Dance-off, Bolivian style

Sometimes the best experiences come from following random leads. I found an obscure flyer for a cultural dance show while in an internet cafe a few nights ago and ended up meeting one of the dancers a little later; he was passing by and spotted me clutching the flyer and emplored me to come. Never one to resist a personal invite, we hopped in a cab WAY uptown last night to see what Boris and his companions had for us in the promised evening of Malamba and Chaqueño.

Naively, we turned up a little earlier than the stated start time, sweetly forgetting that we were in fact in Boliva which runs entirely on its own schedule. Still, after a few hours of waiting and sipping the strong local brew, the small but nice cultural center we had arrived at burst into life, buzzing entirely with locals. Boris seemed dutifully amazed that we had actually come and we realized that we were in for a gem of an evening, Bolivian style.

We lost ourselves in the evening as group after group of dancers and musicians, clad in beautiful and varied costume, amazed us with their skills. I´m told the Chaqueño dances were a Argentinian-Bolivian fusion and almost all of them were centered around the theme of wooing and attraction. Conceived from the idea of a rooster courting a hen, the dances included the men displaying machismo through stamping and very fancy and expressive footwork while the women were more demure and coy about the advances of their suitors. The audience were pretty vocal about their preferred groups and took to the floor for their own dancing during the breaks.

It was so much fun being so very submerged in this beautiful culture for an evening , with only our white faces glowing back at each other :) The waitress was horrified at the thought of us gringos going out and finding our own cab at 1 am so she got the doorman to find us a ´real´one. Definitely one of my favourite evenings on the trip so far.