Character and compatibility

I mentioned a dancer - in England - who had first shown me how powerful a quiet dance with the characteristics I described could be. As with the man in Buenos Aires, I asked him how he came to dance the way he does.  He replied in a similar way - that it was the result of a lot of social dancing, years of experience in the milonga. Neither guy mentioned classes. 

Both men share similarities beyond giving memorable dances so I wonder if these are characteristics of such dancers.  Both dress casually, are quiet, discreet, are in every way wholly unobtrusive.  Both say little, look much, start to dance unusually soon.  I was surprised at this in the Argentine because most people in Buenos Aires chat well into the track before starting to dance.  He I only ever saw dancing in the inner ronda which may be in part why it took me over three weeks to spot him. Both men dance musically and above all for the woman and to the conditions of the woman and the couple. 

The interesting thing about both these dancers is that neither of their dances are characterised by moves. I simply don't see how teaching in class can create that kind of dancing and I have never seen or heard of anyone trying to teach the kind of things that characterise it.  To try and do that in class would be absurd and grotesque because what is created between the couple is a feeling, a sense.  It is to do with the music and the couple.  I do not see how it is something that can be taught in a class.  It is something I think you learn yourself with and through other people and it does not require speech. My description is perhaps not very helpful but what it does suggest is that what some (not all) think of as good dancing is not about "dance levels”.  It is perhaps about finding compatibility of various things, including character within the dance.  In this sort of dance - I speak from the girl’s side of things - there is trust, harmony, discovery.  The words I am reaching for are nebulous, words like understanding, recognition. 

But this is one perspective. This sort of dance is not or at least does not seem to be what everyone wants.

Dependency and empowerment

When you want to learn something from someone who has knowledge and they agree to that, you rely on them, you trust them until you become independent and empowered. But when someone tells you, well, you’ll always slip back into bad habits, you’re always going to need me, you’re always going to be an apprentice, where is that opportunity for independence?

Business is often about the opposite of empowerment.  Before Christmas I finally went to see a professional about my back.  He didn't want to show me ways I could relieve pain and move more easily.  He was pleasant, extremely convincing and after some trials possibly even effective but he wanted to do it for me, through manipulation, requiring my total trust in a stranger with my bones, regularly, over the long term and at great expense.  Perhaps it's true you get what you pay for.  In contrast, my friend's brother, a physio (unfortunately in Spain) will only take clients who agree to do his exercises, who start to become empowered and who want to take or at least share responsibility for their own well-being.  

Money so often trumps other considerations that the juxtaposition of “ethical” and “business” is usually the exception rather than the rule. Yet good businesses which take the long view provide a product or service so valuable and so useful that word of mouth is sometimes all the marketing the business needs - or they make customers partners and stakeholders rather than dependent.  

Any business with the bottom line as the top consideration (because, say, the business is struggling) doesn’t want you to be independent and empowered.  It wants you in a state of dependency because that’s when you keep paying.  They need you to believe you need them.    It is paradoxical that learning is about becoming independent yet the process in some cases - especially where money is involved - can be about keeping people dependent on the teacher.  

In what other context do we hear about “users” of a product and “dependency”?  Even where the degree of the nefarious effects is different, the model is the same.  

“Many different perspectives”

I suggested comparing the kind of dancing that goes on in class with what happens in a real milonga and I want to give an example of the difference and power of the latter. 

March, 2016: I was in Salon Canning, Buenos Aires on the afternoon of my penultimate day of dancing. Perhaps because it was not busy I noticed a man in the inner ronda. He danced musically, quietly, very discreetly. He wore normal clothes, a t-shirt, nothing fancy. For all those reasons you could easily overlook him or just not notice him. His focus was peculiarly inward to the dance, to the couple. Unlike some Argentine guys who check out the girls while they're dancing, it was as though he wasn't really aware of anything but his dance with that girl, but he glanced up occasionally, aware of the available space. 

