Salon Canning

On Tuesday (7 April) night, we made plans to go to Salon Canning after a late afternoon class at EAT with the Dispari’s. This night was special for a couple of reasons: Color Tango was playing and Julio and Corina will be teaching a class as well as performing later. Since I have always enjoyed their dancing and their recent seminar, what more could I ask for?

Salon Canning, which I have heard so much about, was a nice and spacious venue. It has a high ceiling and a square dance made of chequered timber. There are large portraits – many depicting Claudia y Esteban – hanging on the walls, and large professional-looking speakers hanging above the dance floor. In short, I liked the venue and was looking forward to a nice of enjoyable dancing.

Later that night – well, more like around midnight – Color Tango came on and they didn’t disappoint. I don’t normally enjoy dancing to live music so I sat through their performance and thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought the atmosphere was simply electric when they were playing.

The downside for the night was actually the level of dancing. As a guess, the predominant crowd was made up of tourists or at least dancers with less than desirable navigational skills. Many people were simply cutting across the imaginary lanes, or moving without regards for other couples on the floor. On top of that, the music seemed to fade out occasionally despite the apparently good sound system in place, possibly because the regular DJ for Canning was absent that night. All in all, while Canning is a good place to hang out with friends, I am unlikely to return without special reasons.

One final comment: the dancing level improved dramatically once the crowd thinned at about 3am, with the injection of good dancers from the younger generation, perhaps coming in from Practica X(?). However, we didn’t really have stamina to stay any longer and called it a night. Fortunately the cab fare back to the apartment was only about 14 pesos.