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| Roter Salon |
I lost my points of reference in Roter Salon.
After what (didn't) happen in Alma, while I balked at being indiscriminate about accepting dances I suppose I thought it would be better to be more...open to experience. Dancing away, alone you can adopt different strategies: I had tried "very cautious, dance with no-one you haven't seen dance"; now I was going to try "discriminate - but be open to the unexpected".
By this stage, it seemed obvious to reconsider what it means to dance away, as a woman in her forties, alone and unknown. I went to Berlin feeling sad and confused. Instead of going there in February when the Tiergarten feels sparse, grey and desolate and the wind bites, perhaps I ought to have gone with a good book in search of sunshine and sea or got stuck in to some early spring cleaning in Scotland. Instead I found myself going to milongas where I would be anonymous. The milonga will have its own problems, or there your character's flaws are magnified in ways you might prefer not to recognise. Still, it is a good place for forgetting the issues at hand, for forgetting generally.
By this stage, it seemed obvious to reconsider what it means to dance away, as a woman in her forties, alone and unknown. I went to Berlin feeling sad and confused. Instead of going there in February when the Tiergarten feels sparse, grey and desolate and the wind bites, perhaps I ought to have gone with a good book in search of sunshine and sea or got stuck in to some early spring cleaning in Scotland. Instead I found myself going to milongas where I would be anonymous. The milonga will have its own problems, or there your character's flaws are magnified in ways you might prefer not to recognise. Still, it is a good place for forgetting the issues at hand, for forgetting generally.
I should have known from past experience that dancing away in these circumstances can be hard. In the summer of 2014 I went to a couple of places I didn't know in London and then to some milongas across the south of England for the first time. Afterwards, I wrote to a friend:
...I'm off dancing as in, no more going off to find strangers to dance with. I feel so battered and bruised after this summer. I seldom seem to be at ease, at least when away.
The sensible reply:
Away is inherently difficult. Many porteños dance only in their neighbourhood and would find as much discomfort as you dancing elsewhere.
I appreciated that and felt better.
If you are dancing away, alone, you will go to many strange places, be treated as fresh meat by piranhas or be ignored or knocked back. It's easy to become too sensitive to small things, tactless remarks you might otherwise shrug off. In that environment, as with all change and uncertainty it is good and necessary to have something familiar. I had the music in the unknown streets and in the milongas. I walked around Berlin playing Rodriguez and Donato and later, D'Arienzo and Fresedo, mentally making up tandas and learning to tell how the tracks would go from the titles. Doing this with the first two was more than enough.
It had occurred to me in Alma that perhaps there is a sweet spot for catching dances. Wait too long and you miss it. "Why isn't she dancing" can turn all too quickly into "No one wants to dance with her" or "She doesn't want to dance with anyone" and whether that's in your mind or is real is equally fatal.
But I don't like to rush on to an unknown floor. There is pleasure and much understanding to be gained in sitting for three, four tandas or longer. Eventually, I find those few or, more likely, that one who is musical, tall, who dances unpretentiously and in the embrace. But the chances of his being unpartnered and willing to dance with a stranger he hasn't seen dance, are small.
If you are dancing away, alone, you will go to many strange places, be treated as fresh meat by piranhas or be ignored or knocked back. It's easy to become too sensitive to small things, tactless remarks you might otherwise shrug off. In that environment, as with all change and uncertainty it is good and necessary to have something familiar. I had the music in the unknown streets and in the milongas. I walked around Berlin playing Rodriguez and Donato and later, D'Arienzo and Fresedo, mentally making up tandas and learning to tell how the tracks would go from the titles. Doing this with the first two was more than enough.
It had occurred to me in Alma that perhaps there is a sweet spot for catching dances. Wait too long and you miss it. "Why isn't she dancing" can turn all too quickly into "No one wants to dance with her" or "She doesn't want to dance with anyone" and whether that's in your mind or is real is equally fatal.
But I don't like to rush on to an unknown floor. There is pleasure and much understanding to be gained in sitting for three, four tandas or longer. Eventually, I find those few or, more likely, that one who is musical, tall, who dances unpretentiously and in the embrace. But the chances of his being unpartnered and willing to dance with a stranger he hasn't seen dance, are small.
