New York - Stomp and Salsa

Stomp Back in May, I had a flash of excitement when seeing a poster advertising Stomp as coming to Wellington. But we were to have already left the country for the date of the show. So I jumped at the chance to see Stomp in New York. Once we got as comfortable as possible in our midget designed seats with our knees up around our ears, we settled in for a great show. 6 men and 2 women from performing, percussion and dance backgrounds, made up the team of Stomp. Rubber hoses, kitchen sinks, dishes, matchboxes, brooms, dustpans, sand, pieces of wood, steel drums and items from a rubbish bag – newspapers, tin cans and plastic bags were their instruments. The music that can be made from something as simple a piece of newspaper is amazing. The whole crew were very talented and entertaining and I can only aspire to have 10% of the rhythm and creativity of these people. My favourite item was the opening piece which featured broom sticks and tap shoes and a guy did a solo to match the skills of Michael Flatterly. It made me regret leaving my tap shoes in a box in New Zealand. I also enjoyed the rubber hose song where the performers crawled along the ground with different lengths of rubber hose each hitting them against the floor at the precise time to create a harmonious and melodic song.
Salsa

The Taj Lounge lured you in with free entry, h’ordoerves, a free lesson and an open bar. But after getting on an uptown train instead of downtown then misinterpreting the address as 21 48th street instead of 48 21st street, we missed all that and had to pay to get in and the cost of a drink was more than our lunch at Little Italy where the red suited waiter grated parmesan and ground pepper onto your rigatoni.
The DJ mixed a wide range of sounds including Cha cha cha, Bachatta, Meringue, Salsa and Latin pop. Between songs he would pipe in with his reminders about the kitchen still being open or to keep partying because they would be open till 4am (this was a Monday night). The clientele was varied- mostly people in their 30s but there was still the dodgy old guy lurking in the corner asking all the young girls for a dance then pulling them in really close while they cringe.

I was already aware that they dance a different style of salsa here ‘on 2’ but I was still keen to see the scene. It was like being back in beginners 1 again – I felt like a complete tool with 2 left feet. It was OK if I just did the basic step but as soon as I did a turn I would automatically go back to ‘on 1’ and kept having to look at the guy’s feet to try and get back in time. Apart from me, the standard of dancing there was really high and I could have stayed for hours just watching (Warren of course had other ideas)