I don't usually look specifically to dance with smaller guys I don't know unless something happens. Maybe before an invitation he makes me laugh from a distance or establishes some kind of persuasive rapport, preferably still at that distance. None of that applied here. 

 I watched to see where he was sitting but he went behind me. He went to sit in a very quiet spot near the back. The next tanda began. I remember being mortified that if I wanted to catch his eye I therefore had to look behind me, which was hardly discreet. Luckily, he saw me straight away and invited. Years later, Christine told me she had "hunters eyes" and had used them professionally abroad, to assist a birdspotting professional who gave tours.  The real milongueros also have hunter's eyes!  

 

I can't really describe this dance and I'm not sure I really want to. I don't think a dance has ever felt more private. Later, I said in confusion to my non-dancing friend who had come to watch - “What did it look like?” and was surprised and relieved when the answer seemed to be mostly just “quiet”. The reason I am writing about it is because I wish more guys had this approach. I didn't realise until then quite how very different dancing in the milonga could be - not just compared to what goes on in tango dance class, but even in relation to other couples in a traditional milonga. I often think dance is like life and to see people who have that approach in life too would be wonderful. I mention it also because it was two years before I had a dance that was anything like this in England and not until 18 months later on my first visit to Argentina that I had a dance which reminded me of it. I have occasionally had not dissimilar dances with guys - once in Tango West last year, a couple of times with a visitor to Glasgow - but they are rare. I wish that they were not and that is why I want to mention these dances. I realised this man must make women feel the way he made me feel every time he dances yet I encounter this kind of dancer almost never. I told a new guy dancer, a young man I danced with a lot one night in both roles at La Catedral, a guy I found to be a very good and talented dancer, that the best suggestion I could give him was to find this man who he had seen in Canning and see if he would dance with him, with my friend in the woman's role. I didn't know if this would work because I can't imagine a presumably straight guy making another possibly straight guy feel that way. But I thought it was worth trying. At least the conversation would be interesting.

I want to make clear that these great dances have nothing to do with extravagance or any kind of movements beyond the simplest and most common. Other kinds of wonderful dances which may or may not have moves can be thrilling, fun, dynamic, all sorts of things. This was not these exactly and yet it was marvellous.

It was exactly how it had looked - only more so. After perhaps the first track the man mentioned Gavito and about what happens in the dance between the steps. There is a good, experienced dancer in Edinburgh who I remember saying the same thing. I don't quite know why the Argentine said it because when dancing with him that was so clear.

Another time he mentioned the silences in the dance. We had been dancing the music but I knew what he meant. I read later that apparently Gavito talked about that too. I also read that Gavito was master of the "less is more" school. The dances I am describing or perhaps not describing well were all along those lines. I had not paid much attention to Gavito previously being put off by some of his show dancing online.

I had been at Canning I think less than a couple of hours but I wanted to leave after that dance. I didn't feel like any more dances but decided that was absurd. I remembered a conversation which made me think that the cortina should act, among other things, as a palate cleanser. I decided to dance with a different guy. I looked, he invited. He did dance the music and without "moves" yet I have seldom felt more incidental, less necessary, relevant to or part of a dance. He might as well have danced with a mechanical doll. I did leave after that. The intuition that I should have stopped dancing after the quiet guy was right. I am glad though that I did not, so that I understood the contrast of how differently two men could see the dance, the woman and the couple.

The next night, my last, a Thursday, I went to a couple of clubs but did not enjoy them so took a cab to club Gricel around midnight and relaxed.

Across the floor from where I was sitting set back in semi darkness I was surprised to see the guy from Canning. He invited me. We danced three tandas across the rest of that evening. He invited so discreetly, I was sometimes not quite sure. I realised that he thought the same about my acceptance. There was a tanda of lovely Rodriguez songs, a kind of well known, lush Di Sarli I usually avoid but enjoyed with him and something absolutely awful: DJ Carlos Moreira, usually fairly reliable for me, but now in one of his most extravagant moments. I'm still ashamed and puzzled why I looked to the guy during such awful music. Perhaps because I'd missed the sweet, rhythmic OTV and the lovely calm D'Agostino. Somehow I still enjoyed the dancing, if not that music. I can't imagine how that works because for me good music and good dancing are inextricable. Perhaps my partner liked the music, certainly he danced it so maybe that's how it worked. It was my last tanda in Buenos Aires. I did not tell him I was leaving. I felt frustrated when after the drama tanda there was great rhythmic Di Sarli but by then I'd already gone to change my shoes. 

