Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wanderingsalsero]

For what it's worth, I've found the atmosphere generally nice at the 4 salsa clubs I've been to here in Seoul. I think they'd be good places for anybody to go who either likes to salsa or wants to learn.

I've been to Gachi in Apgugeon, Turn in Gangnam, Macondo in Hongdae area and Caliente in Itaewon.

The first three of those were 99-100% Korean patronage. Mostly younger people of course as you'd probably expect since it's a dance club. Turn (as near as i could tell) was the only one that offered free salsa lessons early in the evening (as in common in US clubs too).

They all had a cover charge but usually there is a free drink thrown in with that.

I'm a 'guy' so naturally I look at it from a 'leaders' perspective. The girls in these clubs that I've met have generally been very nice and willing to dance. I've found a high percentage of beginners and early intermediate level dancers and they tend to sometimes resist getting up to dance with you, especially if they think you can dance well..but if they've seen you dance and you've shown that you're a good leader then they will dance with you.

For girls, I'd suspect you'd have no trouble with getting Korean guys to dance with you either. Fact is, most salsa dancers are just serious about enjoying salsa dancing. If you can follow at all, or show that you want to learn, I'm pretty sure you'll have a chance to practice all night if you wanted.

Personally, I'd love to start a group of teachers who would like to visit these clubs and dance together. I am capable of teaching the basics of regular 'on 1' salsa and also the Cuban style called 'casino rueda' which I think is the most fun. If you're curious what casino rueda is, look it up on Wikipedia and then on YouTube. It's cool.

I teach in Namyangju (Onam) but I go into Seoul on the weekends and sometimes during the week too. Let me know if you'd like to get together and see what kind of excitment we can stir up. I think salsa could be a way to get to know some younger generation Koreans too. Salsa is a lot of fun!

[Morton]

I'm up for that. Send me a PM when you are thinking of meeting up. I'll invite some friends.
I'm a guy though. Is that cool?

[valkerie]

Sounds good. Will follow the thread and see where/what u r up to when I get over.

Cheers.

[4seasons]

please keep me posted on the salsa circle.
Thanks

[wanderingsalsero]

This is Art. I see some people have some interest. I assume you all know some salsa?

Let's get together next Friday and/or Saturday in Seoul? Ya'll up for that?

We can decide where later. I'm getting my salsa club infor from two websites: www.salsainkorea.com and www.galbijim.com .

I've been to Turn, Gachi, macondo and Caliente. I saw them on galbijim.com . But there's some more listed over on www.salsainkorea.com . Several more.

Does anybody here so far have any experience at any particular salsa club in Seoul? We'll need to decide what days to meet. Options would be:

1) Just Friday or Saturday
2) Friday and Saturday

I think one advantage of Friday AND Saturday is that some of us might only be able to make one of those days but not the other. Myself, I go into Seoul Friday and Saturday so I'm available each night.

Next we need to decide whether to try to make one club or two clubs during whatever evening we're out. I'm in favor of just one club but still having an optional 'club play' in case we don't like the first one (although all the clubs I've been to have been nice).

In some cases, such as Hongdae area, there are multiple clubs.

Then we need to set up a time.....and I'd suggest we try to arrive early at whichever club we go to so we can (if necessary) have a free salsa lesson. I can do the lesson or we can share the responsibility.

Also.....if this turns out to be something we like doing, the free lesson can be an integral part of our agenda and can be a 'draw' to attract new members to our organization. IF....I say IF.....we ever get to the point where we've got a large number of people involved in our club, we might be able to turn that into some 'perks' at the clubs.

Another thing I'd like to suggest is that you all do some research on the style of salsa known as casio rueda. Here's why:

If our aim in going dancing is 'to meet people' that means that we've got to have something going on in our group that attracts people. Guys want to attract girls and girls want to attract guys. The great thing about casino rueda is that everybody is doing the same patterns during the dance. It looks really cool. Look at You Tube and you'll see.

