I love afterparties (and heels and flats)

I love afterparties - especially when everybody's almost too tired to stand up, but they still want to dance. They just want to dance. They're high as kites on dancing. Somebody DJs. Somebody has a portable speaker. Somehow a room has been found. And it just sort of happens. There's that wonderful no-obligation feeling where everything that was supposed to happen has already either happened, or not, and everything else is a bonus. If only we could bottle that feeling.


It's quite a bit easier, as a follower, to dance close-embrace tango on a bit of a heel, especially at first. To dance well in flat shoes with your feet properly down, you need pretty good posture and technique. Of course, you can do that, and a few women never wear heels at all. Others just don't feel right without heels. Others just see heels in moderation as part of the dressing-up fun, which is where I am most of the time. There are some men I prefer to wear heels for, and it's usually more a matter of dance style than height: if someone throws boleos around my axis then it works more smoothly for me in heels. I'd rather be in flats to lead, but the better the follower, the less it matters. At an afterparty, I'm going to be in flats.

But the point is, I often think flat feet are wonderfully expressive, and these ones are particularly nice, which is why I started videoing them in the first place. Try watching it with the sound off, and notice how much you can hear the music. A minute later I was dancing again.

Tips for European 'encuentros'

A looooong post with all the bits of advice that have helped other people. A bit of an orientation guide to help if you're considering it, and haven't done it before.

What are they?

About the name: the people who organise and attend the kind of event I'm describing, call it an encuentro. So I'm going to call it that here. Obviously, nobody owns a word which is just the Spanish for "meeting", so there will be occasions when people organise a totally different kind of event and call it the same thing. It's pretty much always clear from the website.

It's a different concept from a marathon or a true 'festival', with workshops and shows and whatnot. Those can scale up to 300 or 400 - but they aren't all-shapes-and-ages social events in the same way as an encuentro is, although that might be changing.

'Encuentros' are normally between 100 and 200 people, sometimes as few as 80 or as many as 250. The format is from four to six (or even seven) milongas in one location over a weekend or a long weekend. They hire the best DJs they can, and people come from all over the world, but mostly from all over Europe. It's modern, close-embrace, social tango, with mirada/cabeceo, and aiming to create a social floor (that is, a good connection and flow between couples dancing as well as between individuals) and attract a modest, no-showing-off sort of mindset that is there to meet and dance socially rather than to see or be seen. The milongas are 'traditional', but not 'formal', except in the sense that everyone dresses nicely for the evening ones.

The programme is usually something like:

Friday night milonga from 22:00 to 03:00
Saturday afternoon milonga from 14:00 to 18:00
Saturday night milonga from 22:00 to 04:00
Sunday milonga from 14:00 to 21:00ish
Maybe some kind of communal meal, not always, usually on Saturday or Sunday or both.

A few events might have milongas on Thursday or Monday or both, and you might get an extra afternoon one on the Friday.

They happen in all sorts of interesting places where you might quite reasonably spend a holiday. Dans Tes Bras linked to this map, and put up a nice general description of what these events are. Melina put up a listing for this year, of just the ones she could vouch for at the time.

The quality of organisation varies, and I base my own choice of which ones to apply to on the the cost and effort of getting there, the DJ lineup, and the organisers, in more or less that order, with some tradeoffs and of course some estimate of who else is going to be there. I'll travel further and accept more hassle for my favourite dancers and DJs, or for a location that really attracts me. The personality of the event also varies.

The distinctive general quality for me is that you do not find anyone preoccupied with selling, buying, seeing, being seen, name-dropping, fawning, hype, or similar embarrassments. Everyone is there to dance socially, as social dancers, for fun, with other people who are fun to dance with, and fun to share the floor with. No commerce. No classes. No shows.

There is likely be a wide range of ages - with a good supply of people between thirty and forty, many between forty and seventy, and some younger than 30, who are often beautiful dancers and having a whale of a time. This is part of what makes these events a lot of fun socially.

What's called a 'festivalito' is practically the same thing but includes a small scale opportunity to take workshops or private lessons focused on social dancing, and perhaps one brief demonstration - over time, these tend to drop the classes and convert themselves into 'encuentros'. A festivalito is a good choice for a first try, and the lessons offered tend to be very worthwhile and with very nice and professional people. By 'encuentro,' people mean the kind with no lessons at all.

Swimming pools are not unknown, but it's extremely unlikely you'll be expected to dance in one.

Dance style, and a quick check for Londoners

The dance style, in as far as there is one, is what the europeans call 'milonguero'. Londoners should be warned: this has NO relation to what people mean when they talk about 'milonguero' as going with a particular kind of music and 'salon' as going with another. That idea is inapplicable, and would be laughed at. In this context, it means you need actually good basics - balance, connection, embrace, axis, musicality.

Quick check: if you think the utterance "You just can't dance milonguero style to Di Sarli" sounds sane, you're using the word in a completely different sense. If you say it, people will think you're crazy and have crap technique.

You will find that people dance in ways that are very dissimilar to each other. It's extremely individual. This is a joy.

Customs

It's always mirada/cabeceo; if you go up to someone and ask verbally, this will be understood - with some astonishment - as an explicit announcement that you have no idea what you're doing. Dancing in an unexpected role doesn't cause any problems with this. I know people say it might in theory, but in real life it doesn't. Everyone can cope.

There are often a handful of men at these things who like to follow, and do that a lot, and some women who like to spend half or more of their time leading. If any of those are you, be aware that you are very welcome at these 'encuentros', and the layout and seating is rarely set up to make you feel otherwise. The only exception I am aware of has been Barcelona, but I believe they've abandoned the segregated seating this year. I agree with them dropping it, as I don't think it makes any sense - people at these things want to be able to dance with whoever they wish, and want other people to do that too, and nobody is bothered by anybody swapping roles. If you can do both well, you're a kid in a sweetshop. [Update: I'm informed that the new encuentro in Sweden this year had segregated seating. I personally would never apply to one that I knew for sure was going to do this, as I have tried it and think it kills the concept and the party. But you should consult only your own preference - after asking the question, as they don't always warn us. Update 2 (three years later): Now that I lead a lot, I am fairly indifferent about segregated seating. I either sit at one end and invite in both directions, or change sides from time to time. It depends on the layout of the room.]

It is not a Buenos Aires milonga and it is not an imitation of one, and nobody thinks that it is. There is an overlap, which sometimes includes a surprising number of people, but this is a distinctively European kind of party.

Getting in

Registration is normally four to six months in advance and is normally gender-balanced [edit: or, rather, role-balanced; how they ask the question varies]. Payment will be due on assignment of your place, and will confirm it. If the concept appeals to you, then I'd suggest contacting some organisers and asking if you can please be on the mailing list to be notified of the booking date for next year.

Facebook membership is useful organisationally, as there is usually an event or group where they'll publish practical information. Then do what my roommate in Paris did - book as early as possible as each of them opens, see what you get into, then book flights and accommodation as soon as you can for the cheapest deal. Free cancellation at services like booking.com often means you can reserve accommodation before you are certain of your place, if necessary. Most encuentros will suggest accommodation on the website, and there may be a discount arranged with local businesses.

There are new ones all the time. If people like the look of it and trust the organisers, they may receive at least twice as many applications as there are places, perhaps on the first day, perhaps in the first hour. Single leaders can often afford to wait a little longer, but not in all cases. How they manage the bookings varies wildly. If they don't know you, they may want to ask around to see if anyone can vouch for your competence and behaviour as a social dancer, but they do want to add new people, as it makes it more fun, so go for it. Getting into new ones is likely to be easier than getting into established ones. It's also riskier, as they may not get it right first time and you have no information from people who've been before.

Considerations about whether to try it

It's social dancing, so it matters a lot how nice you feel to dance with and how musical you are, as people will just pick you on their best estimate of that, they don't give a damn who you are otherwise.

They also won't feel obliged to accept anything they don't like the look of. So you need a reasonable skill level (within limitations is fine), but focused on a good embrace and connection with your partner, the music, and other couples on the floor. Of course it's a good idea to eliminate visually obvious problems, but you don't have to have perfect footwork or great technique or be tanned and thin. There will, of course, be people there who do have perfect footwork. In fact, there will be some dancers you'll feel very privileged to see and who are wonderful in various ways. But it's not so much what it's all about.

