Dancing in the dark

On Tuesday nights S and I do a salsa class.  After class there is a social dance / practice session where they put on the music, turn down the lights and put on the coloured disco lights so that it feels a bit like being in a salsa club.  It is good fun, a great chance to practice what we have just learned and have a proper dance but being a mid-week night we generally leave about halfway through.

The dance studio is on the second floor and due to the body heat inside, the windows are always fogged up.  The street is dimly lit and not exactly salubrious, a commercial area filled with car yards and low rent buildings.

As S and I stand in the carpark saying goodbye (a long process really only limited by the fact that it is freezing at night at the moment) we often look back up to the studio.  With the fogged up windows, the flashing coloured lights inside highlight silhouettes of the dancers and it looks amazing.  A bit like an 80's video clip. In the grimy setting it all looks mysterious and glamorous and the dark shapes of the people coming in and out are all the more interesting.

I like to think about how an outsider would imagine the inside from that view.  I think they would imagine it to be far more glamorous and less sweaty than it actually is.  And you know, even though I know what it is like inside, that almost hypnotic view from outside makes it just a little more glamorous for me too.