I had tried to get in to El Ocaso, (Frannz ClubSchönhauser Allee 36, 10435 Berlin Prenzlauer Berg) which later I heard recommended several times. It took me a long time to find since there was a queue of teenagers down the street. Thinking it must be elsewhere, I wandered into the Kulturbrauerei, an easy mistake. This is a walled enclosure, a former brewery with cinema and clubs. In fact the venue is not hard to find. Frannz Club, dominates the corner of Schönhauser allee and Sredzkistrasse. Just inside one entrance to the Kulturbrauerei two men directed me for tango to the other end of the enclosure. From there I was twice more redirected and hustled along the way by a guy bombed out of his mind on drugs. Back at the club, I jostled my way up the steps to speak to the harassed doorman. "Round the back!" he indicated with his thumb. I went to the back door of the club from where I had first been directed away. There was a different man there now who was adamant there was no tango that night due to the pop concert. Puzzled, I dropped a note to Frank Seifart who replied promptly to say they were in the restaurant inside but by then I was nearly at Roter Salon.
Roter Salon (Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, 10178 Berlin) was very...red! You can easily see it on an upper level, from the street. The DJ was Michael Rühl who is well-known for his decades of experience as a DJ and dancer. I had heard the music described as trad and there were plenty of lovely tracks in tandas with cortinas but it wasn't traditional in quite the way I think of traditional tango.
I was early and would have felt too conspicuous alone in one of the seats so chose a sofa near the bar in the top left hand corner, which in fact is so inconspicuous it's out of sight in the photo. There is nowhere to change shoes besides in the ladies on the next floor up. Everyone changed their shoes in the main room. It was all very matter-of-fact. A woman was brushing her hair in the entrance to the salon and an older man combed his on the sofa next to me. I shivered and had no interest in dancing with him even before he stood up. I ordered a glass of wine at the bar but wondered if I should stay. I watched a man patronise a woman, excruciatingly. I don't speak much German, but it wasn't necessary. She kept dancing with him, seeming to put up with it. Many do.
A guy walked up to invite either me or the woman next to me, he didn't seem to mind which. I assumed, deliberately, he hadn't meant me and felt needlessly guilty for lumbering the other woman because of course she could have done the same. Later he invited me by look. I accepted, hesitantly though whether because, now on my third day I just wanted to dance with a second guy or know that I still could, or whether I just wanted to be seen as competent on the floor I'm not sure. None of these are good reasons and the latter, if nothing else, is very disrespectful to a partner. We danced in open hold. Usually, I don't see the point of that although I dance this way sometimes with smaller, musical guys. I danced with the woman sitting on the sofa. We had chatted and danced again later. Every milonga I had been to so far was attracting a different crowd although in Alma I had noticed a small crossover of the clientele (of men, mostly) from Milonga Popular.
A guy I hadn't seen dance invited me by look from a distance. Again, I hesitated and accepted. He was full of music and humour. We felt the same music, danced and parted, danced and parted until the early hours and sometimes didn't part, but sat down for a few minutes and danced again. He persuaded me more or less willingly into volcadas and legwraps. I wondered when I had become so inhibited and distrustful, found myself dancing to extravagant music I probably wouldn't, ordinarly, was surprised and nearly didn't care and thought I was having a great time and perhaps I was. With reservations. Even so, I sat out Remembranza by Los Auténticos Reyes, a modern D'Arienzo cover band, and a Di Sarli tanda with A La Luz Del Candil, Por Quererla Asi and Nubes De Humo, both of the latter with Jorge Duran.
On home ground, I think we apply more stricture. We are more careful. The adventure and fear of striking out on your own is thrilling, it shakes things up a bit, makes us challenge and test our ideas, even if we return to them. In this unusual evening I found myself dancing to Domingo Federico's Leyenda Gaucha, having mentally sworn I would not play or dance to that orchestra. I turns out I am open to persuasion to Federico until the early 50s and perhaps to other music I have rejected til now. Mid-evening I danced a tanda or two with the guy I'd seen at Clärchens then accepted another dance from my new friend. Some think it questionable to dance so often with a stranger but I didn't care. It is rare I find so much music and fun in another. In any case, what happens on the floor is on the floor. Outside the milonga it is a different world.
Still, I was puzzled - here was an experienced dancer who didn't fit in Roter Salon among the older crowd though age-wise he was in that group and who didn't fit with the young, cool crowd either. But I guess I felt a bit like that too.
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