I've found that women always want to be part of the rueda (i.e. 'circle') when they see it. And guys want to get 'in' too but oftentimes they're too bashful to ask. But I've found that if we're all friendly and invite others into the circle with us, they can usually do it as long as we only do simple patterns.

And just for the record, there's also a 'bachata rueda' too. My good friend Jorege Elizando didn't invent it but he was the first guy to make instructinal videos for it. Check out his site here www.bachatarueda.com He's got some great videos on the site too.

Of course we don't have to always be doing rueda. We can couple dance too. I've found in all the clubs I've been to so far that as soon as the koreans see that you're having fun and that you look like you're a nice person....they want to join in too. So basically the more fun we have, the fun people we'll attract. (fake it til we make it

I'm not really sure how Westerner women feel about Korean guys (i.e. the kind we'd see salsa dancing) but I know that most Westerner guys like most Korean women. While I certainly think that us guys in the group need to be gentlemen and protect the interests of our female Westerner members, I still think it makes sense to reach out and try to attract Korean members for our group. After all, we are looking for a cross-cultural experience, right?

So that's it for now.....let's decide on..

next week or not?
What day(s)
Where
the Agenda

Also, I'm still looking for a place to crash for those nights when I come into Seoul on the weekend. Anybody got any extra place or can recommend a reasonably priced jimjilbang or motel?

I'll also share with you that a long term goal of mine would be to start our own casino rueda team that could perform various places around here. I think it'd be a big hit.

The cool thing about doing casino rueda is that it enables you to do a 'show' almost anywhere, extemporaneously.......because everybody already knows the 'calls'.

Keep those feet movin'
Art
010 9122 8095

p.s. If you'd like to see some good videos on salsa and casino style, try
YouTube(put 'salsa' or 'casino rueda' in the search box), same with Google Video or Yahoo Video of Miro Player or Veoh Player. Also see http://www.danceintimeproductions.com , http://www.salsajunkies.com ., http://www.how2salsa.com ., http://www.rumbanana.org (great for the videos of the basic 18 casio rueda patterns).

[Finishy!]

Hey count me in

[wanderingsalsero]

Just had a call from a lady name H______ . She apparently is a member of the SalsainKorea forum and saw a post I'd done there last night when I could't find Maconda. She told me how to find it so now I think I can.

I was discussing my idea for a salsa circle with her and she was interested. She says Saturday is the night she goes out so I'm planning on confirming with her toward the end of the week and probably we'll be meeting at Turn. That's the club she usually frequents.

If some of you could make it too I think that would be great. As I recall, they're open fairly early and still nobody really gets there til later so we'll have time to get acquainted and, if you want, I can show you some casino style too (but don't forget that you've got some great video clips of the basic casino patterns on www.salsajunkies.com and www.rumbanana.org )

I'll most probably still be going into town on Friday night too though. I might try to find Macondo again....although I will tell you that overall I think I like Gachi the best so far because I've found the dancers there the friendliest and the floor decent size...and I met the owner last week.

If any of you know of any decent motels or jimjilbangs, pleas let me know.

Keep those feet movin'
Art
010 9122 9085

[valkerie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_O47mCiKNY

Looks fun.

ART: I am going to watch this thread, when I am in Seoul will be up for it. (I have experience in jazz-swing and belly dancing but not salsa.)

[wanderingsalsero]

Hi Salsa Lovers:

I just ocurred to me that I ought to mention to you another fun opportunity we have....for awhile.

I have a friend who is doing a documentary about Cuban salsa and casino rueda. Her name is Sarita and she lives somewhere in California. She's working on an 'epilog' for the documentary and she asked me if I had a casino rueda group here in Korea yet.

Of course I've only been here a short while and I told her 'no' but nevertheless she told me that if I could get a small group together who could do even just a few of the basic patterns that she'd put a short clip of us on/in the epilog of this documentary she's doing.

