Djing the Odd Tuesday Milonga

My first milonga as a DJ was supposed to be tonight. So last night, when I went to the "Odd Tuesday Milonga" I took the laptop with me to work on some play lists. When I got there, Steve, the host, was fumbling with his laptop, looking kind of frustrated. It seems he was missing some music so I said, you know, I have my laptop with me if there is a problem with the music. He looked at me, said, "you want to do the music?", I said, "Uhh, sure". So there I was, 10 minutes away from the milonga start, with no play lists, no cortinas, on my first night as a DJ at a milonga. Sweet!

It's tough to say how did I do. Most people were dancing at all times, so I'll take that as a good sign, but aside from a couple of them, no one came to say if they were liking or disliking the music. I did ask K, who is Russian, and if you want a blunt response to a question, the best people to ask are Russians or East Europeans. He said it was OK, he didn't particularly like it or dislike it, but he liked the music I play at practicas better. Huh... I thought I did play sort of the same music. I did save my ad hoc build play list, so I'll look to see how it compares with the lists I made for practicas.

Tonight I'm DJing again and tomorrow I'm DJing the practica at MIT. That's a lot of DJing this week.

DJ debut ...

Wednesday it will be my first time DJing a milonga. I've been Djing practicas for a while now, but this is the first milonga. I will DJ from the laptop, but I'm planning on loading a backup playlist on my mp3 player and burn it on three regular CDs, just in case things go terribly wrong with the technology ...

So, if you live in Boston, come check it out! If you like traditional music that is, there will be no alternative music at this milonga.

Montreal - International Tango Festival (@Tango Libre) - Monday

I'm not sure why we went there Monday, as we knew the DJ (same as Saturday) and we knew there was going to be live music (which I don't like). Monday was a complete bust, except for dancing with Debbi at the beginning of the evening on an empty floor. When I say empty, it's not just a figure of speech. We danced for at least 20 minutes alone on the floor, with everyone else sitting down. Don't know why, didn't care. I like empty floors. A few tandas felt really good, particularly a milonga one (milonga still being my nemesis).

With one exception, I have not danced with anyone else. While there were a few people there I would've liked to dance with, the music was atrocious. I thought Saturday was the worst music selection one could hear. Apparently I was wrong.

The one exception was Soledad, one of the Argentine instructors with whom I danced one song. After the performances they were on their way out, but a waltz was playing and Soledad had restless feet, she looked like she wanted to dance. All the other instructors were heading for the door, but I went for it anyway. I walked up to her and said something along the lines of "Oh, are you leaving already? Would you care to dance one song before you go?". So off we went. Not surprisingly she is a fantastic dancer. Light but steady presence, warm embrace, amazing balance and musicality.

Montreal - International Tango Festival (@Tango Libre) - Sunday

In the afternoon we met with fellow blogger Caroline, and we hung out for a while, had a great Lebanese lunch and sat down on the grass in a park and chatted. That was a pleasant low key afternoon.

After the experience we've had Saturday, we went to the place where the festival milonga was going to take place, wary of what we would find. The milonga was going to take place in a room in the Old Port which has glass walls on two sides, it looked pretty cool. We got there at about 8PM and looking at the long line formed at the entrance I realized I did not recognize anyone. It seemed the live music with Beba Pugliese attracted a lot of people who are not avid tango dancers. Also, the Claude was DJing again (see my prior post) and the room did not seem large enough to allow such a large inexperienced crowd to dance comfortably. We heard there was going to be over an hour of performances and since the admission price was $35 we felt it was not worth taking a chance, so we went to L'Academie instead.

L-Academie was pretty empty, presumably most people went to the festival, which I later learned it was not exactly true. While the festival milonga was packed, I was told that a lot of regulars were in neither place. What I think happens in these cases, people assume everyone is going to the festival milonga, and if they feel like that is not worth going to, they just stay home or do ... gasp ... non-tango activities.

But despite being a slow night, I had a good time. Aside from Debbi, I danced with a few people. "L", a french woman who moved to Montreal because she liked the people here better then her compatriots, she is a good dancer. I danced with her before when I came to Montreal for the Neo-Tango festival, and when we came for my birthday, and back then she was very tense and her dancing suffered. But Sunday she was not nervous and it made such a great difference. It was a lovely couple of tandas.

I danced with "I", a girl I never danced with before, she is a lot of fun, highly musical, great embrace and while she did anticipate the movement a bit, the qualities she has certainly made up for that. "M", a woman who was obviously somehow connected with the milonga as she seemed to know everyone, was probably the best dance of the night technique wise, but somehow not the most fun, as she didn't seem like she was really enjoying herself much. But she did stay for 3 tandas, so maybe she was having an off night. "E" was there, a girl I met at the Neo-tango festival when she asked me to dance, while she doesn't have the best technique out there (not that she is not bad, mind you) she is fun to dance with in great part because it's really obvious she enjoys it a lot and she doesn't tense up when something goes wrong, and that is so important it makes up for any other issues.

