The Tango Train idea and the "Brighton Milonguero Cuatro"

Photo by Kirsty Bennett

I am always looking for milongas with great music, good conditions for dancing, good dancing, and warm hosts who set the tone. It is not as easy to find as you might think. There are two places for me just now that are closest to this: TangoWest in Bristol (418 miles from me) and Thames Valley Tango in Eton (444 miles). They are on opposite sides of the country so combining the two (even if the dates of their milongas were to match) is not ideal or easy.

However, the Brighton Milonguero Cuatro, just after Christmas on 26th and 27th December is a social dance weekend with two of the UK’s DJs I most like to hear: Kirsty Bennett (also the host) and Chris Jordan playing just the kind of music I most enjoy.  You can see the kind of music Chris plays here (click on the » to see the detail of the set lists) because like  Johan, Victor, Clive and Geoff, he also shares the music he plays.  Kirsty has a  sample set here.

At Brighton there will be two different venues, no shows, no workshops and no pre-booking required (though there is an “Early Bird” offer still available for a few days).  I went last year and found it relaxing with great music.

Some 90 minutes drive to the north west near Windsor, west of London the Etonathon (27-30 December) is run by Thames Valley Tango at whose special events Kirsty often DJs. Host and resident DJ Charles also plays lovely sets that I have heard several times.  The Eastonathon (at Easter) and Septonathon hosted by Charles and Sarah (with great cakes!) feature various DJs over a few days. Again, there are no workshops, no shows and no pre-booking is required.

In that the Brighton Milonguero Cuatro uses two venues and is close in time to another event  it reminds me of the Blackpool tango weekend which tied different events in different venues together, although there the similarities end. I went in its first year in 2014,  Logistically it worked quite well. Many visitors went to a milonga in Manchester about an hour away on the Friday night (but a car was necessary). Easier still, the day after the Blackpool dance there was a very relaxing tram ride along the coast for about an hour to Fleetwood and a milonga in a hall by the sea. I have discovered I prefer local milongas to big events and smaller rooms over very large ones so the highlight of my weekend besides seeing the inside of the Tower ballroom itself was that tram ride and the conversations with my friend Jackie.

The TangoTrain event in Amsterdam and the London Tango long weekend similarly offer easy logistics for a lot of dancing. I have not been to either but again it is the concept I think interesting: the latter offers a pass into various local milongas over a long weekend. Tango Train lets you know the capacity for each venue, (approx 200 dancers) but doesn't mention pre-booking. The Facebook link gives you an idea of how many dancers are interested in going though in my experience numbers on Facebook (like much else to do with that tool) rarely tally with reality. I imagine the organisers hope that with 20 or so milongas, visitors will find plenty to go to - and be able to get in.

This idea of lots to go to reminds me of a comment by a friend recently returned from Buenos Aires. He said that it was more relaxed there. There wasn't the pressure there is here where sometimes you feel you have to dance because it's the best event around for miles and it is only once a month and perhaps you missed last month's. In Buenos Aires if you spent one night mostly chatting, as he said many do, it didn't matter because there were so many milongas on every night.

I like word of mouth recommendation, low pressure, relaxing events because that is also the kind of dancing I like. I prefer to avoid hype, cult, heavy marketing, drama and shows. The relaxing feeling comes from the music but isn't guaranteed by it. It's to do with the host, the tone and most of all by the kind of people attracted by that music, host and tone. Look again at the page for the Etonathon.  There are no couples in a Vincent and Flavia type tango pose because this sort of social dance event is nothing like that.  There is a useful picture of the attractive venue. The home page of TangoWest is the same, just pictures, photos and video of reality - their very pleasant venue. These small details say much.

How enlightened it would be if more open-minded DJs and organisers got together to host a weekend of just social dancing in different venues nearby. It would pull dancers from elsewhere for whom travel for a single milonga might not be worthwhile. As with Chris and Kirsty, because like does attract like the chances of DJs and hosts with similar ideas about music and good conditions for social dancing getting together is increased.

That is all undermined though if for example - as happened recently in Europe - a DJ "name" is used to try to pull in extra people for a milonga weekend, even though it sold out easily and even when the famous DJ does things like: plays a bad selection so loudly dancers quit, or varies the number of tracks in tandas of the same type or even more bizarrely - delays the start of the dance music for 30 minutes because “not enough women have arrived…”.

Kirsty said there is now a calendar of events for tango in Brighton. How useful that is for out of town visitors. But not all organisers can put aside their rivalries for mutual benefit. It makes sense to work together. Co-operation in organising a social dance weekend spreads the risk and the work and increases the likelihood of people coming from elsewhere. Towns or cities tend to be easy to get to and get around. Imagine a town the size of say Cambridge or a city like Bristol. Cambridge is in fact one of the places I have not yet danced because festivals I find heavy on drama, the corresponding egos and the kind of dancers attracted by workshop-style dancing.  On the other hand, I do not want to go only for one milonga.  Yet I have danced with many nice dancers from Cambridge in other places. So imagine if Cambridge or Bristol held a Tango Train style social dance weekend. Different organisers from the local area might each hold a milonga on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Imagine further the music was great and conditions for dancing suitable.  I am happy with one milonga a day of four to six hours. It gives me time to explore a local town or city or see friends; too many milongas in a short time and I find it's just too much. becomes a surfeit and draining.

Variety too is good - in venue, provided getting between them is easy - in the way things are done, in hosts.  That is why I like the Tango Train idea, if it based around the idea of a local milonga, open to all. Christopher Burney in his searing account of solitary confinement in the book of the same name, writes "I soon learned that variety is not the spice, but the very stuff of life." But variety can be inconvenient if you have to travel far and try to hop about from city to city or city to village hall to get enough of it to make a weekend trip worthwhile. So local variety where the DJs and hosts are like-minded is great and brings people in who don't have it, increasing the variety still further.