Cafe Baile: world music, dance and tango at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Dance Ihayami, one of the acts at Cafe Baile

Before children, for two or three years I used to take some of my holiday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  These days during August I avoid the traffic, the parking problems and the pedestrians with a death wish and read at home instead.  But if you can run the gamut of the Royal Mile without picking up a slew of flyers, Edinburgh in August can be fun.  It feels a bit like London at this time.  The greater human variety lends something of that exciting buzz I still feel each time I go back to London; for context I now live in the middle of Scotland.  At half past five on Leith Walk I enjoyed the mix of people who have finished work, interesting-looking visitors, a man in drag with wonderful pink and silver make-up and outside the Omni Centre an impromptu African music and dance act with drums and masks.  I felt sorry for two young men in sharp suits who I took to be performers but realised had the thankless task of trying to sell a finance product on the street at that time. 

Cafe Baile is part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  For £9 you get a flavour of some of the Fringe music and dance acts with about half an hour of social tango dancing at the start, the end and in the middle.  It takes place three times over three weeks and I have been going for the three years that I believe it has existed in at least its current form.  This year, it has moved from the Jam House to the slightly more clinical atmosphere of Lauriston Hall. There is a bar.  In the past I have found the acts to be middling to good, a few are superb; one or two have been toe-curlingly terrible. It is all part of the rich mix you expect from the Fringe.   

In previous years I learned not to sit in the front row in case  I became a "volunteer" to an act and later to sit where I pleased - but to know my boundaries.  The hypnotic belly-dancer "Shantisha" who seemed able to move parts of her body quite independently from one another tried to persuade me to "volunteer".  I felt momentarily like Eve with the snake - entranced and appalled; not by the act but at the prospect of being on stage. I have seen for myself you never know what you might be getting in to with these things.  As with so much of life it is not unlike what happens in the milonga: during the social dancing someone I know by sight walked across the room to invite me directly.  He wanted to dance but I did not.  I was sorry to have to do so but relieved when to both requests I said "no-thank you".  Later, I asked a friend sitting next to me if he wanted to dance the Rodriguez, but he too knows his own mind and chose the girl he'd arrived with, sitting on his other side.  That's what can happen with asking, only with friends, there are no hard feelings.

The social dancing is attended by some locals and there are often a few visitors who dance tango too.

Since I have stopped going out to the local milongas as much, I have joined a non-fiction book group in Edinburgh instead.  The first Cafe Baile this year was on the same day as the book group which happened to be taking place a bit later in a pub at the end of that street so I decided to drop in to  Cafe Baile first.

There was a queue before it opened (a bit late), so the room was fairly full from the start.  There were about three tandas before the first dance act but nobody danced the first tanda.  I got up to the second Donato track of the second tanda but only danced one track.  I apologised to my friend and we sat down.  The fourth track was good but it was too late for us.  Nevertheless she agreed to the next tanda, which was vals.   I often hear good vals and milonga tandas in sets with tango tandas I do not want to dance.

It was hard for some visiting women dancers to get dances which is unsurprising when they are mixed in with the non-dancing visitors around the three sides of the dance floor. It illustrates the need for suitable seating where there is tango social dancing.  

At the first Cafe Baile there was scattered applause of the social dancers at the end of some tracks.  It felt very odd because of course this would never happen in a real milonga.  I didn't know whether to feel pleased they like the dance we love and might try it some time or whether to feel dismayed that our ordinary social dance looks to them like a show.  The idea of being a spectacle is for me, anathema.  

But how interesting it might be if someone used an event like this for experienced dancers to invite the curious who have never danced to try moving as one to tango music, without telling them what to do (and making them self-conscious), or pushing them around.  Experienced dancers meet new or potential dancers so rarely because most drop out of class before getting near a milonga or they are intimidated  when they do go because their class experience is so remote from what actually happens in a real milonga.

I did not go to the second Cafe Baile and had not intended to go to the third because it doesn't have the continuity of a milonga, the dancing time seems to be shorter this year and I don't want to sit through an act (or three) if it is poor.  If there was a separate area you could break away for a drink or snack I might feel differently.  

But a dancer had recommended some stand-up comedy by "an Argentinian", who also dances, not too far away.  I was only able to go on the same night as the third Cafe Baile so decided to drop in there beforehand.  I arrived when the doors opened.  Numbers at this time were about two thirds down on the numbers for the first one.  The DJ was quarter of an hour late and by the time the music started at about 1915 about twenty five people were there. The numbers picked up  with more local dancers arriving over the next ninety minutes.

I stayed for the first half hour set of social dancing but did not want to dance, then stayed for the first set of acts.  I enjoyed the Indian classical dancing by three women dancers from Dance Ihayami, soft and strong, elegant and grounded and the mind-bending Japanese electro act Siro-A.  

Then I went on to the comedy, getting waylaid by flyer-touts in the dark Cowgate and lost in the dank and eerie sidestreets.

I stopped by my book group for half an hour on the way back and then went back to Cafe Baile for the last set of social dancing where a friend persuaded me to dance two of the Di Sarli.  Then we danced all of the Troilo, swapping roles throughout. He said there were some very good acts in the second half.  

Photo by Shetland Arts shared under Creative Commons license.