He reminded me of another dancer.  I asked him if he was a teacher. He looked at me surprised and said no. I was not surprised because I have never seen that much discretion in a teacher. I asked him how he came to dance the way he does. He looked surprised again and said he'd just been coming to the milonga for fourteen years. 

That same last night in Gricel I accepted a slim, young guy I'd seen dance but when we danced was still taken by how similar he was in style to the guy from Canning. I don't expect to find this in such young guys where style and ego often dominate. But this guy was lovely. No drama, no stunts, just dancing the music with all sensitivity to the woman and the feeling between the couple. How does it happen that it takes two years to discover dancing like that at all, then to have similar dances once or twice a year and then suddenly to find two guys like that in the same room at the end of the same night? Do guys spot something in girls when they have dances like that? Or is it just coincidence? 

With these men and with others who dance similarly, we didn't talk much between tracks. There didn't seem to be a need. But between one of our dances I stuttered out to the guy from Canning the realisation I had come to from dancing with him  - or remembered from two years previously but with revelatory strength. The insight was simply: that a dance to the same music, even on an Argentinian floor, even between different couples all dancing in a more or less traditional way could be so utterly different as to defy coherent expression. And I  wondered to myself that such a dance, so quiet and understated could have such power. I didn’t say all of this but I knew he understood. He smiled and said "Yes, many different perspectives...."

Trust and deception

Some teachers of tango dance tell students they need to stay in or come back to class because they have or are at risk of bad habits.  Or a teacher will tell or imply to the  student they need the teacher if they are to dance well.  I see that as a deception not dissimilar in some ways from interactions with unscrupulous estate agents, second hand car salesmen, sellers of insurance and extended warranties and similarly notorious professions. We go to those people as non-professionals putting a certain degree of trust, if not necessarily much, in a professional, that they will at least not tell you complete untruths. But besides our scepticism there is a degree of protection in the common knowledge that people often feel or have in the past felt, or know people who have been fleeced by these. We don't have that protection with a tango dance teacher because we tend to know less, hear less about the subject than about those other professions.  Yet if you were to go just once a week to tango dance class, spending £10, for a year, taking six weeks off, you'd spend £460. Over five years, at the same price, £2,300.   That's not including all the festival workshops or those run by visiting teachers.  Many classes and workshops cost well over £10.  It doesn't include private lessons either.

Look at the kind of dancing that goes on in a real milonga.  Compare it with the sorts of things people are taught in class.  I think they bear no relationship and that is why I think there is a deception going on because I think teachers know this.  I am in great company (with Ricardo Vidort, with Tete) when I say I don't think the key things about dancing tango can be taught in a class. They may have taught but they taught knew that teaching had limitations and was not the most important thing and I doubt they would ever have emphasised how much students need them - to the detriment of those students' self-esteem.  Good teachers like good friends help self esteem grow.  They don't undermine it.

The difference with trust and teachers is that people (beginners, children) are especially vulnerable. They put more trust in a teacher than does an adult going to buy something that is notoriously difficult to buy. There is an ethical element implicit in the definition of a teacher so I think there is a moral requirement for a teacher to respect and honour that trust. Teaching is a privilege because of it.  

It’s all very well to counter “Anyone who pays for something knows the score”. But that’s just it - beginners do not know the score. In all likelihood they don’t know what real, good social dancing looks like. They don’t know the difference between that and tango shows or performances. They don’t know what they are being taught or its effects. Worse, because of that blind trust they assume that what they are taught is right. They don’t even see the contradiction between being taught a flash move in class and the prohibition - for good reason- of such moves on the floor of a milonga run by - say- that same teacher...

