She's a making a list, checking it twice...

...gonna find out who's naughty and nice...?

Not really!! I'm not one of Santa's elves but been feeling like one lately. Meaning that I've been making, checking and rechecking a lot of lists: for the trip I'm thinking of where to go, how to get there, what to do, what to pack, what I need to prepare before I take off - at work I'm writing notes for my future replacement of the ton of things she needs to remember during my leave - for my zouk hobby I'm creating a list of everything I've learned so far. My calendar has been filled with tasks, appointments, events, parties, dinners,.. things to do and people to meet. What can I say, I'm an organised person!

And now it's less than one week to go!

Adding humour to your dance

There's many ways to make your dance fun. And fun is a very subjective concept so everybody won't agree with how that's achieved for sure. But here's one surely fun - and funny - "interpretative dance" routine for You Can't Hurry Love by Phil Collins:

Ok, wouldn't really call this dancing but the idea is that David Armand mimes the song lyrics and the guests try to guess the song based on that! Quite an impressive thing to learn and memorize all that - and impressive if you can also guess it! Funny stuff though, I might even steal some of his moves ;D

First zouk competition @ Fresca 2011

Last weekend the salsa festival Fresca 2011, organised byt La Nieve Fresca, took place in Helsinki. I joined the festivities on the Saturday night's big party when the Latin Championships were also held. The evening kicked off with the Finnish record attempt for cuban salsa rueda. I think there were close to one hundred couples!? Well, the big room at the "White Hall" near the Senate Square was filled with the rueda dancers.

My birthday roda

I had a little birthday celebration at my house the other day. I didn't feel like doing anything special this year since I've been super busy so a little tea & meringue pie with a couple friends was all I had planned. I got some lovely presents too - and people loved the pie so I was happy with that :)

But that's not all the happened. My friends had also organised me a surprise roda for my birthday. A roda (on zouk birthdays) means that people gather in a circle around the person who is celebrating (guys around a girl or girls around a guy) and steal the person to dance with one after another for the one song. Usually the roda is announced by the dj but this was a surprise. I love surprises! My lovely dance partner had invited all of our zouky friends to come the "kizomba and zouk night" in the local latin bar Havanna. Here's some of the messages him and another darling dance friend of mine had wrote in organising this.