love our morning meals! Lourd’s mother even made me some wonderful chai with lemon grass special just for me so my throat would be soothed. It was amazing! Having chai every day at every meal is definitely one of my favorite parts about being in India. So delicious!





We made our way over to the studio, practiced hard, and then had lunch at a really wonderful little tea café. The tea selection was one of the biggest I’ve ever seen and I enjoyed an amazing litchi (that’s the way “lychee” was spelled in the menu) ice tea and ended my lunch with another wonderful masala tea with cardamom. I even picked up some nice flower teas and really gourmet Darjeeling teas to share when I get home. (Jonathan & Lindsey – I got some I think you’re really going to enjoy!) It was actually a nice change of pace to have non-spicy food at lunch. I still can’t believe those words are coming out of my mouth! I LOVE spicy food. Maybe it’s because I’m sick, home sick, or just getting worn out, but I really enjoyed my tomato and cream cheese sandwich with French fries. It was a nice change of pace!



Of course, after lunch we were back in the studio for more practice, but our time got cut a little short because the local dance team had a private group lesson with Anne & Anichi visiting from Germany. One really fun moment was when Anichi decided to play Giju’s song that we had been practicing to do the combination they had just taught. It’s a fun video!

After practice, we changed our clothes and cleaned up at the studio and headed over to a really nice restaurant called “The Ugly Duckling” where we enjoyed a really gourmet meal and then fabulous dancing right there in the restaurant. Dancing was so much fun and the music was fantastic. The only complaint I have is… I miss no smoking inside in California. I honestly how the local dancers here can be in such good shape and have such great stamina when they smoke or dance in these smoke filled environments. It’s crazy, hazy, and exhausting (ha ha ha)! The video below is little samples of several of our dancers dancing with the locals. It was awfully dark in there, but I hope you enjoy!

After the party ended around midnight, we made our way back to the house where we had to skip sleep to pack our bags and leave by 3:30AM to catch our 6:00AM flight to Mumbai.

On a more personal note, I’ve really enjoyed taking the role of team “mom” and “documentarian.” My mom would be so proud! Whenever someone needs medicine, itch cream, food, band aids, bags to carry their stuff in, or safety pins, I’ve become the “go-to-girl” and get rewarded with a warm, “Thanks, momma.” With the ickiness that has been spreading throughout the team, I’m really glad I brought the decongestant, Aleve, Tylenol, and, of course, Rolaids! Also, I’ve really enjoyed putting together this blog for all of us to remember our trip. It’s kind of become our little team documentary to remember the trip. I really hope you all are enjoying hearing about our rather monotonous days of practice with a few mini-adventures along the way. It really is fun to experience life here more like a local than a tourist, although I’d really like to come back and do all the touristy things too! At least now I’ll have some friends to come visit for that next trip!

On the last note, Lourd has been the most tremendous host anyone could ever hope for. He’s taken care of our lodging, keeps us entertained, genuinely makes sure we are completely taken care of, drives us around, and is joining us in Mumbai. I’m so glad he’ll be joining in at the video shoot. We are so lucky to have gotten to know him. My mom and dad would be so happy to know I’m safe in such great hands!

APOLOGY: I’m sorry this last two entries don’t have pictures yet. We’ve got to get out to catch our flight to Mumbai and I just didn’t have time to post the videos and pictures. I’ll put stuff together on the plane and hopefully, we’ll find internet access easily in Mumbai and I can update the pages with pictures. I know they are much more exciting to look at than read my ramblings!

08/21/08 – Our first practice with the Bangalore dancers

Oh my goodness! The dancers here in India are real troopers. After the weekend of the Congress, they left at 6:00AM for a salsa cruise on Monday morning and returned yesterday afternoon. To top it off, rather than going home from the cruise, they came straight to the studio to meet us for practice for the entire afternoon (around 1-7:30PM). They are insane! I’d be dead if I were in their shoes.

There aren’t a whole lot of updates from the day. We spent the entire day just practicing and teaching the Bangalore dancers the choreography. They picked it up extremely fast so we got a lot done. We should be able to finish up the choreography with them today before we leave for Bombay tomorrow morning. They will be coming out to join us on Sunday to practice and prepare for the shoot on Thursday and Friday.

The funniest part of the day, for me, came at lunch time. We ate at the same vegetarian restaurant as yesterday so again we ate for less than a dollar. On our way back, I stopped at the kiosk type place to buy some toilet paper. It costs 44 Rupees per roll. That’s a little more than a dollar, more than my entire lunch! It’s the best dollar I ever spent. Lunch - $0.70, Toilette paper - $1.10, a clean bottom – priceless.

