Finding Rhythm

Aliénor Salmon

Description

Traditional and digital media: print and online features, reviews, author op-eds and Q&As, and blog tour. Strong outreach planned for women’s interest, travel, wellness, and fitness focused media from publications like Vanity Fair, Elle, Woman’s Day, Cosmo, Travel + Leisure, Town & Country, Shape, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal travel sections, and sites like Mindbodygreen, The Chalkboard, Everyday Health, Well + Good, SheKnows, and more. 

TV appearances with hook of teaching various Latin American dances to talk-show hosts on shows like The View, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Ellen.

Live online appearances designed around dance instructions/classes and book readings with Q&As via Instagram Live, Facebook Live, YouTube, Zoom, and independent bookstore websites.

Targeted digital advertising with SEO keywords on sites like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Instagram with a focus toward dance, Latin American travel, solo trips for women, fun fitness, and more.

Author in-person events: Author can hold dual dance instructions and book readings/signings at bookstores, cultural centers, and elsewhere, and will also do so at the dance retreats she plans to host around the world, including in Latin American dance centers in the US, such as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, and in Puerto Rico.

International sales appeal: Book should have strong appeal to audiences in Latin America and Europe, and author is an international nomad and can do signings around the world.

Book club push: Book is excellent for women’s book clubs and will be promoted to in-person and digital clubs, including in roundups and through targeted advertising.

Trade media outreach: Unique angle should appeal to reviewers in Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, ALA Booklist, and Shelf Awareness.

One woman embarked on a dance journey around the world, finding out how each dance tells a story of its country and learning how beautiful life can be when you take the lead.

If you could do anything you wanted, what would it be? Aliénor Salmon was working as a happiness researcher in Bangkok when a friend asked her the question that turned life as she knew it on its heels. A novice dancer but experienced social researcher, the Franco-British Aliénor headed west from Bangkok to dance her way through Latin America. As she learns eighteen dances, each native to the countries she visits, she engages with esoteric customs, traditions, and cultures. Through conversations and arduous studio hours, she learns that every step, pivot, and shake thrums with an undeniable spirit of place. And that in a world where we are over-connected but increasingly disconnected from one another, dance offers an authentically human experience. One that allows her to develop tolerance, kindness, truth, and love by holding the hands of a stranger and gazing into their eyes for the time of a song.

With her fearless and candid approach, Aliénor will inspire you to take the reins of your own life—and have some fun along the way. In this dance-travelogue, you’ll learn the history and steps of dances like salsa, samba, and tango, enjoy a resplendent meditation on happiness and wanderlust, and receive a life-affirming answer to the question: How do I take the first step?

Introduction

• Bangkok


• New York


• Mexico


• Cuba


• Dominican Republic


• Puerto Rico


• Colombia


• Brazil


• Argentina

Afterword

Sujets

• Special Interest
• Women
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Interest group (disambiguation)
• Travel
• Woman
• The Women
• Dance
• Adventure

Informations

• Publié par: Apollo Publishers
• Date de parution: 16 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781948062732
• Langue: English

Extrait

AN INTERNATIONAL
DANCE JOURNEY

ALIÉNOR SALMON




Finding Rhythm: An International Dance Journey
Copyright © 2021 by Aliénor Salmon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be sent by email to Apollo Publishers at [e-mail].
Apollo Publishers books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Special editions may be made available upon request. For details, contact Apollo Publishers at [e-mail].
Visit our website at www.apollopublishers.com.
Published in compliance with California's Proposition 65.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935820.
Print ISBN: 978-1-948062-72-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-948062-73-2
Printed in the United States of America.


To my mother, Nadine, for encouraging me to always believe in my dreams.







1. Three Loves Lost
2. Bangkok
3. New York
4. Mexico
5. Cuba
6. Dominican Republic
7. Puerto Rico
8. Colombia
9. Brazil
10. Argentina
Afterword
Acknowledgments


