Viva South America! by Oliver Balch

Author:Oliver Balch [Oliver Balch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571312474
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

An hour has flown by. Our onlookers have grown bored with their gringo entertainment and have moved on elsewhere. The dama de paso concludes the class. We’re back to the same flapping-chicken motion with our elbows, but now Carlos is skipping between the heel of one foot and the tiptoes of the other. To complicate matters further, he adds a pelvic thrust into the mix, ramming forwards with one step and pushing his bottom back with the next.

The multipart choreography is beyond me. I’m either skipping or thrusting, but never in sync as the dance demands. As for my elbows, they’re flailing like a frightened battery hen on a slaughterhouse conveyor. Carlos claps in time with the music and makes the rattling chhh chhh chhh sound of the maracas to get me back on track, but the Leão Coroado has abandoned me. Carlos thinks it best we finish the session perfecting the Queen and Bahian woman. I agree readily.

Before leaving Pernambuco, I travel back to Recife. Once a week, different bands gather to perform African-influenced music in the quaint colonial square of São Pedro. I’m hoping ‘Black Tuesday’ will provide the opportunity for me to give my new dance moves a public airing.

Regrettably, marakatú isn’t on the programme the week I visit. I wait out a rock band and a reggae group, until an afoxé singer takes the stage. The beat is much faster, more rave than royal coronation. Young, hip and almost all black, the crowd throws itself trance-like onto the dance floor. I see no sign of braces or Chinese vases, only jiving hips and vibrating buttocks. There was nothing else for it; the dama de paso it would have to be.

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