I walked in to the restaurant around 4:00pm with the intent of just dropping off my gear, calling up a friend to see if we could hang out (maybe even catch a movie) but instead I chilled at the bar awhile chatting with one of the customers and Maria the owner. Nice conversation but I was in da mood to visit Barnes and Noble but it's such a long walk (20 minutes at least) considering the dark storm clouds threatening above.

So this guy offers to show me a shortcut that involves going behind a seedy lookin' auto body shop, past a couple a rusty moss-covered abandoned cars, through a hole in the chainlink fence, a little trek through some suburban jungle and across some train tracks with no safe pedestrian path.

Um, I wasn't appropriately attired for this "expedition" and I nearly poked an eye out when a broken tree branch attacked me. Just kidding sort of. :-) And my once shiny boots were splattered with fresh mud. And now I was in an area where if I fell down and broke my leg nobody would notice me for who knows how long--remember I had to crawl through a hole in the fence to get here? So why do it? The thrill of imminent danger? Perhaps. Nah. It's because I was able to cut down a 20-minute walk down to 5, yay!

Made it to the bookstore. Got myself a doppio and a toffee almond bar--glucose for my brain so I could concentrate. Found a good book that seemed appropriate: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL® THE SPARK : Igniting the Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All. I couldn't put it down and managed to read it from cover to cover (144 pages of quick reading prose). Didn't learn anything particularly new, but it gave me a little jolt of inspiration.

One concept I like was the idea that you have to take risks and go outside your comfort zone to realize your full potential. In a small way, this is what I do when I challenge myself to "figure out" a dancer's choreography as it unfolds.

Another example is my taking ballroom dance classes--I never considered myself much of a dancer and being surrounded by all these fabulous dancers (the pros practice during the day in the same studio as I'm taking my lessons) does make me feel self-conscious, but I gotta break out of that cuz I see this from time to time in flamenco classes: dancers who seem to hold themselves back cuz they're afraid of looking silly or making mistakes in front of the instructor or their peers.

Anywayz, the basic gist of the story is that this business person is at a hotel in Las Vegas and serendiptuously follows these stage techs through a series of doors until he finds himself in the theatre where Cirque du Soleil is rehearsing. He grabs a seat in the theatre and is fascinated by what he sees. The company manager sees him, sits closeby and instead of kicking him out engages him in conversation and gives him a comp ticket for that night's show. Long story short, he's even more intrigued afterwards, meets the crew backstage and eventually goes to the corporate headquarters in Montreal and begins a journey where he basically rediscovers his passion for what he does for a living (sports agent).

Getting back to my story. I made it back to the Andalucia by 7:00pm but didn't pull out the guitar and warm-up (bad, bad, bad) but instead just relished the warm feeling I got from reading the book. Good thing thing is that this feeling contributed to my musical performance. The dancer was Sarah Hart--a very promising young dancer who has her share of good shows and slightly less-than-good shows and she'll admit this too since she has set very high standards for herself. For the second set, she danced a tientos that has two letra sections, but she inadvertently skipped the second letra and went straight into tangos. I didn't think anything of it--just assumed that Sarah was being creative and decided to change the choreography on the spot. So I went with da flow all the time just keeping myself open to any other changes. In the end, this heightened sense of awareness made the performance even better because I was able to catch a few more subtle nuances in the dance that I hadn't seen before. Cool! Going back to the Cirque du Soleil story, one of the concepts mentioned in the book was that "Mistakes are creative opportunities in disguise." I like that.

OK, let's see what's on the da calendar for today. Gotta drop off my sound system at Cabanas before noon before it rains (here we go again!) and visit Alliance Dance Institute at 1:30pm. Hopefully I can squeeze in Da Vinci Code before Cabanas tonight. The dancers will be Ginette Perea and Mariya. Ginette's birthday was technically earlier this week, but we're going to celebrate it tonight so please come!