When the dance studio has cool lighting… you have to go for it!💃🕺✨️
Last Sunday we had so much fun with this sequence. You can really feel the confidence and energy of this amazing group! Thank you @starring__marie for recording and your ongoing support!🫶
Every Sunday, we teach the foundations of Cuban partner dancing so you can learn how to connect with music and with others!
In April, our open classes will be at 📍OC Studio in Hongdae from 3-5pm!
Just send a message to join🔥
#seoul #살사 #danceclass #salsacubana #korea
Istanbul
I really like Istanbul. This time I was there to help organize a workshop. The preceeding time I was there to give a talk at Boğaziçi university. On a warm spring day it is a truly wonderful experience to commute to work by ferry across the Bosphorus. The city itself breathes antiquity, anywhere you look you'll spot lingering remnants from the Ottoman empire, the Byzantine empire, and the days before that.
#sonya6000 #travelphotography #istanbul #manualfocus #ttartisan25mmf2
The Full Moon lantern festival in Hôi An. We managed to arrive just before dusk. I wasn't sure where we were going I was just told to come here. It was hot outside while we snaked our way through the crowd, sales people hawking any possible goods you can imagine. And then the sun went down. The lanterns turned on and the entire old part of town along the river was bathed in warm yellow light
#sonya6000 #travelphotography #manualfocus #vietnam
I got an invite to give a talk at a university in Vietnam. Da Nang, is incredibly beautiful if slightly postapocalyptic. Mother nature is slowly reclaiming the city, there's trees and plants everywhere. The sidewalks are suggestions, roving groups of 20-year olds on scooters zip by all over the place. And everyone is so friendly
#sonya6000 #sonyalpha #travel #manualfocus #travelphotography
"Of all the places I could've ended up in for my first time in the US, it's Port Jefferson, Long Island. I cannot believe this place is real, I'm sure it has to be an elaborate prank to mess with the Europeans. What in the Huckleberry Finn is this? There's white picket fences everywhere, there's as many majoral election candidates as citizens, over half the vehicles on the road are SUV's. I walked past three churches in one street, and two banners told me to bless the troops. I'm half expecting a man in a seersucker suit and a porkpie hat to jump out of a bush to ask me to sign a petition to give civil rights to an ar15 assualt rifle. I want a bald eagle to screech by while holding the declaration of independence in its talons, Star-spangled blaring in the background"
I did not expect to experience so much culture shock on Long island. Comparatively, New York feels almost familiar. It's in films, on tv, on records, in photographs, in books, postcards, Tropic of Capricorn, Taxi Driver, Frank Sinatra, it's where Carrie met mr. Big, Fran yelled at Mr. Sheffield, where those construction workers ate lunch on top of a beam and where Wall street spiraled the world into global catastrophe
The Spirit of Salsa.
And also my first dive into playing around with a manual focus lens.
Performers:
@tinalatina.lsk@kr_reallatin@latinspiritkorea
#salsadancing #salsa #sonya6000 #manualfocus
I was filling in my personal data at the check-in desk while the person behind the counter was eyeing my helmet. She looked at my home address data and asked if I’d rode over all the way from Prague? ``Nah, all the way from Zagreb."
I was told by a friend to head to the Gürtel. Specifically, to a railroad underpass, where all the dive bars were conveniently lined up in one neat row. If I was to see anything on a Tuesday night this would be the place to go. I got some cash from an ATM I found a bar that still looked lively. I wandered in and found an indie rock band nearing the end of its set. I talked to a couple of Austrians who gave me a handy event calendar. There'd be a punk show next day, different venue.
The next day I decided I wanted to see the palace. Given that I had inadvertently toured almost the entire former Austro-Hungarian empire it seemed only appropriate that I would conclude my trip at its seat of power. The palace of the Habsburg regime, Schloss Schönbrunn. After getting to the tourist entrance I crept my way around the princess Sissi postcards, princess Sissi hand mirrors, Princess Sissi candy wrapped in Princess Sissi paper. Once I passed the Princess Sissi ballpoint pens I was waved in by someone that validated my tour pass. I walked through the office quarters of notorious workaholic Emperor Franz Joseph I. Followed by the personal quarters of notoriously unhappily married wife Empress Elisabeth.
By afternoon I ordered strüdel in the place that Gustav Mahler, Peter Altenberg and Sigmund Freud had supposedly frequented. By nighttime I went to see an HC punk band. After the show I went outside and got some fresh air. I decided to have a chat with the band members around the merch stand. Turns out they hailed from New Jersey. I mentioned I read Wisconsin was supposed to be beautiful, I remember his response was: ``F*ck Wisconsin, come to New Jersey. We got a beach, all they got is a shitty lake.” Clear. …sorry Wisconsinites. I also remember another band member claiming that all historical problems in continental Europe could be brought back to religious conflict, he told me `to think about it’. I did. It’s really f*cking reductionist.