You can get away with just not leading any turns, especially if you're very musical and have a nice embrace, but you can't fudge by opening the embrace whenever you turn or cross to cover your poor posture, wobbly axis, and dislike of twisting in the middle. Nobody has an incentive to fall for it. If you are a woman, you'll need to be able to maintain a full-on connection as well as having your own axis and balance all the time.

They usually balance men and women, which can come as a severe shock to some people unused to level competition. For both men and women, however - imagine you were top of your school and the popular kid all the way up, and then you went to university and found that you were in the bottom third and nobody thought you were specially interesting. If your reaction to this is to be a bit miffed, you'll need to overcome that. If your reaction is to feel that a weight has been lifted from your shoulders, to breathe, to learn, and to raise your game, you'll have a ball, as I did the first time I went to Les Cigales.

The money adds up, but deals on flights and accommodation are sometimes extremely good, and entry fees are low, usually around £60 for the whole weekend. If you live near a medium-to-big European airport, you could do four to six of these for the same money as three weeks in Buenos Aires, and you'd use less holiday and make friends you can actually see sometimes.

In my opinion the only advantage to going as a couple is that you'll usually get priority booking. It saves costs to have a roommate, but I don't think it matters otherwise. Being alone means you don't have to worry about anyone, and simplifies the process of making new friends, which is a good thing for your first attempt. I'm used to being alone, though. Do what feels right for you. Sometimes it works to have a wingman.

Practical tips

As I said in a previous post, my main problem is arranging to be hungry and awake and have food in front of me all at the same time, so I can eat enough calories to dance as much as I want to. If possible, I try to sleep for four hours, get up for the hotel breakfast, eat it, and go back to bed for another four hours, then have some lunch and return to the party. Dinner may or may not happen, but I carry nuts and chocolate. Think about what works for your body. I find that sleeping for six hours, waking up hungry and having a snooze later just makes me dozy, but it might work for you.

I usually travel out on the day of the first milonga, and home on the morning after the last one. This is all about how far you have to go and how long it takes, but I recommend being relaxed and not in a hurry for the end of the last event. Goodbyes can take a lot of time. If I can, I take a recovery day afterwards. I'm more tired than I think I am.

I always do hand luggage only. I don't trust airlines with my stuff for such a short trip. Here's a post about packing light. I do notice that the fashion for many pairs of very elaborate shoes is receding, and people usually bring just two pairs in neutral or solid colours that they really, really like. I sometimes take only one pair, but two is safer. It can be hot, so take spare shirts. A fold-up shopping bag makes a good milonga bag.

Both men and women should avoid varying their "look" too much over the weekend. People who don't know you will get confused and forget who you are and whether they wanted to dance with you or not. The more people there are, the more of a problem this is. Keep the general appearance of your hair the same, stick to the same general look in your outfit, or at the very least wear a constant, distinctive, visible hairpiece or piece of jewellery that people can remember. If you're going to wear a suit, stick to it.

If you can't make up your mind about your outfit just before the milonga, and it's freaking you out, take the other one with you in the milonga bag. You can always change if you feel wrong.

Miscellaneous tips

If you don't know anyone, or only one or two people, just concentrate on enjoying the adventure and getting your first dance, and then one dance at a time. Avoid worrying or comparing yourself to others. Especially avoid trying to analyse and seek any logic in who dances with whom: so many things affect it, including random events, that you can never have enough information, and you'll only end up convincing yourself of things that aren't true.

I still avoid trying too hard to get any dance with anyone in particular, as I find it just confuses me and makes me miss opportunities. I chat with other women, I take and share suggestions and experiences, and I look around to see who might be interested. When I'm not dancing a tanda, I sometimes get up and wander about to keep my energy up. If you start feeling tragic, you may be a bit low on blood sugar; have a drink, eat some Emergency Chocolate, offer a piece to someone else, and start a conversation about the venue, the floor, the music, the organisation, the food, the dancing, the weather, the town, the difficulty of it all, etc. Ask questions.

Especially in Italy and France, you may find that your chances of getting a dance with a man go up dramatically if you precede your mirada with a friendly conversation with his wife on some such neutral subject, and then allow time for communication. I presume a similar method would work the other way, but I don't know.

On your first few attempts, be prepared for the first milonga to seem like hard work. It's full of people who have just got off planes and are cramped, overexcited, overtired, stressed, flustered, and desperate to fall into the arms of 20 wonderful people they haven't seen for six months. And organisers often make the error of putting their weakest DJ here, because not everyone has arrived yet, when it really needs a strong one to break the ice.

It's a good thing if you can become a safe choice for someone to get started with, but really you may as well just jump in and take whatever chances are on offer - usually a fairly safe bet, since the base level is high, unless something has gone quite wrong with the organisation. Nowadays, when I know people and they know me, I find instead that the first milonga goes well for me and it's Saturday night that feels like hard work. At some events, Saturday night will be in a different venue, and be bigger, with extra people from the local area. My favourites are the afternoons, especially the last one. Some people prefer the evenings because they like the buzz and excitement. It depends on your personality.

Assuming the DJing is all pretty good, it usually takes me until the middle of Saturday afternoon to really get into it properly, transforming my dance through tiredness. At that point, I feel like I am doing less and hearing more, I connect much more deeply, and I am sure I feel more musical to dance with. I'd like it to happen quicker, and I'm thinking about how to cultivate that.

It's a very nice place to be, and it can last a couple of weeks, or even longer, in good conditions.

Worst case

The worst-case scenario is that the DJing is weak, it's too dark for cabeceo, the floor is bad, the organisation is weak, and they've booked too many people, too few of whom dance well enough (or get the event concept well enough) so that everyone can afford to take risks. If good leaders have several bad experiences in a row, they'll shut down, they'll stop dancing with people they don't know, and the whole thing falls apart. It's absolutely crucial that people can take risks with confidence. Failures do happen.

Best case

Your feet hurting up to the knees, your open-side arm almost unable to hold itself up, your heart full of  splendid balloons, delightful new friends, and a long weekend of tango bliss.

Hedgehog's DJ Shortlist

This is purely personal and by no means exhaustive, but if I see any of the following names in the DJ lineup, I am more likely to apply: Lampis - Bernhard Gehberger - Theo 'El Greco' Chatzipetros - Céline Devèze - Enrico Malinverni. You should compile your own list over time.

Sample Video

[Update Note: The first few seconds of this video make it look like there was segregated seating. There wasn't, they just gave women priority on the front two rows all the way around to make it easier with the big floor. The men are actually sitting in the row behind, at the same tables. You can see better later in the video. There virtually never is segregated seating. I just didn't want to repeat the one in the previous post, which doesn't have this problem.]
There you go. They're all different. They're not for everyone. They might be for you. You'll probably know. Hope that helps.

I really miss it

That feeling when I've spent all weekend dancing - 24 hours of dancing and about half that of sleep. And never a bad one. I do so much less; I try so much less; the temptation to do too much, disappears. I have more time in every step. Smooth and powerful, focused and totally into it. Better connection, totally relaxed. Tanda after tanda with no sensation that I missed a lead. Suspension and road-holding for the fieriest milonga with as many missed leads as you need. That blurring of sensation, such that quite a big part of my brain no longer knows whether I'm dancing or not.

I lose it over time, I grieve for it, I miss it as it wears off. It can last a couple of weeks, if I'm careful. My partners, when I get back home, can certainly feel it on me. I avoid those who won't notice it. I'm careful. I want to let it fade, if it must, slowly and naturally. Like trying not to knock the eyelash extensions off.

Spring and Summer

I'm working a lot of extra hours at work for a couple of weeks. I don't usually do this even for project work because it's usually not worth it, but in this case it makes a reasonable amount of sense. So I'll probably be a bit quiet (as I blog mainly in the evenings when I'm not dancing).

In the meantime here's a lovely view from outside my accommodation at Abrazos Devon, the festivalito I went to in the first week of May.

The view at Abrazos Devon - it was a bit chilly, but some marvellous cloudscapes.

I reviewed the first one last year; this year the average standard of dancing was quite a bit higher in my opinion. The floor was sometimes extremely full and slow-moving, which some people find very stimulating, but even if that wasn't your thing (and it isn't everyone's) in three days of dancing there were also lots of hours when there was plenty of space. They used the long thin daylit room for all the milongas, which had advantages and disadvantages that more or less balanced out, for me. I had a fantastic time, anyway. There was also a helium-filled remote-controlled shark about 4 feet long, at one point. It was a present for Andreas.

