Undead Tango at the Peacock, and scenes I'd like to see

So, one of the reviews said "you have to admire Cornejo’s effort to rejuvenate tango for 21st Century", and I think it would be a very good thing if somebody actually did try to reinvent the tango show for the 21st Century. So I thought I'd better go and see if it had been tried. I expected the reviewer to be mistaken, but I was open minded.

Content warning: some adult language.

It really was trying to be different. It contained things I didn't expect. They included a farthingale, a longish session of ballet pointe-work, a Disney princess and a lot of schmaltz. At least it realised it should try.

Its attempt to avoid cliché opens with "Tango de Roxane" in gold Kylie dresses. The first half continued with various slightly steampunk-themed scenes, musical solos, a wedding with a kind of Widow Twankey thing going on, then the Disney princess, an extended scene of one ballerina en pointe with six men as props, and a lot more that I don't remember. The tango was pouting, one-paced, unvarying, frenetic, kickety kickety kick.

The second half consisted mostly of what you would expect - a succession of the kind of single-couple choreographies that usually do well in the Escenario section of the Mundial. Mundane is what they certainly are. One of the couples paused twice and looked briefly at each other, rather than exclusively at the audience and into space. Then they did an endless turn through a long silence. That, and the obvious fall, were the only moves I remember.

The Widow Twankey bit came back with a clown scene all about the huge impractical costumes, which were pretty much the theme of the production as a whole. There was also the obligatory single scene of men dancing with each other, and of course they had to make it a play-fight, because two men who can actually dance, actually dancing with each other would be - well, what?

On New Year's Eve I was at a festival in France and one of the things I was privileged to see, when I wasn't too busy dancing, was two of the most truly charming and attractive men on the European tango scene dancing together socially and having fun. There's no video, because it was social dancing and it was about actually being there (although if you took video, you should TOTALLY send it right now. I won't tell). I got to dance with each of them as well, and they were both lovely.

This wasn't that. This was so utterly terrified of appearing remotely interesting, let alone sexy, that it threw a punch and ran for the hills. They had to bring a woman on to calm things down with the magic tits of pornobanality.

Tango is a traditional partner dance and a gender-role-play game. It's also a social dance scene in which women dancing together because they want to dance with each other is common, and normal, and often looks compelling and wonderful; and in which men dancing together because they want to dance with each other is much less common, and is also normal, and also often looks compelling and wonderful.

And I'm somehow supposed to be impressed by this on the stage at Sadler's Wells?

This production seems completely unaware that anyone, anywhere in the world, dances tango with another person because they want to. The 'tango' presented is an achingly narrow bonsai product. Irrelevant to its global practice, contemptuous of its audience.

I have no problem with anybody arranging Skyfall as a tango and dancing to it. None. I think that's a great idea. It has a pretty good tune. If you've got a good arranger and a good band, and the song says something you want to say, totally go for it. Dive right in if you think you're good enough. The more good songs get well arranged and well played as new tangos, the better; eventually some of them will be good enough to dance to, and to get there you have to experiment and practice.

I also quite liked the steampunk look. Why not? Long skirts are challenging for the cast, but if it means something to you, do it. Some of the costumes near the end reminded me of passing through Birmingham on a bus at 5am in 1997 on my way to the British Grand Prix, happy days. What they meant to the director is anyone's guess, but I have no problem with it. I just don't think it counts as innovation. Nor does ballet, and nor does rock-and-roll, especially if not very good.

There were moments of genuine emotion; the emotions were misogyny, transphobia, and the kind of sexism directed mainly by men at men which is often referred to as 'toxic masculinity'. The production seemed unconscious of these, so I can only suppose they were sincere.

I would have left the theatre indifferent, but not especially cross, if I hadn't seen the encore and read the programme notes. In the encore, they put on 80s 'fame' costumes and danced tango to 50's rock and roll. If you want to dance rock and roll in a tango show, I would like you to dance rock and roll, preferably well. As for the programme notes, I'll spare you.

It's possible that the costumes were intended to be the plot.

In fact, I'm not going to discuss the production any more. It met my expectations, which shouldn't be an excuse. Instead I'm going to discuss what a tango show should be. Let's make up some possible ground rules and just put them out there.

Ballet is not innovation. Rock and roll is not innovation. Gymnastics are not innovation, nor are they in themselves good dancing. Long skirts are not innovation. 80's timewarps are not innovation. Dancing to a Bond theme has been done rather better on Strictly Come Dancing nearly a decade ago. Same-sex dancing is not innovation. It may be striking, significant, beautiful, or even unusual on stage, but it is not new.

