I always look forward to being part of the biggest and best monthly salsa dancing venue in the UK which is El Grande at Scala from 21:30 to 05:00 – 4 rooms for salsa, cubana, bachata & kizomba – often attended by more than 1200 dancers! Entry is £12 whether you do the lessons or not. The venue is Scala just a few hundred yards down the road from King’s Cross St. Pancras Tube Station at 275 Pentonville Rd, Kings Cross, London N1 9NL. There’s always somewhere to park for free in the surrounding roads – you just have to drive round until you find somewhere.
I usually arrive around 9:30pm and do the improvers lesson and then dance the night away until around 3am when I am usually ready to leave because my salsa soul has been fulfilled or sometimes because I have overheated, have run out of shirts or am knackered!
Please see the facebook event on the El Grande London page for details for this particular night but the usual timetable is:
- 09:00 Doors open
- 09:30 Lesson at various levels for each dance genre in the 4 rooms
- 10:30 Social dancing
- 01:00 (approx) Performances
- 01:15 (approx) Social dancing continues
- 04:55 kizomba, cuban & bachata rooms close
- 05:00 salsa room closes and time to go home
FACEBOOK COMMENTS – click a date to see the original posts with reactions
Love: Sofi Cook, Eli Angel; Like: Artur Ganaev, Miho Mija Shigematsu, Rachel Stalley, Pugger Lander, Salsa Dani Jay, Marzena Bober; Wow: Héctor Freire
Philip Wake I brought two young ladies with me tonight – Vendula and her friend Holly – and they both had a good time though I didn’t get a chance with dance with either of them because they were more interested in the bachata and Cuban rooms while I danced all night in the main salsa room. I had a lovely time having many brilliant dances with Rachel, Annie (from Richmond), Leyla, Becks, Eli and many other charming ladies. I kept going until 02:30 at which time my passengers were ready to return but as I was leaving I bumped into a few ladies from Brighton who I would have loved to dance with but to be honest I was fairly well knackered by then and was pleased when they said they would see me at Revolution Brighton on Sunday for a dance. ❤️3 · 3d
Like: Vendula Ven, Holly Gatrell; Love: Eli Angel
- Vendula Ven Philip Wake lovely night!thank you for taking us xx 1
- Philip Wake My Pleasure Vendula – thanks for the tasty morsels you provided me for the journey – have a good Christmas and New Year and see you at Bar So on 8Jan xx 1
- Holly Gatrell Philip Wake Vendula Ven I really enjoyed it, great to go with friends I would definitely go again👌Thanks so much both of you. Happy Christmas 🎄😀 2
- Eli Angel Philip Wake great dancing with you as always 😁😁great atmosphere and fun at scala last night♥️♥️lots of love and a merry Christmas 🎄 😍😍 1
Philip Wake I had an interesting conversation with a guy who thought he knew more about teaching dancing than any of the teachers in the main salsa room did – something about teaching people to dance salsa rather than to do salsa moves – but when I watched him dance later lets just say I wasn’t impressed! Without learning a repertoire of moves to call upon as you become more experienced it’s rather difficult for a man to learn how to lead a lady in a way which interprets the music rather than simply leading moves which the lady follows in a robotic fashion don’t you think! See my salsa life story at www.wake.co.uk/lifetime-achievement-award-life-story for how I spent a few years building a repertoire before concentrating on dancing with the music in the style most likely to succeed with the particular lady I’m dancing with at the time! 😉
Like: Philip Frost; Love: Eli Angel