And here are some flowers, back at my place, that need no particular excuse. They have a wonderful sweet scent.

Flowers in the communal garden of some very boring, cold 80's flats.

Raduno Rural, somewhere in Slovenia

This was the first Raduno Rural. Blaž Demsar, who some of you will know as a dedicated goer to other milonguero festivalitos, comes from Slovenia, where his family run an 'Agriturismo', which is a sort of cross between a farm and a holiday resort about 900 metres above sea level. And he dreamed up this. I'm hoping they'll do it again next year. This was the programme:

Friday:
17.00 - 21.00 Grill welcome party on the spot
23.00 - ......... well past dawn Milonga
Saturday:
10.00 - 13.00 Milonguero breakfast on the spot
17.00 - 20.00 Milonga 
20.00 - 21.30 Dinner on spot for all
23.00 - ......... well past dawn again Milonga 
Sunday:
10.00 - 13.00 Milonguero breakfast on the spot
14.00 - 18.30 Farewell milonga


The Class/Workshops: There weren't any, it's not that sort of festival.

Layout and Atmosphere: Let's start with the view:

To elaborate:

There was a barn, with an upper floor, I suppose it was a hayloft. They took out the boards and replaced them all, then they added a layer of carefully-spaced foam strips, then a layer of some sort of smooth boards made of pressed recycled wood shavings, and then maybe some sort of varnish. The result was the best floor I've ever danced on - absolutely beautiful. The perfect degree of grip, and soft on your feet. Neither my feet nor my knees ever stopped me dancing, only the need to sleep. About 100 people were registered and it was just nicely full, not too big and not too small. Here's the dancefloor at the start of the Sunday afternoon milonga, nearly empty. There were rolls of felt that came down to cover the open parts of the walls during a cortina when it started to get chilly late at night.

Returning to the barn - then they added a staircase, benches along one wall, and a lot of little tables and chairs in new softwood. As far as sightlines were concerned, it all worked fairly well. I had decent results from staying in the same place, rather than chasing around, which is usually a good sign. But some of the seating was under a mezzanine at the DJ's end, and it was a bit dark there in the evenings. Lighting and sound were good, a little more white light in the evenings wouldn't hurt but I really couldn't complain. They're likely to tweak it a bit for next year. Downstairs were the tables for dinner and barbecue, hay for the low-budget sleepers, a clean and roomy loo, and walls also made of hay. The whole place smells of hay.

As for atmosphere, well, what can I say? It was super friendly and happy. It was mostly Italians, they're really enthusiastic. And Hungarians, Slovenians and Austrians, and at least a few French. Most of them danced well, some superbly. And me. Everybody had brunch together and dinner together and swam in the pool and lay on the grass and chatted in various mixtures of languages.

The following day, at a table behind my right elbow as I take the following picture, I observed an Italo-Hungarian game of what I understood to be Texas Hold'em, in Speedos.

It did get a bit chilly, around 15C, late at night. I found the temperature ideal for dancing, but I put my fleece on if I sat down for more than one tanda. The felt walls kept out the wind, but they're working on something to deal with the gap between wall and roof for next time. You need something warm to put on when you're not dancing or it's not so sunny.

Hospitality: Excellent. Quite apart from the lovely rooms, a long dancer-friendly brunch was included, plus the barbeque on arrival, a very nutritious four-course communal dinner with drinkable Slovenian plonk on Saturday evening, wine and water and a couple of kinds of home-made squash during the milongas, and doughnuts and coffee at 03:00. What else can I say? Dinner was served in the barn under the dance floor, at long tables with red cloths. The whole thing was designed by Blaž Demsar, who likes to dance all night, and catered by his excellent family, who run this Agriturismo place. People go there to ski in winter. (The ž sounds like French "ge" or Argentinian "y" or "ll").

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: Not a performance in sight, fantastic! Just social dancing.

What I thought of the DJing: The DJ lineup:

Enrico Malinverni - Friday
Alan Spotti - Saturday evening
Darko Popovič - Saturday afternoon
Fabiola Loik - Sunday

All (of course) played traditional music, tandas, cortinas, properly constructed, TTTVTTTM or similar.  Enrico Malinverni delivered as usual for the Friday (his Francopop cortinas make me happy) and so did everyone else. Except that Alan Spotti wasn't so much my thing - I thought he started well and ended well but had a too-looong period in the middle sending people to sleep with unrelieved pretentious drama (late-era, I suspect). Maybe taste, I dunno. But otherwise I thought it was all great. DJs will differ next year, obviously.

Sound was excellent throughout. They hired the system and installed it for the occasion. You could feel all the detail everywhere.

Getting in: My €97 included 2 nights accommodation on site (a comfortable pair of rooms shared with three Italian ladies and one from Kyrgyzstan, she hadn't come from there specially, though, only from Graz), full board and all four milongas. And swimming. There were also budget options down to €38 for a milonga pass, or €48 for more basic accommodation; people pitched tents on the grounds, came in camper vans, or brought sleeping bags and slept on the floor indoors or in the hay underneath the dance floor. There are good facilities for having a shower and getting ready inside the building downstairs if you don't get a room.


Getting there and getting home: It's half way up a mountain in a country that seceded peacefully from Yugoslavia in the 80s, apparently by erecting a Somebody Else's Problem Field on the border. You need to drive, or organise a car share from one of the nearest airports, three of which aren't in the same country - any of Ljubljana, Klagenfurt, Venice, or Graz. Slovenia exploits its strategic position as neither-here-nor-there by a system of very good through-roads, with toll charges just high enough to be somewhat annoying, but not high enough so that anybody bothers going the long way round from Austria to, say, Greece. You buy a sticker at petrol stations and stick it in your window, and then you drive slowly through the automatic toll gates. I was the person who'd come furthest for the event - it makes most sense if you're coming from Austria or Italy. I flew Ryanair to Graz and was collected from the train station by a delightful young tanguero who was a friend of the organiser. Our satnav got a bit confused by the toll roads, and a bit overexcited about all the hairpin turns up the mountain. But combining it with Google Maps and the directions provided by the organisers, we didn't have any serious problems.

The website: Coolest domain name: www.milonguero.si - and www.milonguera.si.

How it went: I had a fab time.  Friday night and Saturday afternoon were my favourites. I went swimming. I danced and danced and dance, and danced almost entirely with people I'd never seen before. On Friday I don't think I sat down for more than 2 tandas even once. They didn't promise to balance numbers and I think there a few women over, but it didn't matter much because there were only 100 people, so everybody could find partners and share around. There was a wide range of styles going on, but the line of dance was mostly ok (although I could have done without the overexcited pillock whose violent, inane boleo gave me a painful bruise). Everybody else seemed to be having a wonderful time as well. At dinner on Saturday one of the Italians stood up and declared three cheers for Blaž and three cheers for the family, and he got them, three sharp, full-throated cheers, twice. He was a lovely dancer, too.

Oh yes, local customs: I got all by my first one or two dances by cabeceo alone, and I had the chance to refine my technique at that a bit. As is usual at this kind of event, same sex dancing and reversing roles are not an issue for anyone - everyone picks up very quickly on which women can and do lead and which men can and do follow, you just make the cabeceo a bit more obvious if you haven't danced with that person before.

There was good, simple food. The doughnuts at 3am impressed me. There were a couple of dogs (brought by guests, and welcomed) and some very small very blond Slovenian children running around.

If you got into the swimming pool and stood on tiptoes with your arms on the side, just where the warm water comes in, you could look across the valley and see high mountains and distant glaciers on the other side. It's the sort of place and activity that puts you in the sort of mood where you can be blown away by the wondrousness of a hoverfly in front of your face. There's a little herb garden above the dance floor, with places to sit and read or write or contemplate the view.

Look, the whole thing was totally, utterly bonkers, and I loved it. I had a ton of fun and I felt like my dance was really cooking.

Les Cigales 2011 - Carpentras

Okay. I absolutely had a ball at this event last year, and I raved about it, so I have to update you.

This year, I had some wonderful dances with some people that I had never seen before, and probably never would have met anywhere else. I remember some beautiful tangos, a brillliant milonga candombe, and another fantastic milonga with a lady. I felt by the end of it that I was dancing well and giving and receiving a great deal of joy.

I thought the DJig was very good. Different styles, given a high priority, all good. The sound was good.

There were enough seats. There were reasonably priced drinks, the place was clean (apart from the two tons of talcum powder) and there was a means of getting food.

