My first weekend back in Medellin and who would have thought it'd be stuffed with culture leaving with me with mixed desires of going back to Argentina, take up violin lessons, and experience a Colombian hip hop club.
Friday night Giovanni, Patrick and I went to a ballet show at the local theater. Of course, after seeing Patrick's spectacular moves around the house, I immediately thought of him when I found out about the show. The show consisted of two parts, classical and neo-classical (a bit more modern) with about 30 dancers, four of whom were boys. Though the dancing was pretty good, the real entertainment was in the costumes. One boy wore nothing but Aladdin-style pants and no shirt, another wore a turquoise furry body-suit topped off with a feather on his head, and another had on a gold number that included a see-through midriff baring top that appeared to be for a 7 year old girl. After this hour and a half spectacle, we caught a cab and met the other roomies at some site that seemed random to me (a pedestrian walkway by the Modern Art Museum with some benches and trees), but was in fact the spot to be. Colombians lined the benches and curbs, hanging out in the street talking, smoking, eating, drinking from YIKES open containers! But this is what I love about Medellin: the relaxed attitude, dozens of people convening in an open space, not really do anything. After we downed the bottle of rum we had bought, we decided to accompany Checho to a salsa bar. We arrive to the underground salsa bar and I immediately see this is no place for amateurs. Right about now I'm thinking "How have I managed to spend so much time in Latin America and never master a basic salsa step?!" and envying Cait and her salsa lessons back in CT right now. Checho tried to spin me around a few times, but I just didn't have enough rum in me to fake it well. When I mentioned to Patrick that I guess I just can't let guys lead me around, he said maybe that's a good thing, which made me feel only slightly better as I observed all of the young Colombian couples salsa-ing effortlessly around the dancefloor.
As if I hadn't learned my lesson the night before, I decided to accompany Giovanni, Patrick, and Patrick's girlfriend to experience some traditional porro music Saturday night (and perhaps I should admit that I might have joined to wrap my mind around this whole May-December (or more like May-April-two-years-later- romance) between 41 year-old Patrick and 18 year-old Daniela. Anyways, porro music it turns out is a mix of salsa, kumbia, and tango, making it EVEN harder to dance to because it has 3 different types of dance that you can mess up. But again, it was fun watching the couples dance (who were all in Patrick's age group) but no matter. The amazing tango show made it worth it, and I realized how much I missed the impromptu tango shows on the streets of Buenos Aires while eating lunch outside or walking around randomly.
And if I hadn't had my fair share of watching and envying the skills of the dancers in Colombia, Sunday I went to a breakdance competition. Breakdancers really do not get enough credit. Not only do they have unbelievable dance moves like balancing on nothing but their forearms with their legs extended and rotating on their head for minutes on end, but their style is just something all on its own. When you think about it, they put more thought into what they're going to wear for the dance-off than they put into their dance moves, since they're all improvised on the spot. But seriously, these breakdancing-offs were really impressive, and I couldn't stop thinking how they would just be phenomenal at yoga with that upper body strength.
