All Right. Let's Dance. - Johnny Cage

Dance. Bailar. Pretty common thing here in Spain and certainly something that I’ve encountered during my brief stay here. Being the hombre that I am, there’s no way that I’m going to try to avoid it but rather embrace this notion of some sort of rhythmic motion possibly set to music. Let’s take a journey into a couple of my exploits within that realm, shall we?

So it’s Monday at like 9:00 in the dining hall. I a-just be chilling and having possibly the greatest day of my life, as they were serving us pizza, when I’m told that there was to be a Flamenco class/seminar that night (and the following one as well). Now y’all know that I’m all about the dancing. Especially the awkward, white guy style. That’s just how I do. So there was no way that I was going to miss out on this. The class was to start at 10, thus giving me ample time to finish eating and such. Perfectness.

So after I finished doing whatever it was that I needed to do in preparation for this bailar action, I headed down to the lobby for to reunirme con some other peeps. There were only like 6 or so other personas down there at first, which was a little less than awesome, but soon thereafter, we all migrated into the open patio area with the instructors and then people started filing in. In total, there were probably 25 or so of us rocking out. Legitness.

We all formed a line facing the instructors as they started out by showing us the most basic of the foot movements, which was an easy little 5 step maneuver that a small child pull off. So far so good, felt pretty dece at this point. That feeling of “this is cake – delicious cake, mind you” didn’t last too long as the motions soon became a little more complicated as we began sidestepping, turning, and doing crap with our hands.

Nonetheless, I wasn’t feeling too bad when we started to partner up to rock it for realsies. My compañera for the whole thing was to be Jill, who seemed to have the same basic handle on this whole thing as I, which was very little. So that was encouraging as we started trying to rep this Flamenco together with all of its crazy steps, passes, and tricky footwork in general.

7 years of martial arts training and working out like it was going out of style had apparently not prepared me for the idea of participating in this dance as I just couldn’t seem to find solid consistency with it overall. I like to blame the teachers for this because as a man there’s no way that I’m possibly going to accept responsibility here. Simply can’t be done. But whatevs, I can say that by the end of the night, I was feeling pretty decent about the whole thing in general as I was starting to get it down a bit. So I was pretty much defs looking forward to rocking it the next night as well.

I rolled down to the lobby again on Tuesday just a few minutes before 10 for what promised to be a solid follow-up to the previous night’s Flamenco extravaganza. Again, there were only few people waiting to represent down there. I figured that more would show as everyone seemed to have a pretty really good time on Monday. False. In total, there were only like 10 people. Sadsies. But then again, perhaps it was for the best as we were all able to see better and get more attention from the instructors.

Speaking of which, I got paired up with the assistant instructor this time. I wasn’t really feeling that at first, but after thinking about it briefly I came to the conclusion that that’s pretty legit. I was totally going to aprender more than the previous night as… well… this partner would fully know what the hey hey hey we’re supposed to do and such (not that Jill wasn’t a good partner, but obviously lacking the skills an instructor would have).

Turns out I definitely picked it up better. I mean, it’d REALLY be saying something about my dance skills and overall athletic ability if I couldn’t work with the instructor for an hour and not even kind of figure out the more basic steps of the Flamenco. T’was quite the good time after I got over the initial weirdness of dancing with this like 30 year old woman. Not going to lie, I still had some issues with all the hand motions and my turns still probably looked reminiscent of an 8 year old on ice skates for the first time, but whatevs, my footwork was legit, and that’s what’s important, so step off :P

So yeah, that was my experience with some sort of legit danceness, so of course on Thursday I had to go out to the club, or discoteca if you will, to take it to the streets. First, though, a brief overview of the night life here in Toledo in which I partake. It involves the following: going out to a bar. Sometimes several bars, but always at least one. Then on Thursdays people seem to be fond of hitting up a dance club as well. Of course err’body know that I don’t drink. At all. But I still have a good time at said bars because let’s be honest here, it’s fun to chill with the home skillets… and oftentimes it’s fun to see them drunk too, but it’s definitely a nice change of pace to actually do something other than sit around for a night.

Moving on, so after hitting O’Brien’s (an Irish indoor pub), a hookah bar (again, y’all know that I don’t smoke either), Enebro (an outdoor bar – closed, though, for some reason at 12:16 on a Thursday night/Friday morning), and then O’Brien’s again, we FINALLY decided to meander over to the discoteca, Circulo del Arte, at like 1 something in the manaña. Money.

Now from what I’m told about these discotecas from the locals around here is that there are three types of people who go to these sorts of establishments: Spanish guys who like American chicks, South American guys who like American chicks, and then of course there’s American chicks. Now as far as I’m aware, I’m none of those, so you can probably surmise my comfort level with this right away as I entered this club to find… well… Spanish dudes, South American dudes, and a couple of American girls… dancing with Spaniards and South Americans.

Due to a lot of us getting separated at all the random bars we hit up and other some such things, the only American person at the club with me right away was my broheim Erik. We had come with a bunch of the members of the Puerto Rican contingent that dwell in the Fundación, so yeah… they all know how to dance, like actually dance. I like to think that I’m a pretty fearless cat and moderately coordinated when it comes to bailar whilst in ‘Merica, but it’s a bit different when I’m in Spain… with people I don’t really know that well yet… and peeps who actually have legit dancing abilities.

After a brief period of just kind of bobbing my head to the music, though, I started to get into it a bit. Erik slowly started to come around as well, although he’s said that he’s not really into dancing that much at all. The Puerto Ricans, being the Spanish speakers that they are, all knew like every song that came on and apparently the matching dance that went with it, so they pretty much rocked it while Erik and I white-guy’ed it. Eventually, one of the Boricuas, se llama Luis, started telling us and showing us what to do with all the steps, claps, and such that they were all doing. Solid gesture on his part. So Erik and I started rolling with it a bit more when a couple more peeps from the States showed up in Danielle, Amanda, and Laura. That made err’thing more normal as they were basically all in the same boat as us… well… except for Laura to some extent who used to captain her danceline team in highschool. She knew what was up. Nonetheless, t’was definitely mejor with the estadounidenses there.

Danielle, Amanda, Erik, and I left the place at like 2 or so because Amanda had to catch a cab home, so we figured we’d all just walk together to make everything easier. Not going to lie, I kind of wanted to stay a bit longer. I was just starting to get my groove on, but it wouldn’t have been as good sans those personas, so rolling out was the best option. Overall, I must say that it was an enjoyable time and something that I’m sure I’ll do up again en el futuro. Why, you ask? Because I’m a DANCING MACHINE, SON!

*Note* I HATE the formatting with this thing. The spacing darn near always turns out wrong and for some reason a few of my pics have decided to not show up. But that's a negative note to end on, so please enjoy this comical newspaper snippet: