Salad Dressing

If you just put oil and vinegar in a jar, and you don't shake it, you do not get salad dressing.

You have to put energy in.

Supermarkets think very, very carefully about what things they put on the shelves that are under your hand while you queue for the checkout. Milongas should think just as carefully about what the room looks like when you enter it; about who is coming, and who is already there; about how the people in it see themselves, see each other, and try to make themselves comfortable. Humans are social, extremely sensitive to all kinds of complex signals, and you cannot expect them to put them aside, especially as most of them are processed unconsciously.

The information they need to form a community - however briefly - can be exchanged with time, or it can be provided, within certain limits, by leadership and proper shaking of the jar.

Abrazos London

This is normally on Saturday afternoons, organised by Jenny Surelia at a place called Goodenough Hall, which belongs to Goodenough College, which seems to be named after its founder. There's another milonga on Wednesday in a different room at the same place, but I haven't tried that one yet as I'm generally busy on Wednesdays. There's one on this Bank Holiday Monday as well, so this is a great time to try it, and check the website for other Bank Holidays.

The Class: Jenny usually gives a basic to general-level class before the milonga for those who want it.

Layout and Atmosphere: The hall is absolutely beautiful. To find your way in, you have to buzz the bell or shoulder-surf to get into reception, which is on the left side of the entrance, and they will direct you to the Great Hall. You just go out of the door that's behind you as you face the reception desk, turn left, go into another door which is right there and follow the music up the stairs. The hall looks as though it was built some time between, say, 1890 and 1914, with the aim to imitate and surpass the halls of Oxford and Cambridge colleges (generally built much earlier and with less light). The roof is very high, the walls are wood-panelled half way up, and above this are wide, tall, bright windows letting in the sky. Above that is a white plaster curve magnificently embellished with coloured and gilded coats of arms, and a creamy plaster cieling. Beto told me that it reminded him of a place in Buenos Aires that I don't remember the name of. The heavy wooden chairs and tables are pushed to the four sides for the milonga. If it was crowded, there wouldn't be enough room to get between the chairs, which are very substantial - but there's plenty of room for a milonga of 180 people or so.

The sound is good, the wooden walls flattering it even with small speakers. It might be more of a struggle if it were full. And the wooden floor is absolutely gorgeous - not just smooth and soft on the feet, but also quiet, sucking away the sounds of your toes.

The only problem with the hall is that the windows have been incorrectly maintained and can't be opened at the moment. The room is designed for openable windows, and on a warm day it gets hot. Dress, or bring whatever you need, accordingly.

Look for the Empire Clock at the far end of the room. There's some information in a glass case on the wall to the left of it. It is an ingenious little memorial to that short-lived seaborne empire on which the sun never set; and once you spot the silver fern you realise it's telling you what time it is in New Zealand.

Hospitality: Good, slightly overwhelmed if more people turn up than expected. A table at one end has water, plastic cups, fruit, sweets, miscellaneous cakes and chocolate-brownie-like things, all included. If there's no one at the desk when you come in, it's probably because Jenny is busy DJing - just sort yourself out and either someone will come and find you later, or you can go over and just offer them money. If the jugs run out of water, you might have to attract someone's attention to refill them. As for the loos, they are clean, roomy, and very well lit, but allow an entire tanda to get there and back. It's a rather long way. Go out of the door at the other end, down the stairs on the right, and follow signs. Don't be alarmed by surprise violinists or hot steamy laundry machines. You'll get there in the end. On the bank holiday Monday when I went, it was also possible to get a substantial student lunch and a beer in the canteen next door, and several people did.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: Just social dancing.

What I thought of the DJing: The first time I went, Beto DJd; he's a totally reliable DJ and a favourite of mine. The second time, Jenny DJd, and she did a perfectly reasonable job. It was all nice danceable tango music played in an orderly manner. She made one mistake (dancing) and had to run back to fix it but it was all nice music and the cortinas made me happy.

Getting in: £10. Market rate for London. The class is £5 extra, if there is one.

Getting there and getting home: It's a few minutes' walk from Russell Square and doesn't end late enough for getting home to be a problem. The address is Goodenough College, London House,  Mecklenburgh Square, London WC1N 2AB. I turned right from Russell Square and more or less followed my nose until I reached a fence, then turned right again and followed the walls on my left till I got there - which results in walking round three sides of Mecklenburgh Square - and that might not actually be necessary. But I couldn't at the time see a way of getting round the other way. Try it.

The website: http://abrazosmilonga.blogspot.co.uk/. Scroll down for the little calendar thingie. Does the job.

How it went: I went twice before writing, once for the regular Saturday matinee and once for a Bank Holiday Special. It was very quiet on the Saturday, but I'd arranged for a friend to go as well, so it didn't matter. On the bank holiday there were quite a few people there, after a while, including some excellent choices, and I'd definitely do that again. It was still quietish, but it'll probably become more popular. It's so nice and so convenient that it's hard to see how it wouldn't. You might try something like this group to coordinate with a few friends; but it'll be ok either way. On the bank holiday Monday, it was a little wierd at first because some of the students of Goodenough Hall were still having their lunch; they did so very quietly, but totally fascinated by our activities, and it always feels a bit bizarre having an audience. A friend mistakenly invited one of the students to dance; but he's very good at dancing with beginners and actually she did totally fine, as true total absolute beginners sometimes do in response to a good lead. The dancing was very civilised; the floor wasn't full, but it was very orderly and I think the quietness and the style of the hall is really conducive to a good milonga. I had a lovely time, and it ends at just the right moment to have dinner nearby afterwards. Give it a try on Monday, if you're in town.

Menuda Milonga

This milonga is around once a month (calendar) in one of two venues - Cranbourne, Dorset, or Ringwood, Hampshire. Organised by Richard Slade and Esther Pellejero. Times vary, and you should check the website for the next event; it may be an evening milonga, 19:30 to 23:30, or in the afternoon from 16:00 till around 20:00.

