Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii, What's up? How are y'all doing? Hope you're doing well, and if not, hope you do soon! I'm very excited as this will be my first of many posts in this community, in this opportunity I wanna share with you the great weekend I just had: I passed a Cuban Salsa test and went to the Sweet Fifteen (here in Venezuela we celebrate it at 15 yo instead of 16) of a friend's cousin. Let me tell you how all went 👇👇👇👇👇
Hallway before the party room
Cuban Salsa Test
Cuban Salsa, also know as Salsa rueda or Salsa casino, is a style of salsa dancing which originated in Cuba, where couples form a big circle and execute turn patterns in unison to the calls of a single leader.
A couple weeks ago, my group of Salsa classes was advised that we're going to rush a bit the intermedium level we were so we could reach the advanced group, this way both groups can get to graduate together, so our test to pass to the advanced level was this Saturday 2nd.
I woke up around 08:30 and by 10:30 I was at my dance school @yoysalseros, we were reminded that the test would have 4 sections to evaluate our current dance capacities and what we have learned so far:
- Get the key blinded:
- Basic level figures but without touching your partner
- Wheel management
- Dancing figures of the level
- Micaela
- La Jenny
- New 70
- Vines
- Crazy ball
- Hairstylist
- Whirlpool
- Padlock
- Double 70
- Triple Vacillate
Source
For this first part, the whole group is positioned adjacently one from each other, everybody has to blind themselves with a shirt, a scarf, anything that could work to cover our eyes. Then 3 songs are played, a slow one, a medium speed one and a fast one, and we had to get the musical key and dance along. As we were blind, there was no way that if you were struggling you could follow one of your classmates.
I was told by my professors that I did very good in this part, except in the fast one, I was dancing behind or ahead of the key. I admit this last song was really hard to me.
Now we all grouped in a wheel and we had to dance and do figures from the basic level without touching our partners as the wheel was led by one of the professors. Just one song was played.
In this part of the test, everyone of my group had to lead the wheel for a certain amount of time, being evaluated the gestures we gotta say out loud to tell the next figure we're doing.
Apparently, I did very good in this part, I wanted to do more figures, especially from the intermedium 2 level but I couldn't remember any. Even though my lead was liked by my teachers they told me I had to exaggerate more the gestures so they're easy to understand.
Now the final part of the test (and the one that had me more nervous) consisted of dancing in the wheel as one of the professors led and told us certain figures of the level and we did it along the music.
The figures evaluated were:
I struggled a bit with this part, various of the figures are pretty similar and confused them a bit, it all went well though.
At the end, we all did pretty good in the test, I scored 91/100 points, you can pass as long as you score 60 or more points.
Sweet Fifteen
(Photo taken by me of the greeting canvas in the entrance of the room where the party took place)
A month ago or so, one of my friends that are in the same dance classes as me invited me to the fifteen years of a cousin of her, she told me she wanted to dance and that I was one of the few friends she has that know how to dance. I accepted immediately, put it on my calendar and make sure of not doing other plans for that day.
Being that day this past Saturday, she sent the invitation a couples days before; had to wear semiformal and I don't quite understand what that is, so I searched on my closet to see what I had and decided to wear a dress shirt that my girlfriend gave me, a pair of dress pants that I bought for 3 dollars about 2 years ago and a vest that I bought for a dance choreography that I participated in last year.
Put on a pair of dress shoes my mom gave me and for accesories, a wristband that my bf gave me and other that my gf gave me, and a tie I bought in an anime convention that I hadn't used before this Saturday. It got skulls in it, it is from the character Kira Yoshikage from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable.
Source
The party was going to take place at the party room of a residence where a close friend of mine lives so I texted him to see if I could at his house due to the party was going to start at 18:30 and I wasn't quite sure when it would end. Apparently he and his mother were invited as well and I could stay at his house when the party's over, but with one condition: the next day morning we were going to go hiking to the Waraira Repano park (also know as The Avila, it's mountain here in Caracas, Venezuela), I actually liked the condition so I had no problem with it.
Stand to take pictures, there were also some candies
I arrived to the party around 19:00, a cousin that lives with me and her boyfriend drove there, I was thinking I was late but the quinceañera had not even arrived yet, the dance room and all the chairs were empty. Or that's how it looked like from the entrance. I immediately texted my friends and called them to check if they had arrived, none of them had. I kind of enter in panic and sit outside of the party room, waiting for my friends to arrive so I did not enter alone.
I gotta say that I just knew the birthday girl from a couple times we saw each other because we studied in the same high school. I had not ever met her family either, that's why I was so nervous to go there before my friends get in also.
Fortunately, a girl I knew from school arrived and I entered the room with her, I saw other 2 girls I knew from high school also, greeted them and sat next to them in some stools near a tiny table where the presents and purses the people brought were.