So that's the opportunity. I think we have several weeks before the documentary is finished so we've really go plenty of time to learn some basics.....if we want to.

As I said, casino rueda is very similar to regular salsa. The primary 'new' aspect of it is the 'dame' (da-meh....which means 'gimme' in Spanish). When the caller calls a dame, the guy turns around to the girl in back of him in the circle and does a crossbody lead to her, thereby bringing her to the position previously occupied by his recent partner (who is now with the next guy.....ain't that just like 'life' guys!!).

Dame is really pretty simple but it looks really cool and there several variations to it that add lots of variety to how the circle looks.

Lots of the patterns we do in regular salsa are very similar to what's done in regular salsa but there is one small but important difference:

In regular salsa you might remember your teacher saying, 'you don't count the 4 and the 8 because you don't do anything on the 4 and the 8.'

Well, that's not really true. No matter what you're doing on various beats of the measure (i.e. the measure of music....also called a 'bar of music') the music is still going. It doesn't really stop til the music if over, right? If you were playing an instrument you'd still silently be counting out that portion of the music.

So in casino style you see the dancers doing a little foot tap on the 4 and the 8 counts. Much more pronounced than regular 'on 1' or 'L.A.' style dancers. (or 'on 2' dancer either). And actually...... really good Cuban music, called 'timba' is extremely funky and that little tap fits in real nice when you're really feeling the music.

But what we do in casino style that's different is that on certain moves, the lady doesn't break 'back' on her 1 count. The guy/the leader will lead her in such a way that she starts moving forward on that '1' count. That has the effect of getting her moving into the pattern one beat early.

It really makes sense when you see it. And that'll be one of the things I'll show you if we decide to do some casino style.

Keep those feet movin'
Art
10 9122 8095

[wanderingsalsero]

That clip that Valkerie included with her post is nice. It's not entirely rueda...but rather lots of salsa type line-dancing but you can still learn a lot about the flavor of casino style from it.

It's always knocked me out how Cubans can dance in anything from shower flip-flops to snow shoes. They just step where they want to go.

You can see the cute little funky way they step in this video too. They really feel their music. It's less about 'show' to them and more about really feeling the music.

We can get that way too though! And I think it'll be a pretty unique thing around here. I've heard that there are some clubs here in the Hongdae area where people know how to dance Cuban style. But I haven't been there yet. Maybe that's something we can do as a group sometime soon.

Keep those feet movin'
Art

[wanderingsalsero]

Hi casino lovers:

Here's some news that'll probably sound good to those people who have an interest in learning or doing some casino reuda style dancing in the Seoul area:

(1) the gal (whose name I don't remember) who owns Macondo has started a casino rueda program at Macondo. I'm a little unclear on the terminology she's using but there is something going on on Monday and Tuesday nights. One night she calls it rueda and the other night she says it's casino.......so, go figure.

I went Tuesday night but honestly I'd rate the overall class a 6 on a 10 scale. There's various reasons I say that and it's no reflection on her personally. It's a new class though so there's always a chance it could get better.

(2) I've got a domain name for www.koreacarruseles.com . That's what I want to call the social dancing group I'm setting up. I also just recently set up a yahoogroup, Here's the group URL and email address:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KoreaCarruseles

[email protected]

I'm not totally sure how long term valuable doing that will be but initially, while we're still in our birthing phase, I wanted to have a commonly accesible and easy to understand point of contact for those people who are interested in getting involved with us.

You can contact me though this forum, the Yahoo group email or at my personal email address of [email protected] or at my cell phone of 010 9122 8095.

(3) I've got a small handful of people who have expressed an interest in being founding members of our merry band so my next project is to agree on when and where we'll have our first meeting.

Moving on....

Once we starting to actually do some rueda in public I think we'll see a lot of interest. For whatever reason, nobody has been teaching it lately around here. I have no idea why but I am personally convinced that the potential is here.