The Class: There isn't one. This milonga is aimed at people who can already dance, are mostly willing to travel some distance, and want to not be messed about by the DJ.

Layout and Atmosphere: There are two venues. The one I've been to is Cecil Memorial Hall in Cranbourne. It's a lovely village hall with a high A-shaped roof, a stage at the far end, a very good floor. There are French windows along the right hand side as you come in, with yellowish curtains, and there's a large hatch leading to the kitchen. You help yourself to refreshments by walking out of the hall and into the kitchen, but you still have a good view of what's going on in the hall and if you keep an eye out, it's perfectly possible to get a dance while you're making tea or eating a biscuit. Rectangular tables are set around all the walls with dark blue tablecloths. In places you can walk behind them, but not all the way round. The DJ has a table on the stage and there is a smallish, unobtrusive "now playing" display. Lighting is good; the good quality of the hall means light can be high enough for everyone to see properly without revealing anything depressing. The warm wood of the floor and ceiling give the whole room a nice look.

Hospitality: Good. You are greeted with joy and can help yourself to plenty of coffee, tea and biscuity things or similar in the large kitchen. On my first visit there were all sorts of other canapé-like things as well. Clean well-lit loos with extra coathooks are off the entrance hall.


Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: Just social dancing.

What I thought of the DJing: Richard Slade DJd. I really enjoyed it on both visits. Traditional, tandas of 4, milonga and vals in 3s. Happy cortinas, long enough. Richard is fairly new to the DJing and doing a bit of experimentation, so I'm sure there's plenty of room for refinement but there was nothing daft and the most demanding of my partners had only minor quibbles. He seems to be discriminating about which feedback he listens to, which is what you want. There's an unobtrusive display that names the current track over some lovely photos of social dancing.

Getting in: £7. Includes refreshments (tea, coffee and biscuits). Non-dancers free.

Getting there and getting home: You have to drive - directions on the website. I was a passenger with a party starting from Bristol; we left at 12, stopped for an hour's lunch, and arrived at about twenty to four.

The website: http://www.menudamilonga.com/. Gives you all the essential information on the home page.

How it went:  I had a great time. Partly because I and several of my favourite partners had danced for about seven hours at a party the previous night, so I was still in the zone. And I'd travelled with good company, and there was more meeting us there. But also because it's a really nice milonga.

Most of the people there understood the codes that are published on the website. If you don't agree with them, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go there. It was almost always orderly, with good flow, and really nice. I had one tanda slightly messed up by a zigzagger between lanes (Fresedo does not meld well with the desire to elbow one's neighbour), and some consternation was caused by the arrival of an individual notorious for being extremely tiresome to share a floor with; but Richard stalked him for a while and he started to more or less behave. During the crowded part of the evening there was a bit of standing through the cortinas and blocking the view of people sitting down, but it got less so. I think there were enough chairs for everyone, or almost everyone, to sit down, but that might not have been true at the most crowded stage. I had no difficulty keeping my seat.

Unless you live nearby, it would be a long way to drive on your own if you don't know anybody: it makes sense if you are used to travelling fairly long distances for your tango and you know some of the south-west corridor people who do the same. I know that when I travel for tango, unless there is a temporarily spare leader among my acquaintance (as there was this time) I will probably always have to wait out the first hour while people dance in couples and with people they haven't seen for ages, and this is a nice enough milonga that that's not too annoying. I've been there twice, and on the occasion when I arrived 'cold' I had to work harder to keep a level head, but some of the dances I was waiting for had such lovely balloons attached that the balance of the evening was extremely positive. I was quite happy at the times when I was just sitting in my spot and listening, and there were plenty of people who were nice to watch. It's a beautiful milonga.

Dalston Tango in the Evening Standard

Despite some hilarious but unimportant errors (er, Luis is not Brazilian) and the bizarre headline (headlines never have anything to do with the writer) this is rather sweet:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-24014972-strictly-come-dalston-dancing-the-tango-in-hackney.do

Especially in the way it presents tango as a civilised entertainment for young people, and specifically a hell of a lot more pleasant and interesting than alternatives in Dalston. It's true; if you're dancing tango, getting drunk or high as well is very much optional rather than compulsory, and there are tight practical limits to doing both at the same time, at least unless you've had a lot of practice.

I was going to say that the article exaggerated the role of the East End; tango is not new to London, not by a couple of decades, and the East End is the latest place to get it rather than the first. But, on reflection, it changes all the time, and the milongas they mention certainly have an important role in the way it's has gone in the last couple of years and the way it's likely to go next. For the person likely to be interested in the article, that's what's important. (Then I started looking for my review of the Light Temple - it's stuck in draft, I can't remember why, and I haven't got time to fix it right now).

Congratulations to Luis and Elizabeth for managing to sound quite sensible and more or less like themselves, when transmogrified by print. That can be a bit of a lottery, I think you did well.

I have been to this milonga a couple of times, but not since the place was refurbished. I felt then that it was good choice for beginners, depending on who was teaching, and it sounds like it still is. In theory it's much nearer me than central London is, but it's a lot less accessible given the day and the time. That's nice in a way, as it might stay local and get its own crowd, which can be a very good thing.

Bailamos @ Tango West, Bristol

Last weekend Tango West decided to strike out a bit and organised a full-scale weekender at the Redland Club, with dancing on Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. I've visited them before so I won't repeat the practical details, just talk about this event.

The music: For DJing they used two of their own, who are known as reasonable and reliable, and booked two guests:

Friday milonga Apertura 8.30-12pm DJ Andrew (Tango West)
Saturday Matinee 2.30-6pm DJ Mabel (Tango y Nada Mas)
Saturday eve late Milonga 8.30pm-1am DJ Andreas (Tangokombinat)
Sunday tango café 3.00-7.30pm DJ Michele (Tango West)

I liked all the DJing - it was all properly put together, in the standard format, the tandas made sense, it was all tango music and I never got stuck feeling sabotaged or uninspired. The favourites with me and the people I was staying with were Mabel and Andreas, which would make sense, as they were the guests - otherwise why book them?

