Month September 2012

It’s Wednesday ~ uh, what happened over the weekend?

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I jammed all of my music excitement in to one night over the weekend. On Friday, Heavy G and I headed down to Puyallup Fair to see Pitbull. The parking gods were with us and we scored street parking near the fair. We arrived at the stadium at 7:30, right when the music started bumping – this show did not start on Latino time. Pitbull was super smiley and a G.R.E.A.T. dancer. I would love to spend one night of salsa with him. Whew! He had a band (no horns), but most of the tunes seemed to be voice and music over tracks. It was all very flashy, with videos rolling in the background featuring all of his famous collaborators. The odd thing is that most of the songs were only about 1 1/2 minutes as he would do his rap thing and then let the track play through the chorus. I think only ‘I know you want me’, ‘Let it rain over me’ and ‘Tonight’ were played in their entirety. I sort of loved it when he sang ‘Culo’. I also appreciated that the south end crowd stood through the entire show (I hate sitting). The folks standing next to me were cracking me up as they were keeping watch of the time (“he can only play 15 more minutes”) and then had a discussion about how Pitbull says ‘loco’ a lot, which they thought meant crazy. Clearly, they scored complimentary tickets from somewhere.

Oh my, watching that video makes my heart race because I love me some Marc Anthony. Rawr!

After the show, Geri and I grabbed a scone (so delicious) and then headed back to Seattle. I dropped her off and drove down to Belltown to catch up with Brenda, Cata, Ester, Eloise and Alex at the Picoso show. It has been a minute since I’ve seen them play and it was great to sing along to some familiar tunes. Unfortunately, I chose to wore some practical shoes (flats – ick!) that were killing my pinky toe by 12:30ish or so and I decided to go home – boo! I should have just worn some sandals or something, but I thought it might be cold at the fair. 

Overall, it was a great night, but I wished that I could have danced a little bit more. Next time… 

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Hip hop hilarity

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I took my first (and possibly my last) hip hop class tonight. I would like to think that I could pick this up after a couple of weeks of classes, but I am just not sure.

The instructor is the spitting image of the wolfboy from Twilight. He is a great dancer and kept the class engaged for an hour. I was just looking for something different – I have been trying to find classes that focus on body movements, but we spent an hour learning a 24-count hip hop choreography. I enjoy learning how my body connects to the music, but I felt like I was (awkwardly) just going through the motions. I was not feeling my inner Nicki Minaj (perhaps because it doesn’t exist). There were at least four dancers in the class that looked great performing the routine.

You never know what you will like until you try it. I will file this away as ‘great for someone that enjoys that style of music.’ I might have enjoyed it a teensy bit more if we were gigging to 90’s hip hop.

Next up – Rio-style samba!!

Sunday night chill out

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There are some days that I just prefer quiet and solitude. Is my choice fueled at all by hangover? Perhaps. Although I had some rum last night, I think my body is more exhausted from lack of sleep and from pushing my mid-section to the limit.

I met up with Elena and Eloise at Club Sur for the Kaysha show. Kaysha is from the Congo and I was turned on to him by the kizomba crowd. His hits seem to be slow and romantic, both in English and French. This particular show was fun because there was a large contingent of Africans in attendance as well as Seattle kizomber@s. The highlight of the evening for me was when DJ Guelas (Atlanta) pumped it up and started playing house music. I’m not up to speed on African tunes, but I do believe that he played some kizomba, semba, zouk and Top 40. He also threw in Danza Kuduro, which was a crowd-pleaser. We danced A LOT and apparently the different style of dancing did me good because my core muscles were feeling it when I woke up. 

Kaysha went on at about 1am and was so-so. We couldn’t totally tell if he was singing over the tracks or just lip-syncing. The crowd didn’t really care.

I had a great night and I think that I might have convinced Elena and Eloise to try out kizomba in September. Some folks are intimidated by the dance or feel that the embrace is too intimate, but these girls are game.