I don't expect that casio rueda will ever be 'the hot thing' around here. In most salsa communities worlwide the casineros are a small but dynamic minority. That's fine with me. I just know that I like it and I think the only reason more people don't do it is becuase they never really see it done right or get into a group where they can learn correctly.

I don't claim to be a rueda guru but I do know my basics. And once you learn really just two or three things....i.e. the 'dame' and 'the tap'.....from that point on it's just a matter of expanding your reportoire of patterns and applying them based on your own creativity.

I'm going to have some cards made within the next week in order to be able to give somebody our basic contact info. I've met a lot of dancers lately who I wish I could have said, 'Here....here's our card. Check out our group's page and if you're interested let us hear from you.'

Eventually (and probably pretty soon) I'm going to set up another blog over on my Typepad.com account. The actual URL will be sorta funky but I can use the www.koreacarruseles.com and just have it redirect to the typepad url. That way we can have a nice home page presence.

I've got a big bunch of instructional DVDs so there won't be any problem with us having new stuff to learn. Although realistically it'll take most groups (like ours....who are starting fresh) a few weeks to learn the basic stuff...and I already know that.

For what it's worth, there's several casino rueda instructional DVDs available. Just do a Google and you'll see what I mean. Point is, once you get your head and heart around the basics of casino, you can continue to learn on your own. I've always thought it was kinda unfortunate that most salsa dancers become dependant on instructors for their creativity and new patterns.

I plan on going to the Monday and Tuesday class at Macondo to see what it's like. I have no idea of what to expect. And supposedly there's still the class which that Itaewon studio is starting towards the end of this month.

I can tell you one thing...if it's got beginners in it it'll probably move kinda slow.

So........that's what's new with me/us.....Korea Carruseles.

[wanderingsalsero]

We've got an online presence now. My friend Brent has a website called SalsaFire. I believe it's a .com site. It's fairly new though and there's not much content on it yet.

Myself, I have a blog over on Typepad but I don't have it's URL (which is sorta long) redirected to the domain name I bought at GoDaddy (www.koreacarruseles.com).

The long Typepad URL is
http://wanderingsalsero.typepad.com/korea_carruseles/ All I've got there so far is a welcoming message but later today I'll be be posting the first item of content on it...the first of what will be many and often.

I'm picking up some cards on Tuesday and Brent already has his. None of you know Brent yet but he's also a teacher (and recently married!) and apparently he was thinking sorta along the same lines I was when we met through this board. Both he and I were thinking that we wanted to have a card to give people if/when somebody expressed an iterest in going our social group.

Having cards will make it easier for us to publicize the group....i.e. sometimes you don't have time to go into all the details about something when you meet people in spontaneous social situations. But, having cards will mean that we'll have better odds of bringing you (a potential member yourself, right?) more members to intermix with.

Which brings up another observation:

There's lots of good salsa clubs in Seoul but I've observed that Korean dancers don't go out of their way to talk to or mix with us foreigners. I suspect a lot of that is just due to the language barrier but whatever the reason is it also means that we foreigners are going to have to 'bring our own' (i.e. dance partners) to the club if we expect to have somebody to dance with.

That's one of the advantages I see to having this group up and growing. We have the potential of creating our own social dance community.

If we can build a dynamic, excited group on our own, then I think the Koreans will be wanting to take part in what we're doing......which I'm all in favor of. And if, at some point in the future the rueda style starts to grow in Seoul.....then it'll be a more open social situation too by the very nature of rueda. But I think we've got to take the initiative in creating a situation where we're 'making it happen'.

I'm going into Seoul this afternoon to attend the evening lesson over at Macondo (in Hongdae). And I plan on going to the Tuesday lesson also. I'm not sure what the difference is but they both are billed as 'casino' or 'rueda'.

Based on what I've seen myself (last week) and what I heard from Brent, I don't have much hope of those lessons being very good over there.
I say that mostly because of the language situation.