After the grand majesty of Budapest it is hard not to be a little disenchanted by Zagreb. I looked up at the post-socialist concrete block that was supposed to contain my hostel. The contrast between the dilapidated exterior and the polished interior could not have been starker though. I used the door code to get to my corridor. The corridor was sterile like a hospital ward and was fumigated with a pervasive smell of lavender. Behind my designated door I found a luxe small apartment, decked out in everything from a tea kit and kettle to a very fancy television set (contextual note: all televisions made after 2006 look very fancy to me).
I checked the map though and noticed that very close by across the river there was a bar a former coworker had recommended to me. I walked the tunnel that extends underneath the train station and made it to old Zagreb proper. Now the other side of the tunnel looked a lot more impressive. It’s amazing, you enter the tunnel from 1950’s Yugoslavia from one side and somehow emerge in 19th century Vienna on the other.
Next day I found that the venue Močvara had an event, Suffocation, a death metal concert. Am I the world’s biggest death metal fan? No. But it would be a Monday night and my other options slim. The band was really good. After the show I had barely set foot outside and a very cheerful (and fairly drunk) Croatian man accidentally bumped into me. He introduced himself by the name of Lucifer and he had been living in Zagreb his whole life. He was about to change that though, he had spent his entire life doing blue collar work and had decided that it wasn’t working out for him, so he’ll set out to travel to Berlin with his guitar and become a musician instead. I hope his dreams came true.
The main roads to Budapest was closed for construction and I veered off to the right onto the indicated replacement route that was stipulated by the rigged-up traffic signs, right onto an unpaved dirt path. My Honda is a dirt bike now. With some effort I managed to reach the point where we got redirected onto the main road again. Now, just as I crossed into the outskirts of Budapest, into civilization, the road was completely torn up again. A portable traffic light told me it was cool to drive into the oncoming traffic lane, which was ..also torn up. I had two options, either off-road it through the dirt or tight-rope a 200 kilo motorbike with luggage across the 50 cm wide strip of stones that hadn’t been removed yet. I chose, likely unwisely, for the latter. I realized bitterly that if I lost balance and would have to put a foot down, the ground below would be too far away to reach down without tumbling the bike over. Luckily, with mind fully focussed on balance, I managed to make it across without any falls.
the most stunning view of the entire journey was the moment I reached Erzsebet bridge. A better writer might be able to carefully convey through words the exact experience of crossing the Erzsebet bridge into Kossuth Lajos utca on the Pest side of the city, best I can say is that the singular word that was resounding through the inside of my helmet was `dammnn’. The beautiful Austro-Hungarian architecture rose up from both sides of the street. Old stately buildings in grey and brown brick and mortar reminiscent of the fin de siecle.
I’d decided by this point that I wanted to check out one of these ruin bars I’d been hearing about. It was a beautifully warm breezy summer night. My goal was a place called Szimpla Kert. The sight in front of me was impressive, the crowd the light, the sheer amount of objects plastered to the walls, the thick crowd of people, the bare concrete walls. The word ruin is supposed to indicate that it was a dilapidated empty building in the former WWII era ghetto of Budapest, I don’t see how it differs from the legalized squats in my home country other than in, arguably, better advertising.
#motorcycle #motorcycletravel
The streets of Bratislava loomed up. And they’d do so again and again while I circled the same streets over and over trying to follow my navigation app’s instructions. By the time I looped around for the third time I checked the map and spotted the little tunnel that went up to my hotel.
The hotel was hidden away on the top floors of an unassuming building in the middle of a shopping avenue just off city center Bratislava. All the beds were stashed away in their own little claustrophobic capsules. I, being thrifty by nature and cheap by nurture, got one of the top capsules up a ladder just because it was a handful of pennies cheaper.
That night I passed through the streets, walked across a little bridge past a beautiful little tower with blue tiling up top and ended up at a vegan sushi restaurant. At the restaurant they told me to check out the castle, it was pushing close to 9 PM, but the gates were still open. The bright even-colored walls of the castle lit by bright fluorescent light along the massive statue of three figures with raised hands. From the walls you can look over the Danube valley. The lights were bright on a UFO-looking contraption on top of a massive suspension bridge. Down the hill, an old church, just barely missed by an adjacent six-lane motorway. Burroughs in Central Europe.
Next day, I checked out the hotel. Found out I had enough euros on me to get a cappucino. I spend the next hour reading a book in the warm morning sun. I went back to where I parked, I admired a Ducati Monster parked on the curb with an Amsterdam license plate that made my road trip look like a grocery haul, and I once again strapped my luggage to the handrails of my bike.