Getting in: You could book all four sessions in advance for £32, but advance booking was not required. I paid for the whole package on arrival on Friday night and I think it was still £32, but if you only came for one or two sessions, that was fine too.

Miscelleaneous practicalities: Hospitality is great, as I said before, and there are plenty of refreshments included in the price. The space actually belongs to the Tango West organisation, and the floor is in very good condition. It does, however, get sticky when it's humid, so choose your shoes accordingly. Talc is not allowed as it slowly degrades the floor. My leather-soled shoes were fine, but the suede-soled ones for Saturday night were a mistake. They really do look after the floor. A man's heel disintegrated on Saturday night and scattered little bits of rubber over a radius of about two metres, like the little soft 'marbles' you get from racing car tyres. Andrew, Michelle, Iwona and an assistant were ready with brooms, mops, sprays, and everything necessary by the time the cortina came, and spent an extra-long cortina as the most glamorous mop-and-brush crew you're likely to see.

Layout isn't perfect, there weren't quite enough seats in the room for everyone on Saturday night, or, I think, Sunday afternoon - so some people ended up standing along the open wall where the kitchen is. I never found myself without a seat, I only moved about once, and I don't think I ever saw them all occupied at once - but if you were less lucky you might have had to go and sit away from the dancefloor for a while if you wanted a rest.

Getting there, getting home, and how it went: All these were connected. Making it a whole weekend of extended-session tango with reliable DJs meant that it was worth people's while to come some distance and arrange accommodation. There are lots of B&Bs in the area, and the organisers also tried to match up visitors with local dancers' spare rooms. I stayed with a friend, who filled her house with happy tango people, it was lovely.

What really makes this sort of event is the people, and that worked out excellently. The location is two hours from London on the train, and very accessible from the whole M4 and M5 corridors. You can get a local train to the station near the venue, or for about £8 get a taxi from Bristol Temple Meads (queue outside the station). People came from the Thames valley, Southampton, Plymouth, the New Forest, and Cornwall - generally, people from all points West who would normally go to Eton, Bramshaw, Menuda Milonga, Aldenham, and so on, as well as the usual Bristol and Cardiff crowd. 

Those who are willing to travel long distances tend, of course, to be those who put more effort into their dancing. Over time that means they also grow more discriminating about music and organisation quality. And putting on a long event like this where you can confidently expect decent DJing makes it worth those people's while to travel for at least part of it in the expectation that others will too. Then the presence of people who other people want to dance with, attracts the other people who want to dance with them, and who have reason to believe that their chances of doing so justify the distance. And because no classes are offered, it attracts those who want to dance socially rather than take classes for their own sake. You can do something that I don't think is achievable (here, yet) with a regular or short milonga.

The upshot of all that was that I was there for all four sessions and got to dance with lots of lovely people who were only there for one or two, like the gentlemen from Cornwall, as well as those who were there for the whole weekend. None of these people would ever normally come into London to dance - it's far too expensive, time consuming, and risky, and doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd only see them at things like Abrazos or (if I'm lucky) the European festivals, and all that means a lot more trouble, expense, and advance planning. So it was a great opportunity and I appreciated it. The travel and being away from home was emphatically worth my while.

All in all I had a really good time. I think that since it worked out well, they may repeat the exercise two or three times a year. Given the success of this first attempt, I think they could consider being more ambitous and having an all-guest DJ lineup with perhaps one extra special one. I certainly hope so, but at any rate I would happily go back multiple times for much the same event again.

The Aldenham milonga ...

... makes me happy. That's all.

Especially when I can get dropped off there as an escapee from Wedding Planet. I didn't even need to eat any cake. Just a cup of tea and a dance and I was ecstatic. Felt like I'd actually had a weekend.

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.

A perfect British queue

Abrazos Devon, Friday night: 85% UK attendees, maybe 1.5m space per couple, absolutely bloody perfect 2-lane ronda with a clear space all the way down the middle. The revolution has already happened.

Abrazos, Devon, Friday 6th May 2011 at some point between 11pm and 01:30

This happened totally naturally: nobody had to announce anything or put up any notices: nobody had think about it: everyone knew perfectly well what to do: it happened as easily as driving round a roundabout, standing on the right of the escalator and walking on the left, or forming a single queue for three automatic ticket machines. Pretty much as you ought to expect in Britain, if you thought about it.

Fun and Food

Ahhh I had so much fun at the tea dance in the middle of nowhere (see link on right) - lots of lovely dancers, lovely atmosphere, lovely space, good flow, quite crowded, about ninety people there, buzzing. It's getting popular so there's not a lot of space, you need your milonguerotrousers. Quite a few people you'd otherwise see at Eton or maybe Bramshaw.

Tip: the empañadas are very good and as soon as they are announced everybody makes a beeline for them (instant chaos, gannets) and they disappear in seconds. So if you want to eat more than one, try to spot their progress through the oven when you get yourself a cuppa so you can kidnap them as they come out. Alternatively, while everyone else is trying to get one is a great time to have about two-thirds of the floor to yourself and stretch your legs a bit.

I like that it's quite long so you don't feel you have to chase dances; and that also means I'm happier taking risks with people I don't know, especially early on, which is good too 'cause it spreads the love around.

Now I'm going to watch France v Ireland. You never know what either of them are going to do.

[Update: they've thought up a system. Now you get a little card as you come in the door, and you swap it later for your empañada. That way, everybody who wants one, gets one, and nobody gets to waylay them on the way from oven to table. Much more orderly and fair-play. You can have another later if there are any left.]

Bramshaw

Bramshaw Village Hall is somewhere a very long way down a winding road into the New Forest (a very old forest, obviously) with wild ponies and deer and whatnot running around outside. Steve and Debbie Morall organise Saturday night milongas on the third Saturday of each month, and Sunday afternoon tea dances on the first Sunday in each month. There are also neo-tango milongas and courses offered at various dates, check the website for details.