I stayed in a lovely B&B of the foodie kind called a tableau d'hote. It was beautiful. The people in this area are very kind and friendly, in my experience. People helped me find the buses and the way. The young gentlemen running the kebab shop were very nice.

Torrential rain for most of the weekend was unfortunate and certainly affected the mood, so adjust your perception of the following remarks accordingly.*

The location. Carpentras left something to be desired - it was much more difficult to reach than Toulon, and as far as I discovered, much less interesting. It would have been helpful to include on the website the information that the Thursday (!) was a religious holiday in France and that transport from Avignon was more complicated and very much reduced. I was very lucky, but this could easily have left me and other people stranded with great difficulties finding accommodation or transport. It was stressful, and for some people very expensive, and it affected the mood of the whole weekend.

The numbers. There were too many people. I don't think the concept of a milonga scales up beyond 200 people in this sort of context - maybe in others, but I doubt it. Even when you know that there are many people there you want to dance with and who want to dance with you, your chances of finding any person for any tanda are just too small. For a milonga that big to work well, you need at least excellent lighting and lines of sight, which there weren't.

Technical problems. The concrete floor was alternately, simultaneously, and chaotically sticky and super-slippery. The room was too dark in the evenings, and during daylight the chairs were patchily backlit, making the chances of cabeceo very limited and even just finding anyone you wanted difficult, especially if you didn't know their face well - and dancing with faces you don't know well is kind of the point of these things.

Poor focus. There were lots of people there whose basic concepts of what tango is, were so incompatible with one another that they wouldn't really want to dance together by choice, either as partners or on the same floor. This wastes everyone's time and money. I don't know why that happened. It was fine last year.

18% women over. If you say that you are going to balance numbers, you must, in fact, do so. In particular, I most strongly advise against promising it, failing to do it, and then announcing that you've seen far worse in Buenos Aires. If in Buenos Aires they treat women's money, time, effort, and attention as worth dramatically less than men's, that is their own affair and has nothing to do with me. Making a childish excuse like that for a plainly given, plainly broken promise, just makes the women think that you have no brain and no respect. If there are too many of us, you need to tell some of us no so that we can spend our time and money on another event. If it's me that gets the no, fine. There are other events. Don't mess me about.

If it's the same venue next year, and on Ascension weekend, then I will not be going. It's too expensive and troublesome for the risk. If it's back in Toulon, or somewhere easier, with smaller numbers, the technical issues fixed, and very good reasons to believe that the focus will be better and that the women will be treated equally, then I will most likely go back. It was a great event last year, the DJs are excellent, and it could be again. But this time it was much harder work and had too many irritations, considering the cost of travel, the cost of accommodation, using up holidays, and other things I could have been doing with the time.

* I actually quite enjoyed some of the rain - there was a Bollywood-scale downpour on the Sunday afternoon, so loud we could hardly hear the music, and the sense of strange poetry was only enhanced by the circus parked outside that included a cage of real live tigers who roared, a grazing bison, and a creature that might have belonged to the llama family. And a bloke in a costume having a smoke. I do like the sound of rain. But it brings gloom with it, and sunshine would have been better, I'm sure.

Abrazos Devon - Encuentro Milonguero UK

The first Encuentro Milonguero UK was organised by Lynn Collins and Andreas Wichter, at Dartington Hall, Devon. The name refers to a type of small-scale festival you find around Europe, strongly focused on pure social dancing, with very high quality DJing, and clear expectations as to behaviour, and aiming for a high average quality of social dance with a nice embrace. Although there may be classes (as here), there aren't always, and any teachers are chosen for their focus on the social dance and their ability to help social dancers. Melina has a handy list of similar ones going on this year. This was the first attempt to do something like this in the UK.

Disclosure: I'm very fond of Lynn and Andreas and I really wanted this to do well.

The Class: Detlef and Melina gave a couple of workshops, one of them specially for extra-crowded milongas, and Marek and Oliveira Szotkowski gave a couple of workshops. People didn't go into meltdown after them. The 'privatandas' were a nice idea, they happened in one of the practicas - effectively a short, focused private lesson while everyone else practices around you. I danced with a couple of people who'd just done one and they'd each got a couple of things to work on without being tired or overloaded, so they still wanted to talk about them and practice them on their own.


Layout and Atmosphere: Dartington hall is an ancient country house with magnificent gardens, designed by a well-known American garden designer for the couple who bought the house and restored it in the early 20th Century. The gardens deserve a post to themselves, so I'll come back to that. But the place is a centre for arts and music, and has several buildings with dance studios suitable for practice and social dancing. The daylit room in the picture on the right is in the 'hex', and this was taken during one of the practicas, from the upper row of seating on that side. You can see someone sitting on the lower step, there were three steps like this. The room is broadly hexagonal, which puzzled some people, while others enjoyed all the extra corners. As you came in to the building there was a food counter, loos, changing rooms, and somewhere to put your stuff.

The Friday milonga was this big rectangular studio shown on the left. It was my favourite venue. The room for the Saturday and Sunday milongas, which was in another building, was just a little too long and narrow, although lovely in other ways, with lots of natural light and a patio outside. The same nice tables and chairs were moved in there, but because of the shape, people tended to congregate in the end where the entrance was and block it a bit, so I found it a little harder to find my dances.

There were always enough seats for everyone to sit down, as you can see in the pictures. And people did actually sit down for the cortinas. So it was pretty straightforward.

Nobody mentioned the floor. The floors were all perfect - they're all professional dance studios. (For Londoners: similar in feel to the one at Corrientes). I encountered no slipperiness and no stickiness either.

As for the atmosphere, you can see from the pictures that it's relaxed and an attractive place, but for me it was all about the DJing and about the way you felt taken care of and even your stuff was treated with respect. I actually felt that the culture of the place was genuinely with me and behind me in expecting me to dance only if I actually wanted to - and that it was all about attracting people who would actually want to dance with each other. Genuinely and collectively behind me, and not the usual lip service. No need to fuss or talk about manners. It was lovely.

Somewhere tidy to put your street shoes!

Hospitality: Excellent. Not only were the customers treated as though they came first, even their stuff was treated with respect. The picture shows hanging cubby holes for your street shoes, which might have been dirty and otherwise would have been all over the floor just like they are everywhere else. We were encouraged to change shoes in the changing area and use these, so as to keep the floors nice and clean.

On arrival you got a welcome pack containing your wristbands for each day, a leaflet with the full schedule (and taxi firm numbers, information about food, about lifts back to B&Bs and so forth), and tourist information for the hall and the area.

There was adequate hanging space for your coat. The bar on Saturday didn't have my usual G&T, I think the glass of wine was about £3. There was a food-and-drink lady ("Van Rouge") who made sandwiches, tea, coffee, and other food during the day. I thought her food was very good, but tea was expensive at £1.20. The £7 each for the bookable afternoon meals was double what it should have been for the falafel (two falafel wraps would have been ok), especially with the queue and slow service, but about right for the very nice risotto thing. The tortilla was delicious. I also had two helpings of excellent coffee cake, and some more expensive tea, at Dartington Hall's Roundhouse Café.

Water was available on tap or in jugs at the food bar, with some soft drinks at reasonable prices. All loos were roomy and in very good condition.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: Both teaching couples gave fairly brief demonstrations on the Saturday, you can probably find video on YouTube. The most interesting part was where both couples did a vals together; they have strongly contrasting styles and looks. There was also a Shoe Lady who had practice shoes and tango shoes: I bought a lovely pair of very generous width in a brand I'd never seen before, for £75, a very good price for some very nice shoes.

What I thought of the DJing: Excellent, and I really noticed the fun cortinas. Music for the milongas was of course all in tandas, put together at a professional level, and the cortinas were all great, calm-and-happy music - I loved Melina's British folk songs, and the switch to Queen later in the evening. DJing for the practicas was not in tandas, it was chosen for practice instead. The only departure from purely traditional music was Enrico's bizarre substitute for La Cumparsita, which was decidedly spaced-out, but might have had 'Abrazos' in the title, and I didn't care because I honestly couldn't move another step anyway and had already opened my mouth to tell my partner so. The full line up (with links to their websites rather than the Abrazos page) was:

Friday Milonguita: Philippe Gonella (organises Cigales, Carino Tango)
Milonga Bienvenida (Friday): Melina Sedó
Saturday Milonguita: Céline Deveze (Carino Tango)
Gran Milonga (Saturday): Enrico "Il Mali" Malinverni (Yo Soy Milonguero Crema)
Milonga "El Adios" (Sunday): Uwe Willié (Tangokombinat)
Prácticas and R&R time: Jill Barrett and Dele As (Bournemouth Tango).