DJs and captive audiences ...

Saturday I went to the Tango Potpourri milonga. I had a good time and I might go over the details in another post, but right now I want to talk about the music and the DJing. The DJ was Jackie Wong, from Tango Pulse.

Until about midnight the music was fine. There were some uninspired tandas but overall it was OK. After midnight, it's when the alternative frenzy started. If you've read my blog before you know alternative is not my thing, I find the constant beat and the lack of depth in the music boring. But once in a while, a tanda with carefully picked songs can be quite fun. But not three or four tandas in a row and certainly not two hours of alternative songs, all sounding the same.

By the end of the milonga I was quite annoyed, and I'll tell you why. Murat & Michelle were in attendance as they were one of the visiting teaching guests, and around 1AM when a traditional waltz tanda was played, I asked Michelle to dance. This was the first time I had a chance to dance with her and I was really curious if we can connect, she seems quite athletic on the dance floor and I prefer the "calmer" dancers. But once again, the looks are deceiving, she does have that clam quality to her dance, she is definitely an amazing dancer (see my post about the "Perfect Follow") and despite the overcrowded floor I had a fantastic time. At the end of the tanda I was expecting her to say thank you and move on to the better leads in the room. But for reasons unknown, she kept talking through the cortina waiting for the next tanda. Score! When the first song of the next tanda started we sighed and rolled our eyes at the same time. Yet another slow alternative, the absolute same style that was played most of the last hour. Michelle says, "well, let's try it, maybe it gets better". So we start dancing on the painfully slow, constant beat music and despite having such a fantastic dancer in my arms I find myself wishing the song is over. When it was over we looked at each other, shook our heads and without a word we stopped dancing. That music was incredibly boring. She made a comment to that effect, and then we chatted about some other stuff and I was once again expecting her to move on, go back and talk to the people she was talking to when I asked her to dance, or whatever. But no, we kept talking through the rest of the tanda, and through the cortina and the next tanda starts and ... YET again another slow alternative tanda. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, my eyes rolled so violently I thought I was going to hurt myself. Michelle (shoot ooops, no, she did not shoot anything, I need to proof read better ...) shook her head disappointed and in mutual agreement we decided to give up and go talk to some people.

While my dancing got a lot better in the last few months, it's not often when a "Perfect follow" of Michelle's caliber go out of her way to dance with me, so when the music repeatedly screws up my opportunity to dance with such a fantastic dancer, I get really ticked off. But wait, I'm not done yet. Before I move on however, I want to recommend Murat & Michelle as instructors. I took their Sunday class and I loved it. I generally dislike group classes for a number of reasons, but this was great. Murat explained and demonstrated in detail the mechanics of the move, did not get stuck into teaching some pattern, the class was geared towards getting the "feel" of the movement being taught (I used the word "movement" on purpose, as it was not a figure that was being taught, it was a way of moving that one can use to make their on figure and patterns). I will take a private with them as soon as I can, they're awesome.

Marika & Bulent were in attendance as well, and if you read my early posts about my Montreal visits, you'd know she is, like my girlfriend likes to tease me, my "tango crush". She wasn't feeling good that evening, she had a nasty cough, so I wasn't expecting the chance to dance with her, but we were talking and a milonga tanda was just ending so I asked if she feels well enough to dance a bit. She enthusiastically agreed (she is so sweet), and we went on the dance floor waiting for the cortina to end. So what music started? Can you guess? Yeah, yet another slow alternative, the same style as before. Marika is a nuevo dancer and she rolled her eyes, that should tell you something. I had a great time, she is such an amazing dancer, but I had a great dance despite of the music, not because of the it.

So, if any DJ reads this, please, for the love of God, don't play the same style of music over and over again. The fact that people are still dancing is not necessarily a sign they like the music. Especially at one time events, there are people in attendance that you normally don't have a chance to dance with, so chances are, most people are going to dance anyway, but don't let that fool you. You have a captive audience, we don't have much of a choice, but that's not a license to torture us. ASK people, and ask the right way. Don't ask, "do you like the music?" most people are too polite to say "no". Ask "Would you like to hear more alternative, or would you like to hear some classic tango?" A milonga is not the place to "try new stuff", and if you HAVE TO try something, one "trial" tanda per evening is enough. I paid $20 to come to this milonga to have fun, not to be a guinea pig.

Additional note: while I had a big issue with the music selection in the second half of the milonga, the sound system was top notch. Unlike many other events, I could hear the music everywhere on the dance floor and it was not uncomfortably loud next to the speakers either. Good job there.