The Class: There was a weekend of workshops with Melina and Detlef. Other guests are invited from time to time, and Steve is the regular teacher. Workshops tend to book out very quickly indeed, and they have a system for checking that you actually are at a level that's suitable for the workshops you book. Consult the website for details. I wasn't there for the weekend, only the milonga.

The end of setting up - they turned down the light in the kitchen later

Layout and Atmosphere: It's a large, rectangular room, another really nice traditional village-hall, with a red-velvet-curtained stage at the far end and corner at the near end occupied by a large kitchen hatch for refreshments. There are numerous coathooks by the entrance for your stuff, and some chairs for sorting yourself out, although not really enough hooks for all the people who came on this occasion so it turned into a bit of a pile. Around the other three walls are chairs and tables, directly against the walls. They have little tealights on the tables, and dark red tablecloths for a friendly glow. The floor is excellent, a proper dance floor in good condition with no problems. It's rather dimly lit, so most of your invitations have to be at shortish range, but it's not so dark that you bump into people and feel more like going to sleep.

They often have 'alternative' music playing in another room, on this night the other room was used as a chillout space. At one point Steve made an announcement about it because with all the people, the sound of chat and greeting had got a bit loud.

The temperature was patchy; it was crowded (I was told more so than usual) but it was cold outside and some doors at the stage end were open. It was comfortable for dancing but I'd suggest wearing layers.

As for the atmosphere, it felt great, I had the general feeling that the organisers were happy and wanted me to be.

Hospitality: Very good. There are lots of refreshments on offer in a large kitchen with a big hatch opening onto a corner of the room. Biscuits, crisps, teas, coffee, a tea urn, you can get yourself some water or a cuppa whenever you like. There are coathooks near the entrance for your stuff; they were overwhelmed by numbers in this case, but robust enough that I managed to dig my coat out fairly promptly from under everyone else's. The loos are roomy, well-lit and well-supplied, clean and working, and lots of people change in there after the journey.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: Detlef and Melina gave a brief performance. I enjoyed it - their style is purely social and I thought they looked very relaxed.


What I thought of the DJing: The DJ is Steve Morall, a passionate musician and bandoeon player. It was mostly traditional, with tandas and cortinas. I remember one tanda that was definitely, indisputably 'alternative', and perhaps two to four more that were arguably so depending on your definition. I remember enjoying the valses and milongas a lot. It it may have been the electrotango cortinas early in the evening that got me in the "what's this?" frame of mind so that I never felt quite sure where I was with the tango tandas, and at least some of my partners were having the same feeling. Your mileage may vary depending on your taste and who you are with and what you are used to.

Getting in: £7 for the milonga.

Getting there and getting home: There is no public transport. You have to drive, and/or stay at a B&B in the area (and they don't accept bookings for less than two nights, so that only works if you're doing a weekend of workshops or you fancy a New Forest safari). I was staying with a tango friend in Wales, who had more tango friends from further afield staying with her as well; and since there were six of us going altogether, we hired a minibus with a professional driver to take us there and back. At two and a half hours it was a very long drive for a short milonga, but worth it for the company. They recommend liftshare.org. Google map link: Bramshaw Village Hall, SO43 7JE.

The website: http://www.tangouk.co.uk/bramshaw gives you the details you need; the home page is here. There's more there than just an events list, and you may find Steve's articles interesting to read; he has a lot to say about what he's trying to achieve and how.

How it went: We arrived really early (having allowed more time than was actually needed for the journey) so I was there for the whole thing, and I had a really good time.

As it happened I had brought three excellent potential partners with me in the minibus, together with a lady friend who is a semi-regular there and could point out people she knew; but I also danced with others, one of whom turned out to be a friend of a friend, and saw plenty more that I would have liked to try if there had been time. Perhaps because getting there is such a project, it tends to attract committed and thoughtful dancers, and I had plenty of suitable choices without feeling hassled.

I felt that I could have had a larger number of higher-quality dances than I have had anywhere else in the UK so far - and the reason for this was that the middling level of non-professional dancers was unusually strong. I felt I had greater choice than elsewhere of people who are genuinely good social dancers, that is, at the level where their dance is natural and comfortable and enjoyable and musical and uncomplicated and without any major ingrained flaws, and you can just relax and have fun.

There were people thrashing around a bit, but mostly in the middle and harmlessly; the only real bump I had was with a table which had got out of place below my partner's eyeline, we had to stop and put it back.

The friend I was staying with, who is a semi-regular visitor, reports that she always has a good time there. If a friend is driving I'll certainly go again.

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.

A cross between Hercule Poirot and the Star Wars cantina

"... It's a cross between Hercule Poirot and the Star Wars cantina ... love the music"

... the response of a friend and colleague to a short video clip (about fifteen seconds) of social dancing

Tango West

Tango West have milongas at the Redland Club, Bristol, every other Friday (but check dates), and on special occasions from time to time. This visit was one of their Saturday late-nighters, 8pm-1am on a Saturday in September.


The Class: there was no class on this date. There are classes before the regular milongas, taught by the organisers, Michele, Iwona and Andrew, and they also have Andreas Wichter (who some of you will know) regularly on Wednesdays, dates shown on the website. You can take it, therefore, that the focus will be on practical social dancing, and that's backed up by what they say about their aims and who they admire on the website.

Layout and Atmosphere: If you approach from Burlington Road, you will see a big sign on the side of the building with the Tango West name. They have taken over full or partial responsibility for the hall, and so have a good deal of control. As you go in it feels more like an upmarket village hall or school hall than a gym or health club as you might expect from the name. There is an entrance hall with the kitchen opposite you, the loos on your right behinds some felt screens with notices, and the dance hall on your left. You have a bit of space to sort yourself out and take your coat off. The dance hall itself is quite large, more or less square, and has a pleasing wooden ceiling with a peculiar construction I don't know the name of but which reminds me of a sort of hammer-beam, only going all the way round to make a square. I think it's really some sort of steel suspension thing. The floor is the same colour but a different pattern, and in very good condition. You are asked not to wear shoes that may damage it, and heel covers are available. Refreshments are to your left, along with a sofa, under a sort of partly-curtained gallery, and there are plenty of chairs set around little tables on the other three sides of the room. They warm it more with I think a red gauze curtain under the gallery, and little purply fake tealights on the tables. There are no chairs alone or against the walls.