Getting in: The weekend pass for all day and evening milongas and practicas (not any workshops or privatandas) was £60. The daytime milongas went on about as long as milongas usually do in London, the others longer. You could also book for individual evening milongas or day-passes, but it works out more expensive. Advance booking is essential, places are limited and if you just turn up it won't be possible to let you in. I'd say the entry price was a few pounds higher than other festivals of this type, depending on the exchange rate, but very reasonable by UK standards, especially in view of the number of hours' dancing and the high quality of organisation, music, and dance. Certainly it had no problems getting fully booked, and I wouldn't expect it to next year.

Getting there and getting home: I took a train from Paddington to Totnes.You can actually walk between Totnes Station and Dartington Hall, and I did  this on the way back. It's only about two miles and it's a lovely walk, but I wouldn't recommend it if the weather looks at all dubious or if your suitcase is one with wheels rather than one like mine that travels on your back. It's mostly flat but with a hilly part near the hall. To get there, I took a taxi.

To be able to walk back to bed after the milongas, you need to be staying in the hall, which as far as accommodation goes is a sort of cross between an Oxford college and a nice conference centre. It still helps to have a torch, as part of the way is unlit, but my companion and I managed quite easily without one, it's only five minutes. The rooms are very nice, but expensive - our twin room was £99 per night. To save money, or if there is no room at the hall, you can stay at one of many bed and breakfasts in Dartington or Totnes, but then you'll need transport. One of my partners used a bicycle lent to him by his B&B, who also made him sandwiches. Others drove or got lifts with those who did. The organisers thought about the comfort of their guests - they gave detailed information about all this in advance, and made announcements to match people up with seats. If you had a spare seat you were asked to take a sticker so that someone who needed a lift could find you.

The website: http://www.tangokombinat.de/uk_abrazos_home.htm. Nice. All the information's there. Links are somewhat disguised - they're the bits in italics.

How it went: I had a brilliant time. My favourite milongas are always the daytime ones, where I get super-relaxed and happy and dance better. I should have had the wit to pace myself better for Saturday night, but I enjoyed it more and more as I went along and I remember my last dance with a lot of joy, even though I was practically falling over.

I was really struck by the very wide variety of individual styles within an exclusively close-embrace social tango. One of my favourites, a young stranger who I hope to dance with again, felt sort of like really good well-led nuevo in a milonguero embrace, and we had a great connection. A Frenchman (who I had met before) had a style of dance quite unique to himself, very pleasurable, but very different. A German had a brilliant, earthy milonga. A tall Scotsman had a dance full of gentlemanly warmth. The individuality of dance of all my partners was much stronger than it is at home despite London's extreme contrasts of what's usually (wrongly, in my view) called style.

Here is a little video which gives you the atmosphere and the excellent flow on the floor, better I think than I have experienced anywhere. I focused on a couple of friends, who live thousands of miles apart but have great chemistry when they dance together, and both of them told me (before agreeing that I could upload it) that this dance felt even better than it looked. She has the kind of tango face you want to bottle and take home for when you're feeling depressed, so I'm doing a public service here.



The crowd was about 85% from the UK, with a good number of Scots and some visitors from Ireland as well as mainland Europe (France, Germany, Flanders, Slovenia, I forget).

The third room, looking towards the balcony (behind curtains)
- enough chairs for everyone to sit on one for the demo!

Local customs: Cabeceo, obviously. And although this maybe shouldn't need saying, nobody has a problem with same-sex dancing. Although this might cause a problem with cabeceo in theory (or at least, in the imaginations of some people), in practice, it doesn't. Cabeceo is pretty flexible. Melina even got a foot massage by cabeceo, or at least a version of it. I spotted a favourite new partner of mine following really well, I like that.

There was already very good reason to think that there was a good-sized untapped UK market for a quality offering of this kind, but it was impossible to know for sure until they turned up. I'm so grateful to Andreas and Lynn for taking the risk and making it happen. There will certainly be some who could have taken or left it, but I thought it was brilliant. If those who didn't find it quite their thing give up their future places to those who do, then it'll only get better. The plan is to repeat this next year, and possibly to organise a smaller event between now and then - check the website for details. It was full up, they had as many bookings as the rooms' regulations allowed. But it's only once a year, and it's two miles from Totnes. So I think other organisers who truly want to deliver a quality-focused event, could take a lot of encouragement from this success.

Festivalito Montecatini Terme

Antonio and Francesca

[Scroll down for year-two update]
This is an all-weekend event organised by Francesca Bertelli and Antonio Martinez, at Montecatini Terme, Tuscany. This was the first one, but it's intended to be annual. It won't necessarily be on the same date every year, but the first weekend of April was a good choice since it's not the main season there, and there are very beautiful venues and excellent hotel deals available.


The Class: Melina Sedó and Detlef Engel gave some workshops during the weekend, intended to contribute to attracting the right sort of dancers. You normally need a suitable partner you can travel with to book any of their workshops, which in my case I have not got.

Layout and Atmosphere: Montecatini Terme ('Montecatini Springs') is a beautiful 19th-century spa town in Tuscany. It's full of gloriously bonkers buildings (see pictures), designed for people to come and take the thermal waters for their health, either by immersing themselves or by drinking the stuff for its alleged benefits to various organs. In one of these buildings, the magnificent Stabilimento Tettucio, they had the main event. The room, referred to by several guests as the 'Lothlorien Room' but actually named the Salone Portoghesi, was absolutely stunning, with a beautiful tiled floor, but not perfect as regards layout; the giant tree-like pillars got in the way and made it difficult to get dances from your table. It was well lit, everyone cleared the floor for the cortinas, and cabeceo would have been easy but for the trees. It was much easier on the Sunday afternoon when I could sit back from the floor a bit, circulate more easily, and control my line of sight. Other events took place in the surprisingly ugly Porticato del Kursaal and in a fascinating restaurant called Le Maschere in Montecatini Alto, up the hill.

I won't describe the venues in detail as they will probably change next time - several of the hotels and the other spa buildings have suitable rooms. Hopefully they can get permission to keep going later than 2am - I think the milongas at these weekenders need to go till 4, really. The atmosphere generally was happy, the town feels safe and it's the kind of place where whole families go out for a walk and eat icecreams after dark.

All of the venues had tiled floors - smooth, but hard. Probably most future venues will, too, as that's what suitable buildings generally have here. So choose your shoes accordingly.

Hospitality: Good, if a little hit and miss. There was cheap food and drink available at the Saturday and Sunday milongas, and a very reasonable sit-down meal as a welcome. They went to a lot of trouble to make sure people had a good time, including arranging a discount with a new spa building and putting thought into the seating at the Friday dinner and the reserved tables on Saturday (you automatically got a table if you booked in advance). The spa had either forgotten all about the discount or got confused about what it was actually for, or both, but my companion assured me this was par for the course in Montecatini, and we still got to enjoy it and had a lovely bubble session which I'd thoroughly recommend. The loooong and lonely trek to the cavernous loos from the Lothlorien room was a bit disconcerting if you didn't know that the building was secure. But it was all up to standard.

Clearing the floor for the cortina

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: It was really just social dancing, but on the Saturday night Detlef and Melina gave a brief performance in their usual style. It's not so much a performance, really, more a demonstration of the kind of thing they teach, to emphasise what kind of dancing the weekend is meant to be about. She explained that she chooses the music and doesn't tell him what it's going to be. I knew that already, so didn't think about it, but it struck my companion as a good idea.

What I thought of the DJing: Very good. Andreas Wichter did the Friday night, Al Porteño the Saturday night, and Melina did the Sunday. Antonio Martinez DJ'd for the afternoon mini milonga on Saturday. All played 100% traditional dance music, tandas, cortinas, their choices and reasoning vary but it all made sense and made me want to dance; at any rate it was never the music that limited my dancing.

Ceiling painting

Getting in: The pass for all the milongas was €35, the most expensive individual price was €15 and the Saturday afternoon milonga was free. The sit-down three-course meal at the welcome milonga was €20 including wine - it wasn't very good, in my opinion, but it was very reasonably priced and fun and convivial. Because the season hadn't started yet, (when the town fills up with people taking the waters) we got an outrageously good deal on the hotel we stayed in; under £150 in total for a nice twin room and breakfast for four nights.

