08/24/08 - Meeting the Mumbai dancers

After a relaxing night, we started the next day, Sunday, bright and early to train the local, Mumbai dancers. The dancers from Bangalore arrived early the same day and spent the day getting a little sleep and arranging their costumes. Arieh, Jon, Elena, and I spent a very LONG day in a very SMALL studio with the local dancers teaching them the finale choreography for the video. I think we trained from around 10:30AM to around 7:00PM without a whole lot of breaks other than an hour for lunch. It was exhausting, but lots of fun!


Apparently, Sunday night is THE night to salsa dance in Mumbai so we all went out to a club, Zenzi, across town. Lourd, Elena, and I had a very confused rickshaw driver so it took us about an hour longer to find the place than the other 2 rickshaws that left at the same time as us! I guess getting lost is pretty common. It is a little shocking because I expect the rickshaw drivers to be like the cabbies in NYC that seem to just know how to get everywhere! The night was an absolute blast! I think I sat out maybe 2 songs the entire night. It was so wonderful because we got to re-connect with lots of the people that we had met at the Congress and dance with them again. It almost didn’t feel like dancing in a foreign place. In fact, lots of people thought we were from somewhere in India because we just seemed to know everyone there! It’s Kaytee’s “home base” and Ash spun some really fun hip-hop/salsa fusion. (Kaytee & Ash were our neighbors at the 40 Winks for the Congress and we got to spend a lot of time with them there. Their apartment was the location of the first after party.) After the dancing ended around 1:00AM we went out for some incredible chicken tikka wraps that were the perfect “after dancing” food! They were the India version of my carne asada fries in San Diego. ☺

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