The hall as a whole is good looking and comfortable, and contributes to a warm atmosphere.

Hospitality: Excellent. I was greeted in a very friendly way on arriving (I was very early, having guessed wrong how long it would take me to walk from the station) and given a seat at my own little table where my friends joined me later. Plentiful water, wine, pots of tea, coffee, and various fruity and salty nibbles are included, with disposable cups and the now-standard pens for writing your name on them. Tea - standard and Earl Grey - is served in proper cups and saucers, out of a pot. There were enough seats for everyone. The loos are roomy, clean and working, with hooks for your stuff, so you can do a fair amount of fixing your outfit and makeup before you make your entrance.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: They were trying an experiment of seating most of the women on one side, most of the men on the other, with mixed groups along the third side opposite the door, and encouraging people with announcements to use the 'nod' for getting dances, and to clear the floor between tandas so as to make it possible. It didn't entirely work out - there weren't enough men or women arriving alone to be able to do it convincingly, and Bristolians like everyone else are inclined to sit with their friends and would consider it rather bizarre to be told they couldn't because of a chromosome. But it was interesting and worth a try. The lighting was good, but the hall is a bit big; although I had no problems at all zapping partners from reasonable distances away, I couldn't make it work to the other side of the room. But it was fun to try and would have worked better with a bigger turnout, especially of men, or more people who were used to getting their dances that way.

Otherwise, just social dancing. There was a birthday vals; two of the ladies involved in organising it have a birthday on nearly the same day.

What I thought of the DJing: Andrew Oldroyd DJ'd. [Update - looked up surname and added, as I see from an anonymous comment that some people read "Andrew" and confuse it with "Andreas" naturally enough as he is well known as a DJ - I don't know if Andreas ever DJs at Bristol or not, but he certainly didn't on this occasion]. 100% traditional, tandas of 4, cortinas, golden age, standard proportion of milongas and vals. I enjoyed it, it was orderly and varied. Just a bit of a hiccup after the birthday vals. Andrew told me that he had somewhat changed his approach to DJing recently, and others said they thought it had been a fairly dramatic improvement.

Getting in: £9 on this occasion, I think you could get £1 off for booking in advance. They have a membership scheme at £20 per annum which gets you some discounts on classes and entry; you might think this worthwhile if you plan to take a lot of classes there.

Getting there and getting home: I took a train from Paddington and changed at Bristol Temple Meads to be deposited at Clifton Down, within a few minutes' walk of the venue. Turn left out of the station and walk uphill along Whiteladies Road with the church on your left. Turn right when you reach Burlington Road and continue to the next corner where you will find the venue. It's an easy walk, there are shops and people milling around. It probably would have been just about possible to travel back to London the same night, especially if I had left early, but I did a 'tango sleepover' with a friend who was driving back to her home in Cardiff about 40 minutes away, and took a train back from there the next day. There are also quite a few hotels, guest houses and serviced apartments within a short walk, which you could use if you went for a special event. The trains each way took about two hours and the ticket each way was about £28 - I could probably have done better by booking more in advance. A map is given on the website.


The Website: www.tangowest.co.uk - you'll need to scroll down. It's a bit mixed up but it's all there and straightfoward to find - where, when, what, and how much it is to get in, and it has been updated since my visit in the places I'd expect. The About page is quite interesting.

How it Went:  Not knowing many people there, I chatted to the lady sitting at the next table when I came in, and to my friends when they arrived. Perhaps because the scene is evolving quite fast at the moment, I got contradictory advice, I made a few over-cautious decisions, and I probably missed one or two dances I could have enjoyed, especially early in the evening. But the dances I had were all fab. The turnout was just a bit  low on this occasion. It's a nice venue with good organisation and now that I have the practicalities sussed, if it were a special occasion (the kind that makes lots of people I want to dance with come out of the woodwork, like Melina and Detlef's visit earlier in the year) then I would definitely make the journey again. [Added: oh yeah, there was a good ronda throughout and as far as I remember I had just one or two very minor contacts. I think my heel made contact with a chair leg and maybe someone's trouser hem. No harm done. Sorry I'm not at my best today.]

The Tables

Oh yeah, at Carablanca on Friday they pushed the tables on the right hand side WELL in from the wall, and raked them, so that officious punters couldn't shove them back. It worked really well, you could walk right round the back of them for the whole evening and get where you wanted to be without being in the way of the dancers, and it makes the dancefloor a more manageable shape.

Also they had a very good DJ, Luca Lamberti (from Italy so I assume he's only visiting) and they serve cheap cocktails.

Alejandro Ziegler quartet - Piazzolla unplugged

The Alejandro Ziegler quartet had between them a bandoneón, a double bass, a violin, the Conway Hall's Bosendorfer piano, a samurai hairstyle, two red shoes and one Borat moustache. And Danny persuaded them to play their concert set without amplification.

They sounded absolutely stunning. Every note clearly heard, and all the colour, shape and texture. A violin, a bass, a bandoneón and a top-quality concert grand piano, in a hall designed on purpose for concerts of classical music, don't need any electricity beyond what the human nervous system provides. They sound far, far better without it; if you haven't heard a violin without amplification I just don't know how you'd know what a violin is supposed to sound like; it's very different, and much better. And not noticeably quieter, either.

It was a privilege to hear powerful instruments and brilliant playing on their own terms. They played the whole of Piazzolla's four seasons of Buenos Aires. It was a privilege to have this really treated as a concert set, so that people sat down and listened properly, respecting the music, too, on its own terms and not mocking it, ignoring it or distorting it into something it's not. It was absolutely clear that you might as well dance to Vivaldi.