Getting there and getting home: I travelled with a friend. We flew to Pisa and hired a car - my friend used to live nearby, and was used to driving in this area. If I'd been alone, I could also have taken a train from Pisa airport to Montecatini Terme, and finished a very short walk from my hotel and the main venue - station, hotel and venue were practically on the same street. It all felt very safe at 2am. The only place I would have had problems getting to on my own was the restaurant in Montecatini Alto where the Friday welcome milonga was. I could probably have got a taxi or arranged a lift with someone.

Detlef catches some rays

The website: Tango Tuscany. Francesca lived in New York for a long time and does events there too.

How it went: Very well for a first attempt, I thought. We had different results from each other on each day in terms of how much we danced, but neither of us had any bad dances at all. I recognised fewer people than I expected, and I wasn't entirely in the right frame of mind, for some reason; I think I needed the milongas to be longer. But I did have many lovely dances with people I knew, people who were completely new to me, and people I remembered vaguely from other events. My best milonga was the Sunday brunch, my companion's the Saturday night. I think most of the people there were Italians from the surrounding area, which is great, and they were lovely, but a good number from all the usual places in Europe, too. And some friends of Francesca's from New York!

There were a few individuals in the milongas who were charging around or otherwise creating stress, but this wouldn't stop me going back as I think it will develop its own crowd over time and get a stronger personality. People will know what it's all about and will be less tempted to speed, show off, pose, teach on the floor, or do other things that don't make sense at this kind of festival.  [Edit: also, next year they'll probably avoid the scheduling conflict with the thing in Sicily that a lot of the target audience probably went to instead. I'd forgotten about this till Melina mentioned it.]

More Stabilimento Tettucio

In any case, I think this would be a pretty good choice for your first festivalito of this kind, based at least on my friend's experience; she was completely new to this kind of event, made new connections and had a wonderful time.

We were ridiculously lucky with the weather, and spent a chunk of our time on the beach about 40 minutes drive away. We also availed ourselves of a special deal at a newly-opened spa building, soaking ourselves in a delicious salty hot-spring bubble bath and getting a deep tissue massage from a fast jet of water. It was delicious and we slept like logs for about four hours afterwards. I don't know what it did to my dancing.

[Edit: After drafting (late, sorry) and before publication, I see Melina has written this one up as well - she gives more detail about the DJs, and more background.]

[Year two update, 2012: we went back, and the absence of direct scheduling conflict took the average standard of dance up very noticeably. Lots of lovely Italians in the milonga, and lots of lovely bubbles in the spa. I could have done without the Saturday night performance in this case, but it was brief. The DJing was generally outstanding, if not all to my personal taste. Lampis Zalavras (a genius IMO),  Mirco Baldoni (good, a bit different, enjoyed it), Al Porteño again (rhythm-heavy, not so much my thing) and Céline Deveze (beautiful, and a Canaro tanda en version francaise!). The Saturday night Lothlorien Room is gorgeous but impractical; the Sunday milonga took place in the extremely beautiful café with the ceiling paintings. Lovely, highly recommended; but, as usual in the mediterranean, the floors are hard. Choose your shoes with that in mind. Contact Francesca to get on the mailing list.]

Festivalito con Amigos, Saarbrücken

Some fairly typical buildings opposite my hotel

This is an annual event organised by Tangokombinat in their collective home town of Saarbrücken in south-west Germany. It's a  small-scale festival, but very international (it's an easily-accessible central European location, with good organisation and aims for a good quality of dance, so a lot of people go there). There are four milongas over three days.

All photos in this post are mine, none of the videos are.

Disclosure: I know some of the organisers and regard them as friends (albeit not people I see all the time or whose personal stories are any of my damn business).

The Workshops: I didn't take any (although I had planned to - my partner fell ill). So I can't say much about them. They had three sets of people giving the workshops, two from Argentina and one from Amsterdam, I'll mention them all later.

Layout and Atmosphere: There were four milongas, each in a different location. It would take too long to describe each location in detail, especially as the chances are it will change next year. They are all within easy walking distance of the centre of town. There were two big ones at night and two small ones in the day time.

Dancing in the Johanneskirche

It started on Friday night at Gemeindezentrum Alte Kirche - a good sized (but only barely large enough) rectangular hall-type space with tables on three sides, comfortable seating and a very nice floor. On Saturday afternoon there was a small milonga in Mutanth Studio, Karcherstraße - this is a bright, airy little dance studio with mirrors at one end and seating off the dance floor. It was packed (advance booking is essential or you will not be able to get in) and getting off the dance floor was a bit like changing trains at Oxford Circus in the rush hour; but the intimacy helped people get into it more. On Saturday night there was a ball - 'ball' seems more appropriate than 'milonga' given the layout and the magnificence of the space - at the Johanneskirche, which is the German-industrial-town equivalent of a Victorian Gothic church. You're sitting at a table or in a pew facing the dancefloor, or maybe on a raised platform at some distance from it, which is great for watching but not ideal for finding the partner you want for this specific dance. Finally, there was a daylight-to-dinner one at Theater Blauer Hirsch, which is a sort of cross between a pub/bar and a theatre - it's small, with the floor where the audience would sit for a play, with the tables at one end, and you walk through a pleasant bar. It was very prettily decorated with candles and autumn leaves - picture below. This was my favourite space, and is the one where they do their Christmas milonga.

Hospitality: Ok to excellent, depending on the venue. On Friday night, lots of water, juices, other drinks and some nibbles were included, and substantial sandwiches were sold for €2. On Saturday afternoon, lots of water and soft drinks and cake were all included. At the Johanneskirche all liquid refreshments including bottled water were for sale (but very reasonable - big bottles) in aid of the church building fund - you could get tap water if you needed it - and there seemed to be some cake included in the entry price. The Theater Blauer Hirsch sold good food (although it ran out), beer and other drinks and coffee for very reasonable prices, again there was a charge for bottled water, but you could get drinking water out of the taps if you needed it. The facilities were in all in order although I did have to queue briefly at the Johanneskirche.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: There were some short-and-sweet performances from the teaching couples. I found these quite interesting; they were all close-embrace-only tango but with markedly different and distinctive personal styles. At the Johanneskirche, Sebastian Coli Bazzini and Josephine Boza were youthful, leggy and well-glued. Rodolfo “El Chino” Aguerrodi dances with a facial expression of deep distress, as though this is his last dance ever; his partner Miho Omaki as though she's President of the Freedom to Party Party. It was compelling, for me. At the Friday night milonga, Antonio Martinez siezed the mike and made a long announcement paying tribute to Detlef and Melina and how much he appreciated their way of dancing, then proceeded (with Francesca Bertelli) to do a demo that was really quite reminiscent of them but at the same time quite different. It all went on for  quite a while due to announcements being made in at least three languages, but I didn't mind. Anyway, I also enjoyed watching them all socially and I like the thing they do at the end where all the organising and teaching couples do one dance all at once like a mini-milonga - so I'll embed this one:

Christian Tobler and his DJ display

What I thought of the DJing: It's 100% traditional, tandas, cortinas, people clear the floor for cortinas. On Friday I felt Christian Tobler front-loaded the energy a bit, it got people started but those who arrived later found it a bit harder to get going. It was all good though and I liked his ingenious track information display. Andreas Wichter DJd on Saturday afternoon, I was dancing nearly all the time. At the Johanneskirche it was Andrea Degani, at Theater Blauer Hirsch it was Uwe Willié. I had no problems with any of it. It wasn't all the same by any means, there were experiments, I liked parts of it much more than others, and at some times they played music that was pretty demanding to dance to well and you can only really play when you have confidence in the dancers. Having them be able to do that was part of the fun. They were all professional DJs-for-dancers.

Getting in: The pass for all four milongas was €40. It's essential to book early or you won't be able to get in to the smaller ones. You need to bring the pass with you and have it marked for each milonga.

Getting there and getting home: I stayed at the City Hotel, and walked happily to and from all the milongas. Some of those on a tighter budget stayed in a youth hostel which is less central but it's still all perfectly walkable.