It's a mixed nationality class and I just think it's difficult to move forward very fast when the person who's teaching has limited command of English and the 'local nationals' (i.e. the Koreans) probably don't understand it very well either. But, on the off chance that it might succeed and prosper, I'd want to be a part of it. No need for me to reinvent the wheel if something else is working.

Supposedly that gal at Macondo has been to Cuba. But I do know she can't speak Spanish and I'm not sure how much rueda she really knows nor am I sure how good a teacher she is. I've only been to one of her classes.

When 'we' eventually start our own get-togethers, it'll take me about 90-120 minutes probably to teach you all the basics of casino rueda. That's really about all you need me (or any other teacher) for. From that point on you'll really be able to learn at your own pace in as far as there are several good instructional DVDs on the market.

Once you learn your basics, the value of being part of a group will be that you'll have somebody to practice your rueda techniques with....and maybe to learn 'calling' if you want to. If we decide to continue our meetings for the purpose of some coordinated learning of patterns..and practice.....that's fine with me. Personally I'm hoping to find a regular practice partner for myself and a small group to hang out with.

Probably what'll happen is that there'll be a group of, say.....8-16 of us who like it....and on any particular evening at least 2-4 couples will be able rendezvous somewhere. I have a friend in Austin, Texas who has a up-and-running rueda club called www.streetsalsa.com . And that's the way it happens in Austin.

Just for your understanding of 'the bigger picture'.....the next element of the rueda puzzle to fall into place is for these lessons at the studio in Itaewon to start. I've seen that studio. It's a nice one. And although I think they're a bit overpriced, at least they appear to be somewhat professional.

Supposedly they've got somebody scheduled to be a teacher who knows what they're doing. Time will tell.

I told the person at the desk there that I didn't want to pay the kind of money they were talking about for a beginner class but I would like to audit and perhaps 'help'. I don't know if they'r going to be agreeable to that or not. My suspicion is that they won't. Often times people in the dance busines tend to be very secretive and possisive.

On the subject of Itaewon however, Caliente is the salsa club in Itaewon (if you didn't already know) and it's been my observation that people don't get there til fairly late in the evening. I think Caliente might be a club where we'd be able to dance at once we get going.

One problem we're going to have is finding clubs where we'll have room to dance. 4 couples makes a nice sized rueda but larger ruedas, 6-12 couples are even more fun. But if you've seen Seoul salsa clubs you know there just isn't that kind of room there.

That means that we're going to have to learn to dance in small ruedas (i.e. 2-5 couples). That's really a good thing. People tend to assume that rueda circles have to be BIG. But they don't.

Another thing that we might be able to do in the not-to-distant future too is take a trip to Busan or even Japan to do some rueda there. Whatever little group we're able to form might really be able to build a reputation locally.....but I'm just thinking forward. We gotta get to square one first.

I'm going to go over to post on the Korea Carruseles blog now. Don't hesitate to call me if you have any questions. Actually I'd prefer a call rather than email. My number is 010 9122 8095

Keep those feet moving!

Art

[wanderingsalsero]

We might have something happening at Macondo.

I was there tonight for the rueda class. It was pretty fair really. The teacher was a guy. Different that the lady (the owner of the club) who teaches Tuesdays.

I proposed to the guy that him(them) and me team up and try to really get some people trained in good casino rueda. He said he'd talk to the club lady about it. I kinda think something good will happen.

This particular fellow doesn't speak really good Engish and he doesn't really speak any Spanish and I'm not totally sure how much rueda he knows. But what he does know....he knows pretty well. And he can do 'calls' well too. And I can tell that he actually likes rueda.

So for that reason I proposed we work together. We both could make a contribution to the greater mission of promoting rueda here in Seoul.

He tentatively suggested us doing something on Saturdays. Time will tell whether it happens or not. I think I'll hear something tonight (Tuesday) because I'm going back for the Tuesday 'casino' class.