Berlin: About recommendation

All recommendation comes from an angle. You won't necessarily see the whole picture.  If you are middle aged or older and like dancing tango with people who enjoy embrace and connection there is no point asking a young guy where he likes to dance if he likes exuberant dancing movements associated with tango dancing to music which is not tango music with girls his age. 

There are several milongas a night on offer in Berlin.   I wanted to make best use of my time there which meant matching what I wanted with what was on offer so I asked around and got many helpful and accurate recommendations about where I would find traditional music.

The mistake I made about Berlin was an assumption that where there would be good music there would be people of all ages dancing that music.  I found this to be true only really in Cafe Dominguez and Max & Moritz.  I heard it is also true of El Ocaso.   Milongas in Berlin are even more specialised than I had realised. I found they were most distinguishable by location, music, age and ability of the dancers and sometimes a combination of these.

The other misapprehension I had was about music.  In the UK I have sought out milongas and DJs that play what I think is good traditional music but I was not really aware how selective I had been.  Nor had I remembered the extent to which I generally avoid (dancing at least, at) milongas  that I don't think play good trad and I had forgotton how disappointed I am when I do go but unsurprisingly don't then have a good (dancing) time.  Despite the wide variety of the music I have listened to more or less consciously over the last year or so locally and further afield in the UK and the wide variety proposed by international DJs on Tanda of the Week, I found the kind of traditional music played in Berlin in some places narrower and in others much broader than I expected. This was interesting in itself.

It is good to know what you are going for and to be flexible to opportunities that arise.  If you want to dance a lot, then unless you are young (for women), elegant and a good dancer consider that going to the milongas with the young "in" set may not be your best option. I went to Berlin because I had a sudden opportunity, to forget a sadness, to see the scene in Berlin that plays trad tango music, to hear the kind of music their DJs play, to see something of the city, to meet new people,  and to dance if the opportunity arose.

So I found in Berlin that tastes do vary widely even within the trad music scene - in dancing, in venue and in type of music.  Then it occurred to me that if I was going to share thoughts about what I found there, for those to be of any use I ought to say something about the kind of things I like so I will try to do that next.