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

We met a friend from Boston for lunch and then hung out in the city for a while before we headed back to V's apartment to get ready for the milonga.

Since l'Academie has a new milonga on Tuesdays we decided to skip the festival milonga and go there instead. Also Caroline was going there so we figured it was worth checking out.

We got there at 8PM, and we were the only ones there for 30 minutes. I danced with Debbi, as the music was great. I don't know the DJs name but he did a great job. Caroline came in a bit later and she taped me and Debbi dancing.



After that I danced with Caroline a tanda and it went great. Her embrace improved tremendously since the last time we danced together and her following got a lot better as she is now much more calm and able to wait for the lead rather then anticipate it.

After 9:30 a few more people came in but it was mostly dead. There were a few good dancers in the room, so I had a chance to dance with them on a (mostly) empty floor which I really like. The first lady I danced with she's been dancing 16 years... While she didn't have perfect technique like some of the tango "Gods" I danced with in the past, she has a wonderful embrace and musicality and a confidence that I guess comes as years of dancing pass. I then danced with "L", another really good dancer and Debbi managed to grab that on tape. Watching the tape makes me wish I'd keep my back straiter and have a better extension as I step, but I guess I have to be ... gasp ... patient, I will eventually get there.



The lady who's been dancing for 16 year paid me a very nice compliment. She said something along the lines "It is such a pleasure dancing with you. After only a year and a half you learned to fuse with the music and your partner, which is the most important thing". She is french, which might explain the unusual choice of the verb (fuse), but I like it, I think I would like to be fused to the music and my partner. It seems like it's what should matter when dancing. I like compliments which are really meant. Too often people pay empty compliments and I think that practice just waters down the real ones. Which is why I never do that, if I pay a compliment to someone, a really mean exactly what I say. Because if you describe an OK dance as "fantastic" or "amazing", how would one be able to describe a really amazing one? "Oh, this was super-duper-fantastico-amazingly-great" ? So, if I say "fantastic" I mean, surprisingly to many, "fantastic".

Despite the good dances I had, the place was practically dead, so we jumped on the bike and went to the festival milonga, where we arrived around 11:30PM, just in time for the live music ... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ... Se while that played, we chatted with some people, and it seems we are not alone in our opinion of the festival.

Once the live music was over and Michel started Djing again, I went and asked "D". We never danced before even though I asked her, as it seemed like it was always bad timing. She is fun to dance with and we danced probably 3 tandas. I then danced with a couple of other dancers I danced with before, and while it was not mind blowing, it was pleasant and fun. The milonga went until 2:15 which was fine, as I don't think I would've lasted much longer. There were a couple of other dancers in the room I would've liked to dance with, but they seemed to exclusively dance with one person so I didn't have the opportunity.

I'd say that Tuesday was probably the best day so far.

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.

38th birthday in Montreal

Weekend in Montreal

Debbi took me to Montreal for the weekend as a birthday gift. I love that city and every time I go there I wish I had more time. We met a fellow blogger, Caroline, and we had a great time chatting and going to milongas together. Yes, milongas. You didn't think I was going to be in Montreal and not dance, did you? That'd be just silly...

We made to the Royal Tango milonga Saturday night. I haven't danced much as it was crowded and the floor craft was marginal at best. Also with just a few notable exceptions, the level of dance was somewhat mediocre. I was told it gets much better after midnight (and the only other time I've been there it was better later), but we left early as Debbi wasn't feeling well.

Sunday was a true tango marathon. We started it at 3PM with the practica at Studio Tango then went to the Tangueria milonga where we made it around 7:30 and then we left around 10:30 to make to "L'Academie" where we closed the place at 2AM.

I'll post some reviews of there venues on my milonga review site later, so I won't go into details now. I'll just write about some of the highlights.

At the Studio Tango supervised practica I danced with Mireille for a little bit, as she was "on the clock" (she was the supervising teacher). I saw her at the milonga the day before, but we left before I had a chance to introduce myself. So I did at the practica. She is a dream to dance with. Unfortunately because the practica was crowded and the movements of the dancers were a textbook Brownian motion, I spent a lot of energy in trying to protect her (and myself) from being crashed into, so that made it somewhat difficult to truly enjoy the experience, but one thing was clear, she is awesome. She masters the "moving like moving through molasses" technique and I look forward to dance with her again in a more favorable setting.

At the Tangueria milonga I had the chance to dance with Laura and she was a blast to dance with. I wish I had the chance to dance with her on some music I really like, instead of Pugliese. Pugliese can be fun to dance to, but I have to be in the right mood, it's a difficult music to dance to and trying to make it interesting the first time you dance with someone can be challenging. Debbi took video of me dancing with her, here are a few fragments. Apparently I picked up this funny habit of dancing with my mouth open, which makes me look like a drooling idiot (which I'm not ... most of the time). I'm thinking I should stop doing that ...


The next stop was L'Academie. And it turns out that that's where all the great dancers were. Marika was there (my first "tango crush" as Debbi calls her) and we danced a couple of tandas. She was just as lovely as always, both as a person and as a dancer. She has this amazing warm embrace that can just make you melt. It just occurred to me, I think she should teach a workshop on embrace, a lot of people would benefit greatly if they learned hers. Or maybe she does that already as quite a few dancers in Montreal have a very pleasant embrace.

A while ago, the second time I was in Montreal, the first time I went with Debbi, at the L'Academie milonga we saw a man and a woman dancing that caught our attention. He is very protective about his partners, at times keeping his arms around her like a shield and he sings as he dances. He is obviously a very good dancer. She had this totally relaxed expression on her face, the "tango bliss" face. Last night I saw her sitting down and went and asked her for a dance. She is a great dancer (she is been dancing for 8 years) and we danced for a while, maybe two and a half tandas (there were no cortinas played at this milonga and it was a bit disconcerting) until a milonga set came along. She asked if I'd like to dance the milonga set, and I would've loved to continue dancing with her, but a milonga set was more then I could handle after dancing the whole day.

Last but not least, I obviously danced a lot with Debbi, she is (quickly) becoming a great dancer. While she's only been dancing since January, she is quite often one of the best dancers in the room. Her embrace, presence and following is often praised by her dance partners and she is quickly improving on the other skills that make someone a great follower (in my opinion of course).

I had a great time, thank you Deb, you're awesome.