I would like to see innovation, ambition, and imagination in tango shows. I would like to see choreography that means something and says something. I would like to see things more like the performance that came second in the Mundial this year, which made me feel something. I've seen tango performances in the last twelve months that moved me to tears. It is totally possible.

Here are some things I would like to see in a tango show. Not all in the same show. These are just some ideas, some possible directions, in no particular order. They are not revolutionary. Most of them are extremely conservative, and would be tiny steps in relation to the format and traditions of tango shows. They're things that might give you a reason to dance tango on stage, rather than something else.

Innovation, in tango shows, would be literally anything that wasn't crap. But, how about:

• A variety of styles and ways of dancing, chosen for the ideas they communicate. Tango is expressively rich, technically diverse, and global. Like Shakespeare.
• A scene that tells the story of its music, in the sense of addressing its content. There are songs about gender violence, dead babies, loyal dogs, has-beens, falling in love, selfishness, poverty, crushes, breakups, second thoughts, pretentiousness, humanity adrift in a mechanical world, bad dancing, warfare, emigration, immigration, homesickness, money, church bells, and lots more. The content is sometimes difficult. Why not take it on?
• If you're going to dance to 'Ojos Negros' as a vals, and you have a good band, a costume budget, and a talented arranger, why not tell some of the story of that tune? You could still have the Disney princess dress in there, if you wanted.
• A scene that subverts, defies, or reimagines the content of a well-known tango, or uses it as a clever joke.
• A scene that tells a story about travel and Europe and Japan in the history of tango. 
• An ethnically diverse cast.
• If (as it's clear this production does) you have total contempt for the very existence of European social tango, why not satirise it? I saw enough plastic Chichos at a small festival in France a couple of weekends ago to make anybody laugh out loud. I bet the cast could make fun of that. You could dance in vomit-green swooshpants, bare feet, a bath-ring beard and a man-bun. Hell, you could make fun of Noelichicks, Carlitoheads, Salonsters, bloggers, wielders of the Minirig, or dancing in airports. At least you wouldn't be insulting our intelligence, and it could hardly fail to be funnier than the Widow Twankey. Or show me the hilarious and touching things I don't know about that (probably) happen in Seoul and Shanghai.
• Any scene at all that alludes to tango as it exists in the world.
• Scenes of same-sex dancing that are more than displacement activity. Why not make it about love, or friendship, or teamwork, or learning, or solidarity, or society, or even, for fuck's sake, sex?
• Any scene at all about about complex human feelings or the way people take care of and teach and support each other in bad situations.
• A scene that shows someone wanting to dance with someone else. For any reason.
• A scene about how dancing enhances people's lives. 
• A scene that communicates how magical it feels to find that you are apparently leading because someone has decided to follow you, and how amazing that process is.
• A scene alluding to the contemporary experience of tango tourism, from any point of view. Daring, huh?
• A funny story about a badly-organised tango competition. Even more daring.
• A scene alluding to the funny, complicated or stressful side of organising a social dance. 
• A musical story that says something about the relationships between tango, jazz, blues, and rock, and shows off the versatility and knowledge of cast and musicians, without abandoning what music means to people.
• A cast spending less time obviously out-of-breath.
• If you're going to have a backdrop of random stars, why not have a backdrop of obviously non-random stars, with the Moon and Orion the Southern way up?

I don't think the explanation for all this is commercial. It looks commerically stupid to ignore the European tango scene. It has an absorbing hobby, it has time, and it has money. You don't have to limit yourself to standing ovations from randoms who have no idea what they've just seen. You could carry on pleasing them and still refrain from insulting the people who should be your fans and evangelists.

The show wasn't "Immortal Tango". It was undead. If you are a stage producer or choreographer and think you can revive it, please contact Sadler's Wells. Please.

[Review: Immortal Tango, Peacock Theatre, Sadler's Wells, till 19th March]

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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.

Easter @ Thames Valley Tango

A friend suggested we meet up at Thames Valley Tango's Easter event. As I didn't have anything planned for my long weekend, I decided to get out of London and have two milongas while I was about it, the Friday and the Saturday. They also do a thing at Christmas, and a regular monthly Tea Dance. There were, I think, three days of workshops and three milongas in total.

The Class: I didn't attend the workshops - I went on impulse, and it was too late to book. They were given by Jenney Frances and Ricardo Oria, and my friends and other students were enthusiastic about the quality, saying it was well communicated, enjoyable, and good on technical fundamentals. I think Jenney and Ricardo normally teach in Edinburgh.

