Salsa Dance Place in Seattle

After we have dinner with D-WA congressman Rick, many of YLFers head back to hotel. I went to a Salsa dancing place in Seattle with Ashish, Tong, Ming, Mark, Lisa, Raymond, Matt, Jen….(many people, and I just try to use first name – the typical way I quote people when I don’t have their explicit permission to show their name in my blog).

Century Ballroom

The place is called Century Ballroom and Cafe at 915 E Pine St., Seattle. Nice place. I was very impressed by how well everyone in the ballroom dances. I didn’t bring camera with me but you can check out some sample photos they posted on their own website. It was amazing.

I am familiar with places of disco dancing, but for ballroom dancing, this is my first experience. It seems people have a pretty high basic standard to join the dancing pool. I didn’t dance, but just looked quietly for one hour. The dance itself is a performance for me.

Art in Seattle

Seattle is a charming city. It was always my favorite US city, before I later started to love life in the bay area better (not that much rain, and the faster pace, more relaxed startup environments, and the great minds I can tough).

Besides the natural beauty, Seattle is particular outstanding in terms of art. I saw more art display in Seattle than any other city. I watched drama in Seattle, and it was wonderful. I reported the grassroot art in Seattle about the Live Girls Theater, and the draw exhibition, which directly inspired and led to our photo exhibition in Shanghai. To me, Seattle’s art is more grassroot than New York, and more appealing to me. Tonight is another example of those very well done “art” – the dancing of normal people in this city.

Learn to Dance?

I decided that I need to put “learn to dance” to my to-do-list. The other event that triggered my interest in dancing is a very quick introduction of ballet by Damian Woetzel, one of the greatest and brightest star in the modern ballet field, during the session this afternoon. Sometimes it really matters about who teach you something more than what he/she teaches. The inspiration, I think, will last for quiet some time.

Art and Sports in Life

Besides Damian, who devoted to the education of dancing after he left the New York City Ballet, Kim Ng, the Assistant General Manager of Los Angles Dodge baseball team also suggested the benefit of promoting sports in schools (although she put more focus on female sports education). I remember in the last year’s YLF, the great conductor, George Steel, talked about the importance of music, (and taught me a little bit on conducting)… All these added up together, I just feel that art (no matter that it is, say, dancing, painting, drawing, music) or sports (what ever it will be) should play a much bigger role than today in the Chinese society. This trip is very educational for me to re-think about these simple things that bring happiness to life, and take a pause in this money and consuming-centric world. We should do something in this direction…

Written at 1:36 AM, Seattle time.

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