In the afternoon, we made our way over to a second dance studio where the mosquitoes decided to feast on my leg. It looks like an acne-ridden boy’s face in the midst of puberty. After practice we again made it back home to another delicious, but gigantic meal. Sometimes it feels like “seconds” is just the beginning of the meal! After dinner, everyone (Giju, Elena, Arieh, & Jon) except for Kristen and I went out to meet our new local friends with Lourd at a pub for a couple hours. Kristen and I have gotten quite sick and need some serious rest with all the long days of practice.

08/20/08 - 2nd Day of Rehearsal

After a bright and early start to the day of getting work done and updating this blog, we again enjoyed a wonderful breakfast with our host parents. We sat and had a really nice chat with Lourd’s mother in the morning while she hand-fed her two adorable Labradors, Nikhil & Bruno.









While reading the paper, Kristen came across a rather humorous headline in the morning paper.












On our way out the door, Lourd’s mother was feeding her fish in the pond in the front yard. There house really is beautiful!












Again, we spent the majority of the day back in the studio practicing so there’s not a whole lot to say that would be interesting, but we are recording ourselves in the studio to provide feedback for us as a group. I’ve included a short clip (a preview of what’s to come, if you will) below. Please keep in mind that this is still new choreography and we’re definitely still working out the kinks!

We did get a short break for lunch in the afternoon where we wandered over to some local restaurants just down the street from the studio. We ended up at a little vegetarian restaurant where many of us ate the “South Indian Platter” for only 28 Rupees! The exchange rate is approximately 40 Rupees = 1 Dollar so this lunch that was so beautiful and HUGE cost less than a dollar for each of us. I don’t even think anyone actually had enough room in their stomach to finish the whole thing off! We all also got to try a locally popular soda, Thumbs Up, which was especially important for Arieh to try since he seems to be addicted to Coca Cola. I think he drinks 2-3 liters of Coke every day. It truly is a sight to see!

After lunch, one of the local dancers, Alex, came and joined our practice and picked up the material so quickly. He even helped us out with some choreography so that helped to rejuvenate us. After rehearsal, we all headed over to a street filled with wall-to-wall shops. With all the bright lights and loud cars honking, it’s a bit reminiscent of Times Square, but without all the high-rises. After about an hour of walking around and shopping, we made it back safely home where we enjoyed another wonderful dinner and s

On a side note, it’s pretty amazing no one has gotten at all sick, other than the occasional heartburn from the spices, from any of the food. Instead almost all of us has suffered from some kind of cold. Giju & Elena were both sick at the beginning of the trip at the congress, Kris got sick at the congress and just can’t seem to get rid of it, and now I’m suffering from a seriously sore throat. Arieh & Jon have been pretty lucky and are doing well so far… We’re all keeping our fingers crossed for them. It’s actually really difficult to tell whether I’m sick or if it’s just allergies or irritation from all of the dust and different particles, pollens, and pet dander in the air. All the throat, sinus, and chest irritation is certainly adding an extra element of toughness to our practices, but we all seem to be toughing it through and still being productive! Keep thinking happy and healthy thoughts for us!

08/19/08 - First day of rehearsal

The day started out with discovering that my face had been a mosquitoe's meal during the night. We sleep in pants, long sleeves, and socks to protect us from mosquitoes (which really aren’t that bad at all in the house), but apparently my face and ears were looking mighty tasty to a few bugs. When I woke up, my lip was the size of a fist! Who knew mosquitoes like to bite lips? After some Benadryl and time, my lip is now back to normal size. Thank goodness we didn’t shoot the video today!

Lourd’s parents are really taking tremendous care of us. They make sure we eat (and eat, and eat, and eat), get safely back and forth to the studio, and nurse us all back to health. Each time we sit down at the table to enjoy one of their elaborately prepared meals, they make sure we get a huge variety of food and are conscious of everyone’s preferences. If our plates are empty, they fill them again and again and again. I’m really going to have to re-learn the art of eating slow!

This morning, Lourd’s father helped get rickshaws to take us to the studio. He was really great at flagging them down and being persistent. It was my first time ever in this little tri-wheel contraption! With the 6 of us, we needed to take 2 rickshaws, which turned out to be quite an adventure. We started out great following each other, but then our driver decided he needed to stop to put air in the tires so we got separated. Apparently the 1st rickshaw driver had heard the address “off Palace Road” as “to the Palace” and took Jon, Kristen, and Arieh to the palace. Our driver couldn’t find the address we wanted to go to so we were lost. Who knew there were multiple roads called 1st Main Road? After a lot of trying to talk over really loud engines and craziness, both rickshaws finally made it safely to the studio.

We spent the entire rest of the day rehearsing for the video and making sure we are all clear about all of the choreography details before the local dancers come in on Thursday to learn. It was a fun day, but very exhausting! We ate lunch at a beautiful little restaurant right under the studio where we got to sit in bean bags and enjoy a wonderful meal.

