Boston tango festival - Day 2

Thursday was the second milonga, at the same space. It was pretty much the same as the day before, it just seemed like there were less people, which I find odd. Maybe a lot of people came Wednesday to see the performances. Same horrifying lack of floor craft (Deb got hit in the head by one of the local "dancers", that guy is a menace on the dance floor, yet he thinks he's fantastic. He actually TEACHES tango and he gets gigs to showcase tango at weddings like you can see by following this link. I shudder at the thought of people watching him and thinking that is what tango is.), same light setup and once again the milonga ended at midnight. Sigh ...

Speaking of performances. It's rare I enjoy watching a performance more then watching the same people dancing socially. That's because in most cases, it seems like the dancers feel they have to do amazing athletic things in a performance, and the whole thing looks like a circus act.

I found it weird that argentine dancers would dance (at least during performances) almost exclusively in open embrace. I thought they are supposed to prize the connection and intimacy of the dance beyond anything else.

I feel that we might have a vicious circle going. The performers probably feel like they would not be as entertaining if they didn't go overboard with the athletics, so they keep doing it, and at the same time they make people think this is what tango is all about, so they sort of create the "monsters" who want them to execute the "dancing with the stars" performances. It's quite a shame I think.

I danced with one of the argentine instructors at the end of the night, on the last two songs (two versions of the "La Cumparsita"). On the first song she felt a little stiff and mechanical, like she was bracing for disaster ;), so I kept it simple and stayed in open embrace. On the second song, I switched to close and by the second half I felt we were really dancing (as in, she was participating in the dance rather then just tentatively going along for the ride). I wish it wasn't the end of the night, as I would need a few more dances to figure out if I could create a really good connection with her. Please note that I'm not questioning her proficiency in the technical aspects of the dance, I'm talking about how well we managed to connect with each other and the "chemistry" of the dance. It was too little to figure it out. Maybe I'll get another shot at it later.

Of course dancing what seemed to be the last dance of the evening with somebody else got me in trouble as Debbi likes to end the evening dancing with me, so she excused herself to the person she was dancing with only to sit down alone for the last song. Ouch. In my defense, I looked for her when the first "La Cumparsita" started and she was dancing with Miles, so I went to chat with the DJ and sort of ran into the teacher and without thinking it through, I asked her for a dance. Since I asked her halfway through the song, I felt it would've been really rude to excuse myself after just half a song, so I felt I had to continue.

When I got back to the table Deb was looking really disappointed, so not wanting to leave things as they were, I grabbed my cell phone, which among other things it's an mp3 player, quickly found "Re, Fa, Si" (Biagi), put the phone on speaker and asked Deb for the last dance of the night. So off we went, with the phone kept really close to our ears and had our last song of the night. Miles took pictures and some video of this dance which you can see below. So that's how I managed to dug myself out of the hole ;)