Samba vs Ballroom SMACKDOWN!

I haven't written in a while because I've had another couple of those IMPOSSIBLY BUSY weeks. I don't know if my life really is that much busier than other people's, but it always seems very difficult to convey to my friends what I mean by "busy". I try to explain by saying "I don't get any time off" and they seem to think I mean "I can't take a vacation day when I want to" but what I actually mean is "I don't get any time off". What I mean is, every day I get up at 8am and start working, and I stop working at 1am. Yes, of course that includes Saturdays and Sundays; why would it not include Saturdays and Sundays?

Or should I have said it like this: "I'm teaching three brand-new courses again and a fourth that needs a lot of revamping and have 120 exams to grade, and 34 research students working on the elephants at the zoo, because, you know how most professors here have maybe 2 research students, and they get research support, but I don't get any research support because I'm just temporary, so I thought it would be a good idea if I had 34 research students; and the sea turtle grant is due this week and the 2 elephant papers and the 4 sun-bear papers all need revision in the next two weeks, and my side job working for a publishing company is also due this week, and then there's the 4 bands. Excuse me, I have to go stay up all night memorizing the entire life cycles of all the phyla of mosses, ferns, horsetails and the ginkgo tree for a lecture tomorrow. No, I'm not a botanist, why do you ask?"

Maybe that would get it across better.

THIS week, however, was the Axe Dide show. So I worked seventeen-hour days (instead of my usual sixteen-hour days) for the previous 3 weeks, and tabled the Gatas temporarily, to bank enough time to carve out the necessary hours for Axe Dide rehearsal time, practice time, and the actual show.

I do so love Axe Dide; it's the group that pushes me the most. It's the only group that regularly pulls out completely new genres that I've never heard of. (Because they do candomble and Cuban.) "Now we're doing rumba! Now comparsa! What the hell is comparsa? No idea! I'll just follow along! Now it's something else! Now I'm playing conga! Now I'm banging on the side of the conga with a stick and I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just copying Mehmet! Now Mehmet had to leave and suddenly it's just me and it's apparently some kind of intensely important part that I'm playing. Now they're all looking at me funny!" Like that.

Anyway - Axe Dide had their fantastic show on Friday. Friday the 13th, and sure enough, Friday the 13th is not a good night for a show, because the club had double-booked us with a ballroom dance event. We won the smackdown, but the ballroom dancers got in free and OH MY GOD, they were VICIOUS on the dance floor! My advice would be, never try to do a samba dance show with 25 pissed-off ballroom dancers who want the stage. You cannot keep those people off the stage. Honestly, I have never before seen a dance show in which a dancer was center stage doing a SOLO, for god's sake, and a pair of ballroom dancers suddenly whirls out onto the floor to literally try to steal the stage! Jans tried to stop them but the girl twirled past him like some kind of spitfire tornado - those spins they can do, she had some kind of centripetal momentum going on that seemed to turn her into a kind of twirling medieval war machine with spikes coming out from all the sides. Jans, who is six-foot-something and fairly impressive physically, had to pretty much body-block her with all his weight to get her off the floor. Even then she kept doing little twirls on the side and inching her way back out. Jesus. That sort of thing was happening all night long. Luckily the Axe Dide dancers have learned a lot of ancient African war dances.

even so it was a fantastic show. Some of the moments in my memory...
- sinking into the rumba and having it MAKE SENSE and float along. Sure it was a little messy and there seemed to suddenly be 2 extra people in the band, but still, the rumba MADE SENSE for the first time.

- playing caixa with Angela. She has got SUCH a swing. (Plus I just really dig that the two snare drummers in this band are both girls.)

- Not to mention Stacey holding down primerio & segundo surdo like the rock of Gibralter. She's got her surdos both on stands, mounted side by side and tied together with a rope around the side. So, Axe Dide usually just needs 2 surdo players - Stacey covering both the 2 big ones, and somebody else on a third. And this isn't a trivial part; Stacey is the heart of the groove.

There are so many surdo players who I wish I could order to stop playing, put down their surdos and just come stand in front of Stacey's two drums and just LISTEN TO HER for a half hour. And then play like that, ok? Just be Stacey.

- Discovering that not one but TWO of my guy friends are really great to dance with: Ned and Kirin! Two! Oooo, there is nothing like a guy who can actually lead.

- So, it's gotten late. It's past midnight. It's the Rio samba. We've been playing for long enough that it's turned into a crazy dance party, and it's gotten to the stage where everybody's starting to swap drums around. Angela puts her caixa down, goes searching for a chocalho (note: please recall Angela & I are the only two caixas), miscellaneous Lions from the crowd are clambering into the band to play surdo and tamborim, Jesse is developing a new fancy rhythmic idea and has darted away to teach a new part to somebody, Andy and his repinique have disappeared entirely, Jans is crawling on the floor looking for a stray nut that fell off the tamborim tree; and, while they're all switching around and clambering around, QUITE A LONG STRETCH OF TIME GOES BY when it's JUST STACEY AND ME actually PLAYING THE SAMBA. Stacey chugging fearlessly at the surdos and I'm slamming on caixa (Viradouro) at FULL speed. The whole rest of the band is chatting to each other: "No, you can use my strap! Go ahead! No, no, you lead the tamborim desenho! Oh, that's a nice one but I was thinking we could do the one with the triplets. No, it's my pleasure, use my baqueta! Just a sec, let me find this one nut on the floor" on and on like that....

... and I'm standing there thinking "YOU HAVE EFFIN' ABANDONED ME AND THROWN ME TO THE WOLVES!" which I would shout out loud if I weren't convinced that trying to talk would make me screw up, because it is JUST ME ON CAIXA. Because this is the kind of situation that always used to make me completely panic. All alone and exposed and the groove depending just on me.

But this time something is different.

It's not scary.

It's fun.

In these situations before, I used to always eventually screw up. But I've been playing solo caixa a lot recently, and this time there seems to be not the slightest possibility that I could screw up. There is a solidity and reliability. It seems ... secure. It seems like my hands have become their own motor. I just pushed the "Go" button and they just .... Go.

I don't have to THINK about my hands the way I used to. They just are doing it on their own.

The whole crowd is dancing.