“Well, but if the punters are willing to buy it…”

Insecurity

Some people do doubt themselves, or rather allow themselves to be manipulated into doubt by the "teachers" they might do well to be rather more sceptical.  So here is my reply to that:

It's rubbish. And it's scary. It preys on feelings of insecurity. It creates feelings of insecurity and vulnerability in order to exploit that. That is what gets to me and what brings me to object. What kind of person does that?  Usually someone who wants your money or who wants you to feel bad, or who is going to look down on you. You think, "Well this teacher talks to me about embrace, may even grace me with their embrace - surely they cannot be doing that for cold-blooded commercial reasons. "Tango" [sic] is a "community" after all.  Of course teachers get paid but that isn't what it's really all about".  But sometimes - often - that is what it is all about. It appears that you are being helped: "Very good, but well, lots to work on...." but really you are being undermined.  They’ve used you parasitically, taken your money, can find no more takers and now in an attempt to keep milking the original source they try to create new demand by making you feel uncertain and inadequate and therefore in need of more lessons.  It is a particularly insidious kind of deception.  It is ruthless and relentless for sure but I can't even call it a jugular attack. That would imply a swift death.  No, it is more like a feeding on an unsuspecting host. Do you really want to dance with, to learn from someone like that?

For me, a great guy dancer does the opposite of that. He makes a girl feel safe, secure, special, he makes her feel that she is doing all the right things. If she trips or stumbles perhaps he acknowledges it in a way that says, wordlessly, “Are you OK? It's OK.” It’s not a guy who says - “You can’t dance because you don’t have the right skills because you got lazy and fell into bad habits and were too proud to go to class.”

A desperate stance

The good news is that telling people they’re not good enough - that their dance naturally deteriorates with time instead of as with most things we do naturally improving with experience is a last-gasp effort. When the suggestion is the non sequitur that people who enjoy natural dancing are “too proud” it is obvious there is an ulterior motive - money.  

Criticising something as personal and individual as the social dance of someone experienced, particularly a dance you haven’t yourself felt, particularly the dance of someone you yourself have taught yet blaming any supposed flaws and "bad habits" on them and not you, is a desperate stance.  It suggests falling class numbers as people realise the better dancing, the better learning and most of all the greater pleasure in learning a social dance is to be had by dancing socially. Such dancers realise that it is merely a small but tellingly vocal group who to try to monopolise how people learn this dance (in class), which process all but destroys new social dancers. That process makes them “think dance” which for me is not what dancing is about, not what allows, not what frees the things that do make dance happen. The shrill counter, that "Oh, it (i.e. moves) becomes muscle memory" is spurious. That just means a dance initiated through "thought" not feeling is one which has becomes automated and robotic. A dance that is thought out, drilled in, constructed of steps and moves is not a dance that comes from the music and so is not really, not usually, for me, dancing, not at any rate dancing tango.

The dance seems to me more and more an expression of character and of the various wordless interactions of two people.  Although it happens in a social setting it is a personal interaction - one which has nothing to do with a teacher. When you criticise their dance, you criticise and undermine their character and that personal interaction.  Unless such comments have to do with him hurting her or lecturing her (and lecturers don't criticise lecturers - they beget them) what place have they?  And surely she is the one to let him know.

"Trust me, you need me..."

I had planned to write about milongas in other places but something has come up. 

I don't want to single out Charles. He is a good DJ, one of the best in Britain for me which is to say he plays a lot of the kind of music I like. I have been to many of the milongas he runs. But the milonga is completely separate from what Charles' article is about.

It is simply a good example of something I see in many quarters. Lots of teachers and teacher-bloggers say the same thing. Even people who are just dedicated class-goers talk about how lazy and complacent non-class dancers are or have become. 