When we were finally done with practice it was pouring rain and we couldn’t seem to flag down rickshaws. I’m not sure how long we stood around, but we were all exhausted and many of us are fighting illnesses. I’m certainly not used to all the dust and smoke in the air and my throat was killing me. When Giju finally had to give up finding rickshaws, Lourd’s dad again came to our rescue and came over to pick us up. While we waited, we got to go back down into the restaurant for some nice cold drinks.

We got back to the house and got nice hot showers, some tender loving care, and another exceptional meal with a delicious steamed fish that Lourd’s mother prepared from her own recipe. Lourd’s father made sure I gargled nice warm salt water and his mother made sure I got nice hot soothing water at dinner. It’s just great having parents around!

After dinner, my dance partner, Jon saved me with some Tylenol PM so I could finally get some rest. The jet lag had really gotten to me and I hadn’t gone to sleep until almost 5:00AM the night before. So, instead, I’m writing this Blog from the wee hours of the morning (just after 5:00AM) today after falling asleep early (around 10 or 11:00PM) the night before. Hopefully, the switch from going to bed at 5:00AM to getting up at 5:00AM will be just the cure I need for my awful case of jet lag.

Views from my first ever rickshaw ride:

08/18/08 – Moving to Lourd’s house

Today we spent a very leisurely morning in the hotel relaxing, reminiscing the events, and packing up our stuff. We walked out to a little lunch spot where we didn’t eat Indian food (boo!) and then took a shuttle across Bangalore to Lourd’s (the event organizer/promoter) house where we will be staying until the 22nd. The bus was pretty funny and pimped out as you can see in the picture below. I also took tons of photos from the window of the shuttle as we passed through the streets at pretty insane speeds. I don’t know why they even draw lines on the road. No one uses them!

Once we got to Lourd’s place we were greeted by his parents (it’s really his parents’ house) and were shown wonderful hospitality, watched some Olympics, and ate incredible and authentically prepared food by their cook. It was nice to experience some more of the culture here by staying in someone’s home. It’s still a little bit shocking to me that hired help is so common here, children live with their parents for a really long time, and toilet paper is just not a common item in bathrooms. We were greeted by a security guard at the gate to their home, they have a cook that comes in every morning to prepare food, someone else is hired to come and wash their dogs, they have gardeners, and I don’t really know what else. Right now, I’m really glad I brought a big tub of “Wet Ones” wipes with me, but am really missed good, soft, and dry TP! I’m just not really a Bidey kind of girl. A wet bottom just doesn’t feel great.

08/15-17/08 – India Salsa Congress

Giju met us in the Mumbai airport and we head over to Bangalore together where we were met by drivers that took us to where we were staying for the congress. It was great VIP treatment!

We stayed at 40 Winks which were service apartments. They were incredibly luxurious. There were 14 of us at the 40 Winks so we all bonded quickly taking the shuttle to and from the congress hotel. On a side note, I think it was a really smart idea to keep all the international guest instructors at this separate venue. We were really well taken care of with beautiful accommodations and butler service, but because they were in charge of handling the shuttle for us, it assured that we would be at the event all day for the workshops and on time for the shows and dancing in the evening. We were all exhausted, but no one complained because we were so well taken care of. The hotel provided wonderful complimentary room service and the promoter, Lourd Vijay, provided delicious all-you-can-eat lunch and dinner at the hotel. When we arrived on Friday evening, we had just enough time to get some dinner and get dressed for the evening shows and party. The Friday night shows were fun and showcased lots of the local student teams around India. Afterwards we had dinner, joined in on the dancing, and then came the biggest surprise. The event ended at 11:30PM!! It was actually a welcome shock since we were all suffering from a little jet lag and were ready for a bed. Jon, Kris, and I hadn’t seen a bed since Tuesday night and it was Friday night (well, Thursday afternoon in California).

After getting a little sleep on Friday night we were up bright and early to head out to the teach the first workshop of the day, “Power Shines.” Giju taught us the shines choreography in the congress hotel lobby the night before while waiting for our shuttle and modified it in the morning in the lounge area of our service apartments. As usual, Giju was concerned that they would be too easy and not enough material. And, as usual, the attendees found the footwork super challenging, but super fun! We had a good turnout and after we finished, Giju and Kris were surrounded by tons of people video-taping their demonstration. The video below is their demonstration with music and you can see all the people behind them recording with their cameras.

After our workshop, Arieh gave a wonderful workshop on body movement. After his performance that closed the show on Friday night and two really successful workshops, he's becoming quite the celebrity here in India. You should see everyone lining up to get their photo taken with him and ask for his autograph!

We spent the rest of the day in workshops and tech rehearsal. Jon and I were very frustrated and nervous at tech because the floor was terrible. In our routine, there is a turn pattern that’s tough enough on a great floor. The performance floor was wood panels covered in a cover that was strange but not terribly sticky to spin on. The scary part was that the two floor boards that we were dancing on bounced up and down in opposition so there was always a big crack to trip on and the bouncing made it really challenging to spin quickly. We told the crew about it and they were incredibly responsive and had it fixed much better by the time we got back for the performances.