Layout and Atmosphere: The hall is very handsome, more so on a spring evening than it looks in the pictures. It's brick building with a pointed roof, a little set back from the high street, and they put a big banner up on the side entrance that says TANGO, so you can find the way in. It has a high beamed roof with skylights, a stage at one end and a balcony at the other. The floor is light wood, smooth, flat, and even, with white lines for games, which my feet didn't notice. To your right as you go in is an L-shaped arrangement of tables so that one person can be both desk and DJ when it's not too busy, or two people can sit companionably and do two jobs. In one corner under the balcony was a small display of Nueva Epoca tango shoes (made by Werner Kern), jewellery, accessories, drapey bamboo-fibre knitwear and practice T-shirts with messages like "sacada me baby", and "I am not a shopping trolley". There were tables round three sides of the hall, laid out with their ends pointing into the middle. There were enough of them in proportion to the crowd so that I could always find a seat - mostly the same one, where my mug of tea was - when I wanted it, and could perch elsewhere from time to time. The whole hall was very prettily dressed with white net, red tablecloths, tealights, giant pictures of roses, and loops of white LEDs. I think there were fresh flowers here and there. The look and feel struck me as attractive, and relaxed - maybe it was just the contrast with cramped, battered, crowded, frenetic, uneven London. There was a good mix of ages.

Hospitality: Excellent. As soon as I walked in Charles, at the desk, perceived that he did not remember my face, asked me whether it was my first time there, welcomed me kindly and told me where to find the refreshments and the loos. (The possibility that he knew I was me and might write this, is, AFAIK, remote). In the kitchen, through the door in the far corner, were two kettles on the boil, some jugs of filter coffee, lots of IKEA mugs, and ample supplies of the teas, coffees, and biscuits. On the tables were plastic cups and bottles of water, and trays of crisps and those tiny chocolate eggs with sugar shells that make your teeth squeak. All included. The loos were clean, supplied, well lit, and very spacious, and behind the door marked Ladies' there is not only the Ladies' but also a large changing room with chairs, numerous coathooks (where I left my coat and shoe bag on the Saturday) and a full length mirror. One of the loo locks was broken. I was impressed with the bunch of daffs.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: On the Saturday, Jenney and Ricardo gave a performance. I think three of the pieces were planned and the last one, my favourite, probably wholly or partly improvised. They performed in a fluid front-on style with quite a few flicks and flourishes, but it wasn't heels-to-ears stuff. And they looked like they still loved each other after a dodgy moment, which was nice.

What I thought of the DJing: It was all traditional and all strong and included a lot of things I know and like and a few things I hadn't heard before. There were (nearly always) cortinas. I think the tandas varied in length, but were mostly fours. There was a good sprinkling of milonga and vals. The last tanda on each evening was different, more what I would call semi-traditional - then La Cumparsita to finish. The sound system was good, and the sound was consistent between tracks and all over the hall.

Getting in: It was £10 on the Saturday, £8 on the Friday. If you went to both, I think the Sunday was free, but I went back to London on Sunday morning.

Getting there and getting home: I was staying round the corner, and there are several other choices of reasonably-priced accommodation within five minutes' walk, if you want to make a weekend of it. My friends had driven from North London, which I think took well under an hour. It's five minutes' walk from Eton Riverside station, which is just under an hour from Vauxhall on the train, and I knitted peacefully all the way there and back. It would probably be quite feasible for me to take the train there for the monthly tea dance. The train ticket would be £16.40 - four drinks at Wild Court, if that.

The website: At http://www.thamesvalleytango.co.uk, well organised, looks nice, tells you what you need to know.

How it went: Very well. There were people I knew there, to give me a start, so I can't really tell how easy it would be for a total stranger to get her first dance. A simple salon style predominated strongly, and the general impression of dancing was nicer to my eyes than any London milonga I've been to yet. On the Friday I didn't have a single bump; on the Saturday, although the floor did get quite full, I had a total of two, both when dancing with Londoners if I remember correctly. My impression of the dancing in general over the weekend made me think that Charles probably does a good job in the beginner's class. Being out of town, I took one or two risks and had a couple of poor dances, but the majority were good to excellent, and not with people I had met before. Anyway, everything worked out so that I could dance about as much as I wanted to and sit quietly drinking tea or chatting about as much as I wanted to, and I enjoyed the watching a lot more than I usually do. When I wanted to dance, a persistent look sufficed as an invitation. There were also direct requests, but I wasn't pestered. Generally the whole thing was a relaxed and pleasant experience. I don't know how much of that was just the fact that I'd got out of London and felt like I was on holiday, but my friends had the same impression - a "good vibe".