One moment some of them try to undermine us calling us Calvinist, Amish even Mormon for preferring embrace and connection to flash moves, the next moment we are called idle. The similarity linking Mormons with the rigour of the other two sects is lost on me. I suspect it’s an example of the easy sensationalism I associate with that peddler - spooner of easy pap into the gaping mouths of her groupies.   A lazy Amish...you know arguments from that camp are cobbled together when they start to look contradictory.  Unsurprising then when it comes from a notorious self-promoter a "peoples’ favourite “tangoblogger”.  I think there must be something odd there in essence.  There is more of the self promotion here and if you can be bothered there’s more still but I find trawling through that stuff off-putting. And there are the many selfy-videos on her Facebook page.  How she can stand the focus I don't know.   I suppose it's all part of the self-improvement deal. But performance where the spotlight is on one couple, that sort of writing, that kind of high self-regard, that didactic approach, that general outlook is far from what dancing tango is like for me.

These sorts are randomly trying all angles for show, for effect, for a shallow attempt to misrepresent and discredit rather than for the substance of the claim. They all have a reason though - the teachers tell you it is because they want your money and the class-goers tell you the same because they've spent so much time and money on classes and workshops and adored their teachers so slavishly that they have gone past the point of no return.

Ksenija's milonga

Ksenija's fundraising milonga in mid December was one of the nicest I went to in Scotland last year. Several people said how lovely it was. 

It all starts with the host and the tone. It is a necessary element though not sufficient, because great music and good physical conditions for dancing are also needed. But actually Ksenija's milonga was makeshift, not fancy.  It was a space in someone's office and I think it was organised fairly impromptu. Still, it had a good floor, there were chairs opposite one another and you could see to invite and though it was a smallish space people did still invite by look.   Those I think are the main conditions. 

December 2015

A:  I had such a great night! Finally, in Edinburgh! Did you? Amazing how different host, venue, atmosphere can change everything even with the same (or rather a subset of the same) people.

B:  My thoughts exactly! What a lovely host and a lovely evening!! It's nice when things don't feel oppressive. 

A:  What a relief when a milonga like Ksenija's can change so much.

B:  She was so happy, sunny and welcoming! 

A:  Yes. And attentive to everyone's needs. She is an ideal host.

B:  Yes I think the key to a good milonga is a good host. 

A:  An essential element, I agree. Like attracts like when it comes to organisers, I feel.

*

March 2016

A:  I was chatting to someone yesterday about who/why certain people get asked to dance... He reckoned it could be summed up as "warmth".

B:  I agree with that. For me dancing has much less to do with skill, technique even experience, than it has to do with  character.

*

December 2015

It was just lovely. It was the best night I have had in Edinburgh since...I can't remember. Iain had offered a room at his office for free. He's born to host too.  They are ideal hosts together. It was the warm tone that was so nice. I commented on that to a partner & he said yes, warm & cosy which is exactly the sort of event I'd've expected Ksenija to run. 

Juan was the DJ. The music was lovely if high energy. Biagi then fast Laurenz - No me extrana (dance video with Ismael Heljalil)  & friends; fast vals, fast milonga. Most of the tandas were great except (another) poor Pugliese. There was a not so great OTV at the start with Coqueta (dance video in Lo de Celia)  & Viento Norte - I'll take Coqueta at a push but never Viento Norte. Video [or "how to tramp a tango"].  There was another poor "early evening" tanda next to it I'm not sure I even knew the orchestra. But overall it was very nice. Tricky perhaps to DJ for such an intimate milonga. I wish Juan had varied the speed of the tandas more is all. He did a great trad set at the Counting House in November though was more variable the once or twice I heard afterwards.

We were only between 15 & 20. Of the guys I only danced with one guy swapping 2 & 2 tracks because he is tall & amazingly good as the girl. It was very nice. I had all nice girl partners & good dancers.

With the Forth Road Bridge closure it was three hours travel for three hours in the milonga but it was worth it.

*

Ksenija, who I think is an anthropologist, has gone to Nepal now but if you need a great host or just someone warm, attentive and welcoming - that's the chica! 