One of my friends arrived, Angel, he was the one that let me stay with him, as well as other people I knew that were friends with the birthday girl. And I started to starve!! I had lunch early in the afternoon it was already 20:00, as the quinceañera haven't arrived the DJ was putting slow and kind of sad music till she get in, also as she wasn't in, we couldn't touch any of the candies surrounding us. I even thought of a plan of distracting the waiters and taking some biscuits but I decided to wait.
The rest of my friends arrived and we started to hang out, talk about our lives and we complimented each other on how we were dressed, all very elegant and handsome. By 2300 the birthday girl finally arrived and was the moment of the welcome, her father gave some words and started the moment of the Vals, the least thing that I wanted to do is dance with someone that probably didn't even remember me.
After some of her relatives danced with her, it was my turn... I greeted her very lovely and she immediately said: "Sorry, but I don't know you are" 🙂. I wanted the earth to swallow me and i don't know, to spit me out in a land far far away. Tried making her remember me by saying that we were in the same high school but nothing. I complimented about her dress and make up and let the next person dance with her.
Once the vals finished, it was moment of the toast, we all were given champagne or a weird green drink made of grapes, in my case i received none lol and had to get some from a fountain that was near the bar, the drink was green and did not taste very good but I think it had alcohol and i wanted some.
The green drink.
After this, the DJ put dance music and we all started dancing, after a couple songs he put Bachata, me and my friends are in Bachata dance classes so I immediately asked one of them if they wanted to dance, she said yes, I put our drinks away and started dancing. We are in the advanced level of bachata but we don't dance much besides every Saturday at school, so I tried to show off and do advanced semi complicated figures, not all of them turned out well executed but that's okay, dancing is about fun not about doing 5 turns in .6 seconds.
Pic taken by my friend Ashly with her phone
Around midnight, we all went for a break, it was SOOO hot on the dance floor, I went to the bar because I wanted a coke and one of the waiters came to me offering me chinese food (yes, that was the dinner, is that weird in your countries? Please tell me in the comments). As I said before, I was starving, I smiled at the waiter and totally unconscious I told him "No, thanks". I regretted it as soon as he turned around, I don't know why I said that.
I took this pic of the plate before eating
I went to the table were my friends were either eating or waiting for food, I sat down on a chair and once I saw the waiter that I just rejected 2 minutes ago, I got excited and tried get his attention as he was pretty far away for me but I could see he got some plates on his hands and I needed to eat. A kind sir told the waiter that I was looking for him and he came to the table, I asked for 2 plates of food, one for my friend next to me and one for me, he gave them to us and I said: "Thanks, I wasn't that hungry before" hahaha.
We kept dancing for a couple hours more till the crazy hour arrived, everybody came to the dance floor and danced random songs that the Dj were putting (They're usually mixes that you can find in Youtube by typig Hora loca), at some point a robot arrived, he was like a garota. It was really fun the hour he was there livening up the party. There was also a piñata, kept a couple of candies from it hehe.
Garota is a girl that dances samba in my country, they are usually hired for graduations and that kind of events; it also means "young lady" in portuguese.
>My friend Ashly and I with the robot, photo taken by her phone and thanks to the help of her sister.
The robot left and we once again sat in our table to talk, we played a bit with the things we grabbed from the crazy hour, especially with some paper serpentines. I'll let the photos talk for me.
Then we sang the birthday song and I ate birthday cake, which was quite good by the way. It was around 04:00 and my friends started to leave and around 05:00 I went to sleep, I woke up around 1100, my friend and I were very tired and our feet were hurting too much from last night to go hiking a mountain at noon.
He cooked breakfast for us and for his sister who also was at the party. He had to leave to go to another birthday that Sunday so I left by the same time as him. I didn't want to go directly to my house so I went to the closest mall looking for a chicha or cocada.
Chicha is a sweet pasta or rice based beverage. Cocada is a sweet beverage made with Coconut.
Curiously, my cousin who drove to the party yesterday night was also in this mall, she, her boyfriend and I met up and went looking for something sweet to drink, I still cannot believe that there were no place in that mall to have something sweet besides ice cream... I wasn't feeling in the mood for an ice cream.
We left the mall and outside the other mall in front an old sir was selling chicha!! My cousin's boyfriend gave me one and you can't imagine how happy I was with my chicha haha. So happy that I forgot to take a pic before drinking it all...
Took this photo with my phone when I realized that I had drunk it all
My cousin's boyfriend dropped us at my house and that was my weekend!
Thanks for reading and taking the time to do it. Let me know in the comments if you have ever went to a sweet fifteen or quinceaños. I'm pretty knew here in Hive so I'd appreciate it if you give me some tips about writing in this community.
Also thanks to my friend Yei for inviting me to the fifteen years and Angel for letting me stay at his home.
Byee see you on next post :D
PD: I wrote this post with the help of Deepl Translator as English isn't my first language.
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