After a long day of workshops and tech rehearsal, we got back to our rooms with about an hour and a half to shower and get ready for our performance. We had a couple of little mistakes, but, overall, the performance went pretty well. I also really appreciated one of the festival sponsors in particular… the Red Bull girls! The long day combined with some residual jet lag made the Red Bull seem like heaven in a can. After the performances we were treated to a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant that lasted until 11:00PM, which we sadly did not realize. We were just enjoying the food and the company and didn’t keep track of the time. By the time we finally got into the real dancing party, there were only around 5 songs left in the night. Promptly at 11:30PM, the police came in and shut it down. It’s pretty amazing. It’s actually illegal to dance in places where alcohol is served here. In order to have dancing, alcohol cannot be served or consumed in the same place where the dancing is. If anyone wants to drink, they have to go to the hotel bar and stay there. It makes for really fun dancing since people aren’t being crazy drunk all over the dance floor. Also, the floor was pretty sticky on Friday night so on Saturday night they poured a powder (similar to baby powder but finer) all over the floor. It was a little like dancing on an ice rink. Lots of people didn’t like it, but I was in heaven.

After the dancing was over it was still fairly early in the evening so we hung out together in one of the rooms back at our service apartments. Like an idiot, I forgot to bring my camera back for the performance so, unfortunately, there aren’t any pictures from Saturday night at the event, but there are a few funny ones in our PJs hanging out back at the rooms. We stayed up laughing, talking, and dancing until the wee hours of the morning. Knzo, an incredible dancer from Paris, even gave Kris, Jon, and I a private hip hop lesson since we couldn’t attend his workshop the next day because ours was scheduled at the same time.
We were given the option to sleep in some on Sunday, but I couldn’t really sleep in so I went to the first workshop on ladies’ styling by Diana, a belly, cabaret, and salsa dancer extraordinaire. It was well worth the lack of sleep! I’ve never attended so many workshops and enjoyed them so much as I did on Sunday. Juan Matos, from New York, showed us an incredible body work pattern and, after lunch, his partner, Candie, taught some beautiful ladies styling with Bob Fosse flare.

After Candie's workshop, Giju & Kris ran a workshop on complicated turn patterns. And when I say "complicated", I mean CRAZY complicated for the attendees. It was a great challenge and the attendees really enjoyed learning something so new and impressive. ...And Giju was worried it would be to easy! Jon, Elena, and I helped out and got to meet lots of new people.

After the workshops we went back to our service apartments relaxed, ate dinner, showered, and got ready for a whopping 3 hours (definitely appreciated!). They sent a later shuttle for us and we still got front row seats to the evening performances. The shows were absolutely amazing! There was a huge variety of hip hop, Bollywood, cha cha, flamenco, belly dancing, contemporary, and, of course, salsa dancing across the three nights. The big highlights from Sunday night for me were an incredible cha cha from a World Championship finalist couple, Anne & Aniche, from Germany and an elegant yet humorous routine by Juan Matos and Candy to close the show.
After their performance, Lourd had all the instructors and his students come up on stage to show his gratitude and gave each of us a framed flyer to remember the event. We spent a good amount of time taking pictures of all our new friends, which you can find on my picasa page.

Some of the people that really made an impression for being so nice, fun, and genuinely friendly were Lourd (of course), a group from Thailand (yeah, represent!), a promoter from Hong Kong (hilarious & quite the dancer), Kaytee & Ash from Mumbai (some of the most fun I’ve ever had goofing on the dance floor), Knzo from Paris (such a diverse talent and constantly dancing), and the Sambaleza girls: Helen, Sue, and Tina (so sweet and friendly and seriously sexy on the stage) from Brisbane, Australia. It truly was an international experience! We danced a ton (since we didn’t do dinner after the shows) and I was just completely drenched with sweat. With the storming rain outside, the humidity was ridiculous. The floor was covered with even more powder and actually got even to slippery for me (which never happens) so I spent most of the night dancing on the carpet, which was actually just about perfect for my taste. It had plenty of the powder spilled over from the floor too so it was also pretty slick. After the dancing ended (again at 11:30), Lourd invited a group of us up to his room for an after party, which was fun, but super crowded. Lourd gave a nice little speech of gratitude and we enjoyed a nice conversation with Aniche from Germany. After we left Lourd’s a bunch of people (including Lourd) migrated over for an after after party back at our place where we danced, chatted, and partied until the wee hours of the morning. Some people didn’t even go to bed because a huge group of people actually left for a salsa cruise at 5:00AM. They’re such troopers! Lourd went on the cruise (I think he organized it) so Kris, Elena, and I will be staying in his room when we stay at his place this week.