As for getting to Saarbruecken itself, you can fly to Trier and take a train from there, but I took the Eurostar directly from London. You change trains in Paris (there's a five-minute walk from Gare du Nord to Gare de L'Est) and Saarbruecken is the first stop on the inter-city-express to Frankfurt. It's only just beyond the French border, and French is quite widely spoken there, I heard it often in restaurants. The train from London to Saarbruecken takes between five and six hours in total depending on how much time you spend stopping over in Paris. Morning trains get you there between lunchtime and teatime, having lost an hour to the time difference; an 8am train home got me back in my flat for lunch. Flying such a short distance is significantly slower, what with faffing about at airports, but it's much much cheaper.

The website: http://www.tangokombinat.de/ and http://www.tangodesalon.de/. Neither gets updated very frequently [Edit: Melina reckons weekly, but if you want to know where she and Detlef are and what's going on, I'd recommend following them on Facebook, plus you get the Extreme Ironing and miscellaneous banter. Edit: added FB link.] but there's usually a downloadable PDF with the complete programme, addresses and everything.

La Despedida at Theater Blauer Hirsch

How it went:   Really well, for me. It was long enough for me to really get into it. I danced with many friends, from home and abroad, fine dancers and delightful people. There were so many lovely dancers from so many places. Mostly I had bits of a language in common with them, sometimes we could find two that were mutually semi-intelligible for between-dance remarks, I enjoy that. The quality of dancing generally was high, and although there were some who were not so skilled, and there was much variation in personal style, there weren't really any clueless showoffs bouncing about causing problems for other people. I saw one significant bump, and I had a few touches, more at the evening than the daytime milongas - the floors were pretty crowded a lot of the time. My favourite was the last one, which felt particularly happy. I personally prefer the smaller spaces to the larger ones, as in the larger ones I find it harder to circulate and dance with the people I want to - I find them a little disorienting and develop a tendency to hide. Plus I think they make some people very tense, especially if crowded, and that's not good for bumps. But some people probably have the opposite preference, it depends on your social character.

The seams were getting a bit tight in places, and they want this festival to stay fairly small with a relatively intimate atmosphere, so it's likely the format will change a bit over the next few years. Possibilities include changing the mix of venues, or dropping the workshops and going more in the 'tango-marathon' direction; any or none of those things might happen. They also do an event at Christmas, check the website for details.

Best tango domain name yet

I don't think I have the time or the money or the right sort of transport to go to the milonguera?si! Festivalito Rural, but:

• I met Sašo, who seems to be organising, and who handed me the flyer, and Blaž, who I think is DJing for the last bit, at Les Cigales, they were both lovely dancers, a real treat.
• I had to look up where Slovenia exactly was. It's the one that dropped quite peacefully off the left hand side of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 90s, and then joined the EU in 2004 and adopted the Euro. The Tourist Board has found a way of getting "I feel love" into their logo.
• Best tango domain name yet. http://www.milonguera.si. And http://www.milonguero.si works as well! 

That's all.

Weekender Packing List - Lessons Learned

Ever been to a tango weekender? Or thought about it, and wondered what to take?

Here's what I learned from my four days in the south of France. Men might simplify things a bit by taking a suit, which would deal with all of the evening milongas, but then you have to puzzle out the shirts and ties. And for the daytime milongas people wore all sorts. Polo shirts and chinos are a pretty safe bet, but I had lovely dances with guys in cargo shorts and flipflops.

Key: Final packing list, comments on return.


The Brief: 5 nights, 4 milongas, unfamiliar Mediterranean climate. 18-22C, possibly windy. Might want to do tourist things. Actually there were 7 milongas! I hadn't understood the programme.

Dancing
Dancing Shoes 1 (pink tone) I only wore these once, with dress 1, and they're a bit tight for a long milonga. I should order a half-size up in this brand.
Dancing Shoes 2 (silver tone) Wore them all the time - these are the half size up. Winner.
Dress 1 (attention-getting and folds up to nothing) That worked.
Dress 2 (also folds up to nothing - very pretty - quieter though. Could conceivably be worn as daywear, if not too windy) That didn't work. Put it on and it just felt wrong. Something about the climate and fabric and proportions. Felt sweaty. Didn't wear it.
2-piece outfit 1 (relatively casual but bright and cheerful, super-pretty, both parts recycle as daywear) Winner, wore the sweet little Audrey-Hepburn Capri trousers for 2 milongas and as daywear for 2 days.
2-piece outfit 2 (relatively warm in case of unexpected weather, top recycles as daywear, dark colour) This took care of one of the milongas I hadn't counted in the planning. But the skirt is a bit too big and rides down - requires an anti-static slip.
2-piece outfit 3 (relatively formal - cheerful colour - top recycles as daywear) This covered for the failure of Dress 2.
Little Black Dress as backup in case I've totally missed the tone. Didn't need it, but don't grudge the space to proper risk management.
Underwear as required by above.
Knee length zip-up over-dress to wear over outfits when walking to and from the venue. Very glad I put this in at the last minute, otherwise wouldn't have worn Dress 1.

There's 2 outfits redundancy there, but that's because I'm not familiar with the climate or the venue and I don't know exactly who's going or how they dress or whether there's aircon or fans, or whether Dress 1 might be out-of-place. Redundancy and flexibility, luckily.

Both pairs of shoes are comfortable rather than demanding; long nights. Good call. My feet hurt up to the knees at the end of day 1. Any of my other shoes would have been disastrous.

Daywear
Denim skirt Did the job well but could have either gone without it, or worn it instead of the tourist trousers and avoided the attention of security at King's Cross - I forgot that if you have visible pockets on loose garments, they always search you. Pencil skirt again next time.
Various cotton tops used one for one of the uncounted milongas and 2 things to cover the shoulders only needed the one that matches Dress 1 
Spare light hot-weather skirt, folds up to nothing. Took care of another milonga - good call.
Factor 50 sun cream essential
Belt
Beach towel didn't need it
Foldable kitbag didn't need it
Bag with all bits for doing hair, legs, face. Decanted shampoo, conditioner. Bobby pins.
Daywear flat sandals. Wore them all the time and danced in them twice.

Will wear tourist trousers on train with ankle-covering canvas shoes and socks, and hoodie; those will do for any off-road walking. Perfect - took me up the telepherique, hoodie took care of cool evenings.

Camera essential
Charger
Phone
Charger
Adapter for chargers
2x spare SD cards for camera

Document wallet with all booking references, train tickets, and passport.

Small bag with book, money, cards, and knitting.

The only thing I had to buy was sticking plasters for my feet.

Rencuentro Milonguero Les Cigales, Toulon

This is an annual weekender organised by Milongueando France; it's now been going for two years and it's planned for next year at least. This time, it was held at the Hotel Cercle du Marin, Toulon. There are seven milongas over four days: Friday evening, Friday night, Saturday evening (then a sit-down meal), Saturday night, Sunday evening, Sunday night, and Monday afternoon/evening. It might or might not be in the exact same place next year, but it will be somewhere on the Cote D'Azur. In case it is in the same place, which seems to be the current plan, I'm going to add some detail about the venue at the end, since it would be important if you were planning to come on your own. [Update 06/06/2011: read this update post, there were some problems with the 2011 event].

The Deal: "Rencuentro Milonguero" means the deal is proper close-embrace salon tango, in an unbroken and truly close embrace, i.e. plastered-around-his-neck-and-staying there 'close', to traditional music (what the Europeans call 'milonguero style'). That is the whole point and purpose of this gig, so if it's not what you do or what principally interests you, if you can't already do it with a fair level of comptence, or if you don't know and love the traditional music, it makes no sense at all to bother with this. You will be wasting your time, feeling out of place, looking like a fool, and stuck with unsuitable partners. Consider the Berlin Tango Festival instead, which is on at about the same time in that marvellous town and has many and varied tango-substances to offer which may suit you.

The Class: There aren't any. No workshops, no classes, nada. If you admire a particular dancer who's going, you watch them dance socially or dance with them, you don't take lessons.

Layout and Atmosphere: Once you find your way in through the car park, following the little 'Tango' signs, the hall is a good sized concert hall. It has a stage at the far end, a mezzanine at the near end, and glass doors opening onto the patio along the far half of the left hand side as you come in. You enter through the bar, where they had the table with everyone's bookings, and the t-shirts for sale. There's also a lobby at the back where there were displays of shoes and dresses, and a room where you could get a massage at certain times - I failed to take advantage, but I was busy dancing. Chairs and tables were arranged around all sides except where the glass doors were, with two rows of tables at either end and enough room to walk behind nearly all of them, plus more seating under the mezzanine at the back. The location of the DJ booth on the mezzanine is prominent and honourable, but practically not ideal, making it difficult for the DJ to gauge the mood of the floor. Although everyone had their own seat, people did move around quite a bit because of the slight layout problems created by the mezzanine and the lights along the front of it (which made it hard to see people sitting underneath). The floor was good - a good wooden floor, slightly sticky in places on the first afternoon but about right for me after a bit of talc went down. The hall looked nice, with long blue and yellow curtains, blue chairs and purplish tablecloths. The little patio with the pink roses was lovely.

