One more tango entry about what one encounters when one ventures out of the studio, puts on one's dancing shoes, and faces the crowd. The milonga is the salon where you go to dance tango. It is also a dance made up of tango steps but to faster, more rhythmic music. The milonga is typically danced very close, apretada, chest to chest, and in this way the couple moves jauntily as one. The tango can be danced salon-style, meaning with more space between the man and the woman, allowing them to execute longer steps, more intricate kicks, and wider turns. This requires a lot of non-verbal communication as well as a thorough knowledge of the optional flourishes that both the man and the woman have to choose from. The tango can also be danced milonguero-style, meaning joined at the torso. This is the most popular form at the milonga, where people typically don't have room to do many fancy kicks anyway. But when the floor clears for the occasional show of professionals, it's time to gasp. They travel across the floor twirling, faster than you would think possible without losing their balance. She kicks between his legs, he kicks around her waist, then he pulls her close into an incline and rotates with her feet being the pivot.
Now, the scene at the milonga is a culture unto itself. The location might be an old cafe or a club, both of which might also offer classes and practice sessions. The crowd ranges from painted old ladies and pot-bellied gents to foreigners who come to BA for this purpose to locals in their 20s-30s-40s who have taken classes, as it's not something you grow up doing. Some milongas are known more for a younger or older crowd, and one is even known for being gay. One can dance the afternoon milonga, which takes place from about 5-10pm. People arrive from work, often alone or with a friend, change into their dancing shoes, and then look around to signal their availability for a dance. For the evening milongas, starting around 11pm and going until 2am, 4am, or even later on the weekends, people may be more likely to come in couples or with groups of friends, and be dressed more glamorously, but it is rare that couples dance together exclusively.
For anyone who hasn't come with a partner, the hostess will typically seat the men on one side of the room and the women on the other, thus facilitating an incredibly awkward process in which the man looks intently at the woman with whom he wants to dance. If she looks away, he gives up. If she looks back, he will attempt to reinforce his gaze, although she might need to signal, "me?" to be sure, since it is possible to miscalculate and realize that the man is looking at someone just to your side or behind you. Once this obstacle is overcome, the couple meets on the dance floor for a tanda or set of 4-5 songs. It is considered highly inappropriate to stop dancing with someone before the end of the tanda. So whether you like the way he leads or not, you're stuck. It goes like this:
-Empty dance floor with random music playing (might be the Rolling Stones).
-Tango music starts (might also be milonga or the even more confusing waltz, which is tango in 3-4 time).
-Gazes flit about the room, are ignored, rejected, received, and confirmed.
-The floor begins to fill with couples, soon making it difficult to see the rest of the room.
-Between each song, the couples pause and chat, asking each other's names, origins, milonga tastes, etc.
-The next song will begin amidst the chatter, until gradually the couples re-embrace, quiet down, and begin to circulate around the floor (there is a direction, but I'm not sure who decides it, although the convention seems to be counter-clockwise).
-If it's crowded and/or the leads are not that good, couples will bump into other couples. This heightens the trust issue, since the woman might get kicked or even stepped on if the man is not careful where he leads her.
-When the tanda ends, the DJ plays a minute of some other music. The dancers thank each other and separate, going back to their tables to await the next partner.
-It is not correct to dance two tandas in a row with someone--unless you want it known that you are not available for other partners. It is also not correct, the old-school teachers will tell you, that the man should approach the woman's table, because this makes it harder for her to decline. Personally, I'd just as soon they come up, put out a hand, say "bailas?" and make my life easier.
So that's all perfectly clear, right? I'm probably still missing something.
So I've been absent from blogging lately, but I was in the vast Chilean national park of Torres del Paine, where the weather changes twice a day and the isolation is absolute. At the refugios, refuges, where I stayed with a small guided group of trekkers, we were able to buy wine and beer, and they did feed us, but those were the only signs of civilization amidst the towers of granite, snow-capped mountains, foxes, condors, rabbits, scrub brush, million-year-old glaciers and a wind so strong it could hold you up. By the time I had spent a few days there, my lips were chapped, my face lined, my quads ripped, and my backpack full of stinky clothes, but being in that spectacular scenery was enough to make me grateful for being alive. And sharing it with a random assortment of like-minded people (like-minded enough to trek in the snow and rain and wild wind and then sleep in bunk beds next to perfect strangers), was totally fun. 