Feeling slightly upset today. I know there are 3 weeks ahead, but I'm having a major freak-out already. No notes, no slides - why don't you just thrust me a copy of Trauma by Matton and ask to test me 4 weeks later? Ploughing through books. Getting freaked out. Puffy eyes yet again. Then feeling tired and flinging the books away. Pick it back up. Plough through it. Get freaked out. Puffy eyes. You get the idea.

And getting irritated too. VERY irritated. This is simply not the time to start on something new. Exams round the corner, and going overseas after that. It's just stressing me out way too much. What's more, I'm not fantastically enthused about going for this anyway. Just want to be left alone. People don't quite realise how I work, do they? Life is so packed, and everything has its own proportion of my measly 24 hours. To add something new into this arrangement, something else MUST go. I still haven't figured out how to balance things out yet.

It's such a shame. These things should have been done in the honeymoon years - i.e. years 1 and 2. You don't go out learning new stuff in the penultimate year.

Talking about learning things - if there's one thing I'd dearly love to do, that'd be having more progress in Samba. It's awfully difficult to find a teacher here, even if I had the time. We tried to do the natural roll by watching competition videos, but ended up stumbling over each other's legs. Yx also absolutely refuses to learn Paso Doble, hahaha ... she's petrified that I'd get rough with her. But hey - after all, this is the only ballroom dance where the light is cast onto the man! He acts as the matador, while the lady is the bull, or sometimes the cape. It's beautiful!


Demonstration during a lecture at the Blackpool 2005 by Michael Malitowski & Joanna Leunis from Poland. Not my favourite couple, but their routines are simple yet dramatic.

Chassez cape movement - the man flings the lady around himself, like a cape.

Rare instance when the bull actually wins (man's buried under her). OK, I suppose it's not that flattering to be referred to as a bull.

Utterly amazing performance by Slavik Kryklyvyy & Karina Smirnoff at the World Latin Superstars event in 2004. I LOVE this move!!! It just totally shows off the woman's legs .. oh, have I mentioned that these latin ballroom people seem to be made up of all legs? Their US:LS ratio is actually around 1:2 =P Karina's dress was Ooooh La Lah!

This is why Yx's scared I'll get rough.

And this too. Man flings her 6 feet away onto the floor. Anyway, this was an absolutely gorgeous routine danced to "Bamboleo" by Gypsy Kings. They actually had Paso Doble for the first 2/3 of it, followed by an extremely fast and beautiful Samba, and ended with the classic fling-the-cape-away move from Paso.

My all-time favourite couple - Andrej Skufca & Katarina Venturini from Slovenia.

Quite an uncommon interpretation of the dance, where both the lady and the man take on the role of matadors. This is a double cape performance at the start of the routine.

And this, of course, is what yx totally hates. =) Kufca dragging the defeated bull out of the arena .. he actually flung a cape over her at the end, turned her over so she is then lying on the cape, then slides her all the way out of the ballroom floor. What a classic!