Salsa in the Blood
10 July 2005 (Sunday) – Recife, Brazil
Katharina drove me around Recife Antiguo. This is the old part of Recife, on a small island linked by bridges, with lots of old, colonial buildings. This used to be the dodgy red-light district, but the government cleaned it up a few years ago. Now, this is the commercial and financial district. They restored some of the old buildings and repainted them, but guess the job was not very well-done, as the new paint had already started to be stained, looking like unrestored buildings again. If I see some 1960s Chevrolets around, I would have thought this is Havana, Cuba.
No one lives on this island anymore, so it was really quiet on a Sunday. There is a street Rua Bom Jesus where there are craft stalls set up every Sunday afternoon, but no more craft stalls for me for the moment, please.
Katharina has been taking salsa dancing lessons. She explained that her instructors have organised the students to go to a place to dance salsa this afternoon. She had never been to that place before, but we would go and take a look. She invited her mother to come along as well.
We met up at her dancing school, before all the fellow students followed the car of their instructors to this dancing place. It turned out to be in the dodgy, poorer part of Recife where Katharina and even her mother, had never ever set foot on before. The area looked thoroughly different from the high-rise apartments and middle-class living that I had seen. Katha’s mother told her daughter, “Don’t leave me alone here.” Hahaa…
The dancing hall is a place for the community’s Carnaval bloco. It was really, really old with peeling paint all over. There were tables and rusty chairs set up around the dance floor. There was a band warming up on the stage. The members were aged 50 and above, the Golden Boys, I would call them.
I looked around at the people in the hall. My goodness. Everyone but everyone was ugly. I am not being cruel here, or poking fun at people. I am just here describing to you the scene right before my eyes. The medium age of the people here must be 60 years old. Yeah, most people seemed to be between 50 years and 80 years old. At the moment, they were quietly sitting at the tables, checking out one another.
I poked fun at Katharina, asking her to check out the ‘dashing’ stud at 5 o’clock. She refused to even glance that way. Oh, poor Mr Sapo (frog) (I call him that, because of his frog-face and he is so small).
Soon, couples started to move to the dance-floor, dancing the various forrós, boleros and ballads. It was not long before the dance-floor was rather filled up and even people without partners were getting up around their tables and dancing away.
Wow, I could not believe the scene right in front of me. I thought I was in a movie… I felt like I was transported to the 1960s of a very trashy-looking sports hall where the humble people tried to pass off as a disco. But it was great, because this is the place for ugly and old people to dance for even ugly and old people deserve the chance to dance.
And do not underestimate these people… No matter how grey the hair is (if any is left), how false the teeth are, how thick the reading glasses are, you would be surprised by some of the dancing abilities of these elderly folks. It was incredible, the way they swayed their hips, criss-crossed their legs, bent backwards (slightly) despite arthritis and Parkinson’s disease…
70-year-old Mr Sapo was not lacking any dance partners at all, why was I worried? He was dancing with one granny after another. I sat watching him for a while and he caught me looking at me and gave me a suggestive wink. The cheek!
There is no discrimination of anything here, as long you are a man and I am a woman, we dance. It is great just sitting there, observing these very happy people enjoying music and well, life. Some seemed really passionate as they held on to each other tightly, cheek-to-cheek. How romantic, I would not be able to tell if they were indeed couples or that they had just plucked one another off the dance-floor for one dance.
And gosh, what they were wearing… Many of the middle-aged to elderly ladies wore tight chiffony dresses possibly bought in the 1960s, when they themselves were 4 sizes smaller. One was in her elegant turqoise evening gown even, complete with a shawl with diamante studs. Her fingers had one rock (just costume jewellery, no need to fear for her safety) each. Imagine, your grandmother wearing her glasses, dressed to the nines, with dangling ear-rings, a nice necklace and a dash of red lipstick and hobbling around. That was exactly what many of the ladies were like.
One young boy in our group asked me to dance. He is a 17-year-old boy, possibly the ONLY person here under 20 years old. Hey, he is probably the ONLY person here under 30 years old even! I did not know any dance steps at all, but he would guide me with the simple ones. So there I was, dancing a light bolero with the rest of them out there.
I think I must be the only tourist, possibly ever!, in the entire history of this dancing hall, to have set foot here. Many of the locals had found me interesting, and smiled at me and exchanged nods with me. One ever-smiling guy with an immense tummy (Mr Smiling Buddha) kept making jokes with me. A woman who had come over to greet her friends in the table next to me, spotted me and even stretched out her hand to greet me in delight. The waiter came over to say, “Arigato.”, thinking that I am Japanese. When Katha told him I am Chinese, he asked her if I eat monkey’s brains. Nope, just human’s.
Later, a couple of other fat, old men did come over to ask me to dance. Horrified, I turned to Katha’s mother for help. She quickly told them that I did not speak Portuguese and did not know how to dance and waved them away.
Then, there was Carnaval music and our entire group jumped to the dance-floor and danced free-style, Carnaval-style. When it was done, Mr Smiling Buddha came over to shake my hand, calling me a brasileira. What a riot!!!
Now that we have seen THIS bolero/salsa place, Katha said there was another salsa place to check out, but this is in a pub back in civilisation. We returned home to shower and change into pretty dresses and went to this pub.
Now, this was a complete change from the earlier scene. A pub with great, great salsa music that was mixed by a DJ from CDs, not the same sort of horrendous ballads by The Golden Boys. And again, there was no discrimination of race, age or looks here, it was very normal for a very young man to walk up to a middle-aged lady to ask for a dance. In my country, usually people have to be interested in someone in ‘that way’ before they would go up and ask for a dance. Sheesh, I much prefer the Brazilian carefree way.
Some people with great stamina were dancing non-stop. For the quick-tempo salsa, I was absolutely stunned by the rapid and fluid movements of some of the lady dancers. Here, they are young, beautiful and very svelte. If I had not come to this pub, my vision of a dancing Brazilian woman would still be frozen from what I saw just now in the ancient dancing hall – grannies with wide hips in tight 1960s dresses.
But, this… this was spectacular dancing. Amazing bodies, amazing confidence, amazing sensuality. These people have salsa in their blood. Darn, I think I need some blood transfusion before I can try and take salsa lessons!
Tags: 03) The Land of the Spirits, Recife
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