I wasn't as crazy about their dance sets - but then I'm not usually. Apart from the flatness produced by the amplification, bands whose priority is musicianship never play in tandas, and the pieces they play tend not to be the ones you'd probably choose for social dancing, or ordered in the way you'd choose (I seem to remember that Sexteto Milonguero were an exception).

They were also very expensive. The entry price of £18 was a bargain of a concert ticket; but a lot of dancers aren't interested at all in music as such, and certainly not in concerts, so they tend to stay away from events like this. The subset of dancers who are interested may not be big enough at the moment to make it viable. I hope that in future it might be possible to market events like this at least partly to a concert audience as well. A couple of people said to me that this band should be playing at the Barbican - I don't entirely agree because when I went to a tango concert at the Barbican last year the sound quality was awful. I think I'd prefer it if they filled Conway Hall and then the concert goers left and there was just some time for dancing, for those who liked, from say half past 12 till 2. That means you still need a DJ too. It's a puzzle. The layout would be a puzzle too. If you lay it out as a concert hall you can't have dancing. A compromise would be to have a lot more tables and a much smaller floor - but does that make it viable? I'm not sure.

Practical matters - if you go to a concert in this format at the Conway Hall (so that it's laid out for dancing rather than as a concert hall with a lot more people), wear enough clothes, it can get cold. I've been there before and know how this works, so I'd brought a cardie, and I enjoyed being able to sit at a table and sip my drink while I listened, but I wouldn't have minded a hot cup of tea.

Tango @ 33 cancelled tonight

If you want to know why a director of the company that owns the venue was arrested in December, it's in the Serious Fraud Office press release. I can't see that this in itself would be a problem for the milonga, the problem seems more likely to be that Westminster City Council have got an interim injunction [picture of pole dancer, PSFW¹] to enforce a planning notice outstanding since 2006 to the effect that commercial uses of the house are not permitted. Compare the house website.

That's likely to be a serious problem, so I should imagine the milonga will be cancelled permanently and they'll have to find another venue; getting planning permission doesn't sound like a runner to me. However, do check the milonga site (plays music) for updates.

¹ Probably Safe For Work

Milonga Marina, Plymouth

The milonga is at the National Marine Aquarium, and when it's on it's a monthly event, but, sadly, this one was the last one for a while.

Disclosure: I know Andreas and Lynn, and consider them friends; they were happy to see me and since I'd come such a long way, offered me guest status; but I did not accept it, because if you do that I can't give you a writeup.

This writeup is of limited use to anyone anyway because the Aquarium is closing for refurbishment and won't open till April. No-one knows yet whether the room will be available then or not. I'm going to use my usual format anyway.

The Class: There isn't one, just the milonga.

Layout and Atmosphere: The dance floor is in the café at the very top of the National Marine Aquarium. As you come up the stairs you can see a table with a white cloth, and the floor and the DJ, with her own little floor-facing table, on the other side. Having said Hello and handed over your money, there is a space with some coat racks and chairs for metamorphosing yourself from woolly caterpillar into twinkly butterfly. This process took me several minutes, in late November at Plymouth docks, and I was glad not to be doing it on the edge of the dance floor. Then you go round a bit of wall and see a small bar where an employee of the Aquarium serves hot and cold drinks with biscuits, and then there are some tall tables and sofas.

The rest of the room is a glass-walled, curved space looking out over the quay, with fishing boats, charter boats and small sailing yachts visible far below. Around the outer wall are little round tables with white tablecloths, candles, pretty fake rose petals, and enough chairs for everyone. You will not find yourself sitting with your back to the wall and your feet on the dancefloor. The floor is small and roundish or maybe triangular. It was quite well filled with a dozen couples on it, which I think was what I counted at the peak, but the dancing was calm and orderly so more would be able to fit, dancing small. Lighting is good but not harsh. You can catch someone's eye from the other side of the fairly small room quite easily.

It is a very pretty, light and airy space, nicely set up for dancing, and I was intrigued by the idea that if you were on one of the boats outside, the dancers going gently round and round on the brightly-lit dancefloor behind glass at the top of the Aquarium would look like a school of tropical fishes. The atmosphere was gentle and civilised as though everyone was relaxed and enjoying themselves.

Hospitality and comfort: Good to fair. The layout was more comfortable than I'm used to and the general look and atmosphere much nicer. I appreciated the biscuits. My single G&T was £3.15, but sabotaged because the Aquarium had run out of ice and lemon. I didn't really want it and drank tea instead at I think £1.80, which is a lot for tea, but what you'd expect from a tourist attraction like the Aquarium. Because it was cold I forgot to ask for water; bottled water was for sale at the bar. The loos are on the second floor - take the little lift down and they're on your left. They were clean, working, properly supplied and roomy, with just a few spots of water on the floor. And very well lit - I had awful panda eyes.

The cold was the only problem. The room was really quite cold, I suppose because the walls are almost entirely glass, it's open to the huge space of the stairwell, and it was very, very cold and windy outside. It might be hot in summer. Now the cold had a big upside, in that the men mostly kept their jackets on and didn't get sweaty; I had only one even slightly sweaty tanda. But if I'd known it was so cold I would have worn a different outfit. Or a bra.

Anything or anyone interesting that turned up or happened: There were Greta Flora tango shoes for sale, which I haven't seen before. They came in a variety of heel heights as well as designs and colours, and the little detachable flowers are very nice. I saw some on the dance floor too and they looked good. The two ladies who were selling them don't seem to have a website, but they're in Totnes and the first email on their flyer is annasalsa at gmail.

What I thought of the DJing: Lynn Collins DJ'd. It's 100% Golden-Age tango music. I remember noticing many things I liked, but not particularly things that get played all the time. It kept me interested and the time flew. The tandas are fours for tango, so you can get into it properly, or threes for milonga and vals. The cortinas made me feel cheerful and refreshed.