May we dance in the face of our fears.
—Gloria Anzaldúa


1

Three Loves Lost
“I f you could do anything without the worry of time or money, what would you do?” I ask Naoko.
“Swim with whales in Papua New Guinea!” she exclaims with absolute certainty. Naoko is obsessed with sea creatures, dependably quirky, and always willing to entertain my line of inquiry. “What about you? What would you do if you could do anything?”
Somehow I hadn’t expected my own question would be asked of me too. Why haven’t I asked myself this before? As an emerging happiness researcher, shouldn’t I know what would make me most happy? I turn to stare blankly at the limestone cliffs dropped like sugar lumps into the Andaman Sea, which I admire from our hotel’s terrace in Thailand’s Krabi Province. A series of sad events has left me with a broken heart, the first signs of burnout, and a cloudy mind, making it difficult for me to think or see clearly. In what situation am I happiest? In what kind of environment and with what kind of people? What would make me feel free and alive? I desperately want a break from work to learn something new, even if for just a few months. I want to liberate my body from my desk.
Over the years I have pushed myself to do more, produce more, in the hope of being more. But my achievements have come with a growing workload and a flooded in-box, leaving me with little space to quietly reflect on my creative outlets and countless ideas. It dawns on me that I am much more than my profession. I am a person whose inner child has dreams yet to be fulfilled. The answer comes to me.
“You know what? I would learn to dance.”
Living in the tropical metropolis of Bangkok with a budding career in the United Nations and a bustling social calendar, my life may seem like the pinnacle of success. But the loss of three great loves—my mentor, the man I’d considered my soulmate, and my grandfather—has left me devastated. It turns out that there are three ways men can abandon you: a diplomatic recall, ghosting, and death.
I had worked for a visionary, a man whose integrity and tireless dedication to building a happier and more peaceful world made me feel like I was part of something bigger than myself. He was my mentor, my maestro . When you live and work far away from home, your colleagues and friends become your family. I’d been fortunate to be part of a remarkable team: we bonded over frequent happy hours, embraced the work hard, play hard culture, and won every office competition. We were an eclectic bouquet of human beings led by a person whose daily presence, inappropriate sense of humor, and genuine interest in our work motivated us to innovate, create, and strive to be better.
When my mentor called an impromptu team meeting and announced he was leaving in just one week, it was like a stab to my chest. My throat tightened and I turned my face to hide the tears that were streaming down my cheeks. His absence even for a few days would have been strongly felt. Now our team didn’t know if we would see him again. It was like a collective trauma, and a heavy sadness and loss filled the room. Over the weeks and months to come, the sharp pain in my chest would occasionally return, causing tears to roll down my cheeks without warning. I would sometimes start to email him out of reflex, only to remember that there would be no reply. What made it worse was that we had no contact with him whatsoever, and no news. We knew nothing. He seemed to have vanished—incommunicado.
A few months after losing my mentor, I met Cristián. It was the height of Thailand’s monsoon season, and I’d made it through the rainstorm to a Latin party at Above Eleven, my favorite Bangkok rooftop bar. As the rained poured down and lightning flashed across the city’s sparkling skyline, we took shelter. By the bar I caught his gaze and instantly felt a force drawing me toward him. It was like we’d known each other before, and when we spoke, his eyes pierced through my soul. He placed his hand on my heart and brought my hand to his cheek.
A tuk-tuk ride and twenty-four hours later, I knew I was in love. The next day he was bound for the airport to return to Europe, but within weeks we met up again in Spain. We went to Seville, where we lost ourselves in the labyrinth of the Alcázar Palace, strolled across the Triana Bridge, and shared secret kisses on patios surrounded by fragrant orange blossoms. People would stop to admire our glow, one old man even crying, “ ¡Que viva el amor!” (Long live love!) During a romantic horse-drawn carriage ride through Maria Luisa Park, we passed the statues of three young women representing the three phases of love: hopeful love, possessed love, and love lost. Mine was certainly the first. Cristián was my first great love, and I pinched myself looking up at him and wondering if I would endure through the three phases.
Within a few days of my return to Bangkok, I was back at Above Eleven, a place full of memories, for their weekly Latin night. When one of my favorite songs started to play, I asked the DJ what kind of music it was, and he told me it was bachata, a genre from the Dominican Republic. The soulful voice singing to the lament of a weeping guitar mirrored my own emotional state. I found solace in the wistful longing. My heart was open, bare, and beating. I was allowing myself to feel. I decided to sign up for beginner bachata classes at rumPUREE, Bangkok’s leading dance studio, that week.
Cristián and I were separated by distance, but I had hope—what we felt seemed too precious to let go. Because of the time difference, I would read his messages every morning as I woke up. They felt like heartfelt letters sent from the front, amorous declarations. But over time his texts became less frequent. I would increasingly wake up to an empty screen, leaving me trembling and distressed. One stormy evening, while admiring the deep purple clouds above Bangkok, I surprised myself by praying to the moon that he would come back to me. I almost never pray. I was possessed.
Weeks of silence, sudden manifestations, and excuses passed, sending me into an agonizing roller-coaster of emotions, until he disappeared completely. I had waited twenty-nine years to feel this love, and now it was lost.
When December arrived, about six weeks after I last heard from him, I was no less heartbroken, but it was impossible to resist the cheer of Christmas celebrations and that universal “holiday feeling” that emanated despite Bangkok’s eighty-degree heat. For me the holidays are very special because I’ve lived on a different continent than my family for almost seven years, but the holidays are a time to be together. My French mother raised me in England, where I was born. But I grew up between both countries, with frequent ferry rides across the Channel to France where I spent time with my grandparents, with whom I am incredibly close.
As I got into my mother’s car at London’s Heathrow Airport, which I always fly into en route to France, she sighed from behind the wheel and then slowly said, “Your grandfather is dying. This is probably the last Christmas we will have all together.”
My grandfather was the most important man in my life. He was my mother’s stepfather, but he cradled me as a baby and loved me as if I were his own child. I even danced my first steps with him—when I was little, he would lift me up so that I could put my feet on top of his. It was no secret to anyone in the family that I was his favorite. He’d even figured out how to set my photo as his computer screen saver.
In postwar France, my grandmother, who had lived through the Nazi occupation, would often attend the village ball. She was known to dance like a butterfly, light in the arms of potential suitors. It was at the ball that she met her first husband, my biological grandfather, and they later left their home in rural Brittany to move to Paris for a better life. They were deeply in love and lived simply but happily in the Parisian suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine, where they had three daughters.
At the age of forty-two, my biological grandfather died from an incurable illness, leaving my grandmother widowed and heartbroken. She returned to Brittany with her daughters and worldly possessions and went to work in a telecommunications factory, where she met her second husband, whom I know as my grandfather. They shared a passion for dance, and after discovering a local dance club for pensioners, my grandmother became its president and my grandfather its treasurer.
“A waltz has nothing