Waiting for the Cannes results, we ended up arriving an hour-late to the Youssou N'dour et le Super Etoile de Dakar concert at Bercy. No big whoop though, as we seem to have been in sync with African time and the concert started shortly after our arrival. Other than being 2 of maybe 10 white people in the crowd (Youssou N'dour is Senegal's biggest star) and being about a foot shorter than everyone (West Africans are very tall people), we felt right at home.

While we initially felt a bit conspicuous, everyone was welcoming and more-than-willing to share their culture with us. And what a culture. This was more than just a music concert; it was a 4-hour dance party. It was open admission, so we decided to go down to the "mosh pit" area to get into the action. As soon as Youssou came on, people went crazy dancing. The arena was filled with beautiful (and I mean beautiful) young men and women dressed to the nines (many in traditional costume) enjoying themselves. For them dancing wasn't a matter of bumping & grinding and trying to get members of the opposite sex to go home with you. It was all about celebrating life. Sheer joy.

Or so we thought…

For the most part, dancing seemed to be primarily a means of self-expression and even of communication (mostly men danced with men and women with women in a sort of call-and-response fashion that allowed people to learn new moves through imitation and improvisation). But as we were the exotic ones, we quickly found male dance partners: an adorable Spike Lee look-a-like for Mandy (the only one under 6 feet tall) and a 6'7" Senegalese Adonis for Maya. They told us they came from the same village in Senegal: Dakar. We didn't understand half of what they were saying to us, but that isn't the point. We learned some great moves and also learned that dancing on the beat, the way we learned in 7th grade, just doesn't cut it.

So, 4 hours later, Youssou was still going strong, but the two white girls were fading and the last metro was approaching quickly. We were getting ready to make our escape from our 2 dance teachers, whose dancing had dissolved into the bumping and grinding we were so happy to leave behind. Spike Lee seemed content to get a phone number (not the real one, mind you, too bad there is no Rejection Hotline in France) and say "bonne soiree", while Adonis was a little less laissez-faire. A quick grab and pull by Mandounette freed MizMaya from an African liplock and we were on our way, relieved to be on our own again and filled with immense amounts of joy from Youssou's contagious energy. Legs burning, all moisture sucked from our bodies, we collapsed at home in front of Ab Fab episodes and a night cap of water bottles.