Getting in: £10. When you get to the Aquarium you won't see any sign that it's open or anything is on. The sign at the front says "Pedestrian Entrance" or something, with a big arrow pointing to a very small, ugly, clearly shut door. Ignore that door, but follow the arrow and the pedestrian pathway on the left right round to the back of the building - it still looks shut - until you see a lit glass door with Aquarium employees inside. Maybe this door is left open when the weather's warm. They will open the door when they see you outside it, and let you in, whereupon you hear the music and can follow it up the stairs to the top.

Getting there and getting home: Even if you live locally, I think you probably need to drive or get a taxi. The area didn't strike me as pedestrian-friendly - certainly the entrance to the Aquarium isn't - and I didn't see any buses. I think there's free parking. I was staying at the hotel across the road, and although the area felt perfectly safe I wouldn't have wanted to walk from much further away, especially afterwards. The station is really much too far.

The website: Tangokombinat. Milonga announcements appear on the News page, but it's not just about the milonga, it covers various activities, have a look around. Announcements are also usually posted on tango-uk.

How it went: there were more and less experienced dancers there, but nobody needed to open the embrace to do a turn. There was a clear line of dance all the time using the full size of the floor, sometimes with two or three couples in the middle, and people were respecting each other's space. The only thing my heel made contact with was the leg of a stray chair.

I could relax. I could dance. I could even dance well. I remembered that tango is actually good. I could hear all of the music properly all of the time. I met neither General Melée nor Major Scrum. I didn't have to sit with my back to the wall and my feet on the dancefloor, hide from anyone, watch my bag, leave my stuff in a big dusty pile in the dark, or even change seats unless I wanted to. I met congenial people. I had really good dances (much better than I would get in London) with friends and strangers to good music in a charming setting. Not getting bashed into every three seconds or having to be on guard meant I could maintain a reasonable level of dance to the end of the evening, and if anyone was unsatisfied with my dancing he didn't let me know about it. You should consider my bias, in being used to London, and in being happy to see friends. But as far as I'm concerned it was magic.

Salon Room at 33 Portland Place

[Update 25/01/10: The milonga at this venue is cancelled, probably permanently - it's looking for a new one]
As mentioned in my previous post, the 33 Portland Place milonga, which has so many rooms, tried a bit of an experiment last week. The white room downstairs was designated 'salon style' with the rules posted on the door - like no overtaking, keep moving (just one turn!), respect the line of dance and respect the space of the couples in front and behind, no dangerous play (high kicks etc). Not in exactly those words, but more or less the gist.

It was really nice and relaxing and I could close my eyes as much as I wanted to, and my friend really did reach the end of the night without one single shoe mark on his nice clean trousers. And anyone who didn't find the idea appealing or didn't enjoy dancing to those rules could wander off and dance with the likeminded in the ballroom upstairs.

Adrian Costa DJ'd and supervised and helped people understand what to do. And it was lovely. The floor in that room is quite good, much better than upstairs. The only problem was weak sound, and I daresay that can be fixed.

They're trying it again tonight, which is Adrian and Amanda's last night here I think, and I gather that they really want to continue with it in future. I don't know how that will go, but if it's an idea you like (I like it) perhaps you might consider going along and supporting it.

Social Dancing - Videos

I've got a couple of nice video clips of social dancing from the mini-festival I went to at the weekend. I didn't think that post was really the place for them. These are from the Sunday afternoon, so it's full daylight and you can see well. There isn't a lot of real social dancing to be seen on video, so I think people need to see this kind of thing. It's informative if you're a beginner, and some of my friends will really like them.

In this one, I wanted to show you the cortina, because it's so pretty the way everyone clears the floor and looks so sociable about it. The tandas were longish, always four tracks. So enough to get used to a new partner and be thoroughly enjoying yourself and satisfied by the end.



This one is from later on, after all the workshops have finished. A lot of people have gone home or sat down for a rest, so the floor is rather empty, but there's some very fine dancing to be found in there, and you get a good view.



I'm not going to say anything else here specifically - I think I'd like to give my readers a chance to watch for themselves. Again, it's informative if you're a beginner - you can watch it a few times and think about what interests you and which couples you like to watch best. It's often hard to judge these things when the movements you see are not ones you know how to accomplish yourself, so don't worry if you are just starting and you don't know what to make of it. You can always come back and watch it again later, you don't have to have an opinion now.

Festivalito de los Angeles, St. Wendel, Germany

This is an annual two-day festival in the picture-postcard-pretty little Baroque town of St. Wendel, which is in Saarland, Germany. It's organised by Melina Sedó and Detlef Engel, who are based in Saarbruecken, about an hour away and five minutes on the TGV past France. It's sponsored by the venue, Angel's Hotel (which I think is owned and run by a rather gorgeous lady called Manuela Angel).

The workshops are on Saturday afternoon, then you can have dinner (book a table; I shared mine with another lady), and the milonga goes from 9pm till about four in the morning or as long as people feel inspired to continue. I went to bed at 03:45, having held out, with unusual success, for a "quit while you're winning" moment. Then on the Sunday there is a "Tango-Brunch"; you roll out of bed at elevenish, have breakfast, then start dancing again from noon. At 6pm it stops, at which point some people have left to go home and the survivors are ready for their dinner, which was a whole 'nother thing - later.

The Class: The workshops were given by Fred and Caty Romero. They were in French, which was lucky for me as my French is quite a lot better than my German, approaching fluency on a good day. It was also translated into German, sometimes by Detlef and sometimes by a student volunteer. I took two of the six. (It's generally necessary to book with a partner, and I was alone, but Melina matched me up with a partnerless leader for these two and it worked out very well). The first workshop was called "the basics - walking and pivots" and the second was "harmony and slow movements". Both of them were interesting and full of really useful content, equally useful to the men and the women, and I felt they had been carefully thought out to illustrate important concepts. The second one in particular was challenging and useful for the women. There was also repeated emphasis on a line of dance, and help and advice for the students who had trouble achieving it.