The atmosphere was relaxed and happy, with plentiful seating, good DJs, very friendly organisation which I'll mention under 'hospitality', good lighting with minor flaws, and a lot of good dancers who were thoroughly pleased to be there. The gorgeous weather didn't do it any harm; walking back at 4am in my little fleece hoodie, it was just pleasantly cool, with visible stars.

Local customs: Most people generally used some version of the 'nod' to request a dance, so the whole question of who asks whom is more or less meaningless. There were exceptions; refusals were always polite and accepted with grace as far as I observed. Nobody bats an eyelid at same-sex dancing, men or women, you can dance with whoever is willing to dance with you in whatever role you both wish, and people did.

Hospitality: Very good. In particular, there is a lady who greets you when you come into the dance hall and finds you a place to sit, and she did an excellent job. Having established what languages I spoke or understood, she sat me with some Italians of similar age to myself, and we got on very well. There is enough space for the seating and there are enough seats for the people, so you can keep yours and nest a bit, which makes a huge difference to the social aspect. It was so nice to have an idea where people were, or at least where they were likely to return to, and not to have your things muddled up all the time. There isn't water on the tables, but a free drink is included in entry for each day, and nobody stops you bringing your own either. Wine and soft drinks from the bar, with prompt service, were all around 2€, espresso 1€, and sandwiches. The whole thing was very well organised. On arrival I got an envelope with my name on it containing wristbands for admission to each day, my free-drink vouchers and the timetable. The military-establishment loos were pretty rickety, though, the best I can say was that they were clean and worked and you could always find paper somewhere, if not always a perfectly dry piece of floor or anything to dry your hands. They aren't even segregated. On the other hand, the patio was a nice place to cool off or just retreat, and the doors to it were usually open.

Anyone or anything interesting: It was just such a joy to watch so many good dancers. You never had to turn your eyes away from the dance floor, so it didn't even matter if your feet hurt up to the knees and you had to sit down. And the T-shirts were genius - they're black, in men's and women's styles, you buy one with the logo and date on it, you put it on, and then there's a pot of paint and a roller and you get someone to paint their arm and embrace you, and you do the same for them. It looks so cute.

What I thought of the DJing: The DJs were Melina Sedò, Philippe Gonella (Gitango), Enrico il Mali Malinverni, Théo 'El Greco' Chatzipetros, and Marcel Lambert (Marcelo). It was all good. All the DJ's played proper tandas that made perfect sense and always used cortinas. Everybody cleared the floor. You could stop, find a new partner, organise your evening. Most stuck strictly to the traditional frequency of milongas and valses, others used somewhat fewer. Some also used salsa or rock interludes that were long enough for people to dance to. Melina's style is very smooth (and I think with fewer milongas), others more rhythmic, and I think it was Enrico or maybe Philippe who played some rather jazz-tinged modern versions, I'n not quite sure. There was some quite marked variation of taste, but it was all music that people could use with the style of dance and the floor and the partners. Basically the music for the weekend was 100%  traditional by a broadish definition, but perhaps 5-10% was not traditional by all definitions, or not played by the golden age orchestras. But all of it was strong and professionally put together.

Getting in: 60€ included all seven milongas and a pretty good three-course dinner on Saturday and a free drink each day. It's necessary to book but you can pay cash on arrival.

Getting there and getting home: If you do as I did and stay in the centre of town, near the station, you'll need to walk to the venue. The easiest way is to follow the street that goes across the bottom of Place de la Liberté, staying on the uphill side of it, and keep going, working your way around all the crossings and intersections: when you reach the huge Holiday Inn, you can see Cercle du Marin diagonally across the main road. Keep going past the street of shops and cross at the crossing directly in front of Cercle du Marin. There is another way, along a sort of sunken car-park-like road along the front, and it involves far fewer crossings, but I preferred this one. The sunken one is easier to find from the hotel end.

As for getting to Toulon, I took the Eurostar from London and changed at Lille. I took the 06:20 from St. Pancras and was settled into my hotel room by four in the afternoon, having lost an hour to the time difference and an hour to the change of trains. I am averse to flying unless strictly necessary, but flying is much cheaper, and you can go to Nice and catch a train from there. Either way you are deposited within 5 mins walk of my hotel and 15 mins walk of the venue. The journey is tiring either way - I was glad I'd done it on the Thursday and slept for twelve hours.

The website: en version originel.

How it went: Although I enjoyed all of it, the milongas I enjoyed most on their own were the afternoon ones on Friday and Monday, especially Monday. Saturday and Sunday evenings nights were pretty full-on with a very crowded floor, and although most of the dancers were very good, with very few who would have been less than outstanding in a London milonga, there were just enough fools - about three or four does it - to make navigation challenging even for very fine social dancers. Nothing like home, but somewhat tricky. I made gentle contact with quite a few things - chair legs, shoes, the overhanging leaves of a potted palm (several times), Detlef's arse (less bouncy than I might have expected, had I ever thought about it) - but nothing painful or serious.

Generally, however, the quality of dancing was extremely high. In the whole weekend of 7 milongas I had two bad dances (amusical and poorly controlled), one seriously flawed dance (bad posture with sideways force), and one perfectly inoffensive beginner dance. The rest of them were all fab. Particularly notable was a dance on Saturday night with a Frenchman of whose face I have virtually no memory but with whom I had such an intense connection that we didn't even change weight or break the embrace between songs. A thing suspended in time. Also many delightful Italians, some splendid Croatians Slovenians [I do beg your pardon, I still muddle up the names and locations of the countries that weren't in my jigsaw of Europe when I was little], most of the DJs, all lovely, various ace dancers including the Rockstar and the Nemesis of Potted Palms, and a tanda of the spinning-on-clouds thing that a certain person does when he's out of his tree on four days of dancing and you put on a vals. And I found someone to exchange embraces with for the T-shirt - and danced with him in my flat street sandals for Monday's Cumparsita. I didn't feel pressure to dance or not dance, I loved watching and I danced with joy.

It was interesting to experience the effect that such prolonged, repeated sessions of high-quality dancing had on my body, my mind, and my dance. As I relaxed into it, I developed a physical comfort in my body and movement - especially the back and hips - which came out in just walking around town. In the dance, I found that I was using my whole body musically in a stronger and more explicit, confident way than before, and I might be able to make that persist, with some work. It would be nice.

The daylight hours, when not sleeping, I spent in the brilliant sunshine of the Cote D'Azur, contemplating the Mediterranean. Another post for all that, but I can recommend the Roy D'Ys, on the seafront, for excellent crepes, teas, and icecreams. And you can get a reasonable breakfast till 12 in the square in front of the Opera House.

Note on accommodation

The hotel itself, where the dancing is and you can stay if you book early, is not really a hotel at all - it's called a hotel and looks like one from the outside but it's really a military outfit dedicated to military clients visiting the naval base. The dance hall is great, but the rooms are extremely basic. There are few double beds, there may or may not be window curtains or shower curtains, and if you want a bath-sized towel you have to bring your own, like a good galactic hitchiker. En-suite accommodation does not include the loo, which is along the corridor. The hotel is also ten minutes' walk out of town. However, it's extremely cheap and it does serve food, including sandwiches at odd times. Having had a good look at it on Google Earth and a bit of a nose at the website, I decided that being able to fall out of a comfortable room and into a nice breakfast in the sunshine was a higher priority than being able to fall out of the milonga directly into bed - ten minutes' quiet walk helps me sleep, anyway. I stayed at the two-star Hotel Celenya, just off Place de la Liberté, which happened to offer a discount through the corporate scheme where I work and was very reasonable and comfortable with very nice staff. The walk back into town is perfectly all right and there's always someone else going. If you're on a tight budget or less attached to comfort, and you're not interested in exploring other aspects of this fascinating town, the Cercle du Marin is a very good deal. Be aware that everything shuts on Sundays, and the only place to get breakfast is on the front.