Chinga ching ching

Holy smokes. I'm a little sore. My calves no longer like me and are reminding me of this every time I attempt to use them. There were 15 hours of dance classes over the weekend I'm a little disappointed to say that I only made it through ten; although, that's really not bad. I missed Sunday morning because I was too frickin' tired and I fell asleep in front of the TV watching The Professional. Jean Reno's voice will lull me to sleep every time. I wonder if that happens to a lot of women and if he finds that irritating?

This was the first workshop so I wouldn't expect everything to work out well, but I have to say I was more than a bit miffed at the fact that the entire weekend was being recorded except for Cassandra's workshop. Cassandra obviously didn't agree to be taped and she also bought her own boom box for her music which I actually think was a good idea since she knew exactly how to control it. She's an extremely good teacher and phenomenal dancer who got totally screwed during her performance but I'll get to that in a minute.

Everything else was taped and this presented a problem because of the camera angles. There were three cameras set up in the middle of the floor which cut off a large chunk of the floor area in front of the stage where the instructors were. The boundary lines were marked with sweat jackets laying on the floor. If someone moved the jacket thinking it was accidentally left there, they were reprimanded and told it was to stay there so no one steps in the way of the camera. We weren't allowed to step into the neutral zone of flying ions because it would interfere with the capture of the moment of which we were paying $200 to attend. So what ended up happening you ask? Well, let me tell you. We were all scrunched into the back half of the room and poured a bit over on the sides of the stage and had to stop to switch places every so often so the people along the back wall could get a chance to see the footwork. So, to summarize, I spent $200 to be squished into a room where I couldn't see everything but if I want to see what I missed with my $200 I can buy the dvd for another $45.

The show on Saturday night was very good though and I'm happy to report it was included in the $200. It went pretty long, about 2 1/2 hours, but I got a chance to see really good dancers perform several times. Cassandra is our own little living legend of American Middle Eastern dancers. Getting a chance to see her is kind of like having Michael Jordan shoot hoops in your driveway. I even moved up to the edge of my seat for the event. It started out well but then her music started to pause....and then come back....and then pause....and then come back...and then skip...and continue on like this for her whole performance. She dealt with it very very well but at the end made a hasty retreat out the back door. The tech guy then stepped up and apologized because the download of her CD to his laptop apparently didn't go well.

I'm not quite certain that this could all be put on him because earlier in the afternoon, I overheard Cassandra talking to the organizer saying "Well now you're not going to get my music until right before I go on. If I'm going on later in the show, I watch the other performances and then decide which dance I will do". This is all fine and dandy if you've worked with the equipment before and know for certain that everything will work well. Instead, the artistic process and modern technology rammed together like the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm except with way more sequins.

Aliyah Sahar (Leslie Kennedy) and her group performed the most and the drunk woman sitting next to me didn't clap for them at all. Okay, that's fine, this is America and you don't have to clap if you don't want to but truthfully I was just waiting for one little snide remark (slur, whatever) and I was going to punch her. I can be fiercely loyal at times.

I turned the furnace off yesterday. If it gets cold and I have to turn it back on, I'm going to punch the air.