I really took to Fred and Caty. They had empathy and seemed to love what they were doing; Fred chatted to me later about that and about his approach to DJing and about how he likes teaching in a different place from time to time with different students and different reactions; he seems to have a sense of adventure about it. They were lovely and I've never been gladder that I paid attention in French class and that my parents expected me to learn it properly. They don't speak any English, so otherwise I wouldn't have been able to communicate with them. Here are Fred and Caty somewhere else: [Update: new post with a video of them at St. Wendel]



Layout and Atmosphere: The hotel is pretty, an old building making very good use of natural light. It faces the cathedral. A temporary outdoor dance floor was put up at the front of the hotel; it then got a marquee roof in case of rain (there were a few spots on Sunday, but the weather was generally warm and humid with quite a lot of sun). The floor leads directly out from the hotel bar and restaurant which can be, and was, opened onto the square. There's also an indoor dance floor in another bit of the bar and both of them were full on the Saturday. The area around the dance floor, between it and the tables with umbrellas, was scattered with rose petals, and containers of orange flowers set around the edges of the dance floor. The sides of the marquee were opened and closed from time to time according to the variations of the weather. Here's a pic from Sunday afternoon, quite late, with the floor about one-third full compared to earlier.



You can partly see from the picture that there's quite a substantial drop on three sides of the dance floor, which does focus people's minds on not doing anything reckless. You need to build trust. It made me just a little more cautious than I would otherwise have been about who I danced with on that floor rather than the other one. People danced in a civilised way, I got virtually no bumps and those I remember were just brushes from the side, I think.

Hospitality: It's a luxury hotel in a really attractive building. The service is excellent (it helps to speak reasonable German. Most of the staff don't speak English well, though some do and quite a few speak French). The food's very good. Everything's lovely. It costs quite a bit but the drinks were reasonable. Entry to the milongas is free, and you don't have to stay or eat in the hotel, so there aren't water jugs, which is OK with me if entry is free to an outdoor festival. I mostly drank coffee.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: The whole thing was a fascinating holiday from my point of view. On the Saturday evening, Fred and Caty gave a lovely improvised performance. Their style is a close-embrace salon style. I think they did three or perhaps four dances, and I really liked the middle one, for which Fred had chosen a beautiful piece of modern music, quite unlike anything else that got played, which obviously had a strong emotional message for him. [Update: video here.] As for other interesting things, I learned at least the following: If I thought the dancing flower was a tango pisstake, this was because I had not sufficiently experienced the presence and activities of Detlef Engel; especially when ostensibly dancing a perfectly square tango-salon, and with a perfectly straight face. Different class.

What I thought of the DJing: Melinda Sedó DJ'd on the Saturday night and Andreas Wichter on Sunday afternoon. Both of them obviously put a lot of thought into constructing tandas, both play cortinas, and everybody clears the floor for every cortina. I don't think there was a single dodgy tanda or track in twelve hours of dancing. However they both stick very strictly to a more-or-less 'golden-age' period, which is kind of the point, as far as they are concerned. Now there is absolutely oodles of good music in that period, to keep you going for as long as you like, so I have no complaints whatsoever about that. But there's no point in going if you don't like this approach, so be aware of it. I do like it: I also like some other approaches.

Getting in: Entrance to the milongas was free. If you don't live in the area you probably need to stay in the hotel. My extremely nice single deluxe room was €78 per night, including breakfast and use of the "wellness centre"; you'd only actually need to stay the one night, the Saturday. You could still do all the workshops and both milongas. I stayed three. The workshops with Fred and Caty were €22 each and I think the quality was very high, with a high proportion of really useful information, and we all got personal attention.

Getting there and getting home: It makes sense to stay in the hotel. There is other possible accommodation within a few minutes' walk, which might be cheaper. To get to the festival from London, I could have taken a plane. It would have saved me a lot of money, but no time. Instead I took the Eurostar to Paris, and TGV to Saarbruecken, and the local train to St. Wendel, and I knitted all the way. I left St. Pancras International at 09:01 and checked in to the hotel at about half past four, having lost an hour to the time difference, so the train journey took about six hours including adequate allowance for changes. They're not joking when they call them trains à grande vitesse. I booked the whole journey via the Deutsche Bahn website, working on advice from the man in seat 61. If I were doing it again I might use the Deutsche Bahn website to plan the journey, then book the trains seperately.

While I was changing trains on the way back, I went for a coffee in Saarbruecken and checked the location of Melina and Detlef's festival in September at the Johanneskirche, which I'll put on the map. I think you could get there in well under five hours from St. Pancras.

The website: http://www.tangodesalon.de. The splash page has a real function, selecting your language. The info's all there, sometimes as JPG or PDF.

How it went: The dancing went exceptionally well. Now this was partly because I knew some of the people already, as it happened, but if I hadn't known anyone I think I would still have found it fairly straightforward to get my first dance, and after that there wouldn't have been a problem. It was a very congenial atmosphere. All levels were represented. The Saturday night was a bit intense and at one point I had to go to my room and cool my feet off, but the Sunday afternoon was very relaxed (see photo above). Those who remained at the very end mostly had dinner in a large loose group with the tables pushed together and this was in some ways my favourite part of the whole weekend; I've never been happier that I made use of the opportunities I had at school. Nobody can be selfconscious about speaking a foreign language when nobody's perfect, and some people understand and speak more than others, and you all want to understand each other, talking about things that interest and amuse you all, and there's no showing off. Just communication.

I think I should say a word about style. It costs a lot to go to a festival like this in comfort, so you need to make an informed decision about what you're going to get out of it and whether it's right for you. Woman or man, you need to know how to dance a front-on, close-embrace, continuous-connection tango, if you're going to get a lot of dances. It doesn't matter what else you know, as long as this is among your options. You need to like the Golden Age music, or there'd be no point. And if you are the bloke who I personally witnessed reversing at speed into two couples at once at Corrientes in June, please don't go because if you fall off that dance floor there'll be a broken leg, not necessarily yours. Okay?

Anyway I loved it. I had a top-class weekend.