Milonga

On Friday night we had our first taste of milonga. Well I say Friday night, but as we didn't arrive until 11pm and left at about 4.30am, I guess Saturday morning would be more accurate!

Milonga is where people of all ages go to dance the tango and the milonga (similar steps but a bit faster). There is an important etiquette to finding a partner. Women who want to dance stay seated but look interested, while the men walk the room. The man will try to catch the eye of the woman he wants to dance with and gesture to her. If she is not interested then she will avoid eye contact and look away, but if she wants to she will nod and then they will both make their way to meet at the dance floor. Much of this is very subtle, so if you are a none dancer like me you have to be careful not to look anyone in the eye if you want to avoid an embarrassing encounter! Generally you will dance with many different partners throughout the evening irrespective of whether you are there with someone. The dances are in sets of four and you keep the partner for the whole set. You don't speak during the dance but there is time for have a brief chat in between and you do see the odd couple having a very awkward silence while waiting for the right point of the music to start dancing again.  It amused us that  when the music ends the dancers stop abruptly and freeze for a moment before releasing - it reminded us of a game of musical statues!

We went because one of our Spanish teachers , Cecilia, was kind enough to invite us to go with her and her friends. They are regular milongistas so frequently took to the floor whilst we just watched, but it was still good fun. It was intriguing to watch the invitation and acceptance to dance and fascinating to see the way they all negotiated their way around the packed dance floor with very few collisions.  At about 2am two experts, in this case the teacher of one person in our group, did three very impressive show dances.

There is a tradition at milonga that if one of the regulars has a birthday then they get the floor to themselves and various of their friends cut in to dance with them.  We happened to be there for a special occasion as it was the birthday of the oldest regular.  He is about 89 and works as a chauffeur during the day and then goes to milonga every night.  He is still pretty decent on his feet and everyone is always happy to dance with him so there was quite a queue for his birthday tango.

And as we were now firmly into Saturday, we had hit 9 July, which is the anniversary of Argentina getting independence from Spain, so after the birthday dance they played the national anthem.  We had heard a fairly lousy rendition of it before the football, with most people having no idea of most of the words, but the milonga crowd did an excellent job of it, knowing all the words and singing in time and in tune.  Typically, as probably the only non-Argentine people in the room, we had to be sat right in front of the piano that they played it on and that everybody looked to as they stood and sang.  So we did stand, but felt fairly conspicuous being practically the only people not singing.

As the night carried on the better dancers hit the floor and even to us the improvement in standard was noticeable, though there was still no room for the kicks and flourishes.  Cecilia and Sol left at about 4am to go to another milonga and then have breakfast, before getting to bed at about 7am.  We stuck around to about 4.30am as the dancing was drawing to a close and got to bed comparatively early at about 5am.  Just as well as we were supposed to be meeting Cecilia and Sol again at midday.  But that is for another posting.