Milonga del corazon, Kinning Park complex, Glasgow

Hosts:  Vanessa Leamy and Naomi Head; DJ Antonella Cosi (Edinburgh).  Performance:  Damian Thompson and Mariana Ancarola. £10 entrada including snacks. Saturday 6 February, 2016 2030-0100

This milonga is not currently a regular fixture.  It was organised by the hosts as the social dancing for a weekend of workshops given by the performers. The venue is in a suburb of Glasgow.

I hadn't intended to go.  I had danced some that afternoon at the Glasgow practica and gone on to a wine tasting, planning to go home afterwards.  But after several glasses of gewürztraminer I found myself in the car of friends en route to the milonga.   I was glad to be  accompanied because although the venue is conveniently opposite Kinning Park subway station the entrance was round the back of a building and alone I doubt I would ever have found it.  Someone said the area is rough and that you wouldn't want to walk around on your own.

We arrived probably towards 2200.  I had planned to stay for an hour or so then get a train but after perhaps a couple of tandas there were performances (shows/adverts for classes) of four tracks cutting down the time for social dancing.  Luckily, another friend said I could stay over.

There was a table of snacks -  quiche I think, cold empanadas and other things.  The arrival of hot bacon butties later on was a very British twist on the idea of hot Argentinian empanadas.  Indeed they vanished quickly.  There was always plenty of water.

There were several announcements - one for various thanks and introductions of the performers, one announcing bacon rolls, one asking whether anyone wanted more bacon rolls,  one to announce the last 5 tangos.  

The best thing about this venue was the smooth, newly sprung wooden floor.  It is quite a long room for invitation by look from one end to the other.  I wasn’t paying attention to how others were inviting.  Given the way the tables were arranged I just assumed that it was by look.  Glasgow dancers certainly seem to have gone that way at the Crypt milongas in the time I’ve been going and Glasgow used to have a reputation for not inviting by look.  Somebody said they thought the lighting a bit harsh but with a room of that size you need good lighting. Somebody else had said previously the venue could be cold.  I noticed Mariana, who wasn't dancing much, wore a wrap but I felt fine.

There were tables of the large, British, trestle style. There was I think sufficient seating.  Coats and belongings seemed to have "bagged" most of the chairs.  But you couldn't guarantee your seat would be there when you came back from a tanda because of seat swapping.  

A few people stayed on the floor during the cortinas blocking line of sight for invitation by look across the room.  The cortinas were occasionally danced.

The ronda was mixed though there was in theory plenty of room for a good ronda.  The actual ronda was  a single circle of couples.  There were several new or just poor, experienced dancers  who stuck neither in the middle nor in the ronda.  A few times I got frustrated with being crashed into by these and to avoid them cut across the ronda to an empty space or circled back. As people left though, things improved.

I watched the professional, Damian and the host Vanessa dancing in the ronda. I met the very charismatic Damian and had a private lesson with him a couple of years ago. I found him polite, professional, respectful and helpful.  I seem to remember he has been dancing for decades and as you’ll see in any video he has a lot of very well polished moves.  I also know Vanessa as a social dancer who now teaches locally.

Their social dancing was more in the tango nuevo dance style - with a hold more than than embrace.  Vanessa is small and Damian is a tall guy so the hold might have been for that but I think Damian’s style is acknowledged as being more towards the nuevo end.  Also most recently, last year.  Vanessa and Damian were fun to watch, more fun for me than the performance.  There was a lot of play and jokes in their dance  I rather felt I was watching a show in the ronda which many dislike though I think they are both sufficiently experienced dancers not to cause harm or invade the space of others.  The trouble comes when less able dancers trying to ape that are mixed in a ronda with people who want to dance more modestly.  Generally I feel that where a local area has diversity in milongas like will attract like and people who enjoy the same dance style and the same kind of music will gravitate together.

Mariana is very beautiful, smiley and seemed nice but watching voleos which in performance for me become repetitive and mechanical is not how I would choose to spend those twenty odd minutes. I prefer to watch accomplished dancers socially and when they are being wholly themselves, rather than a projection of something else for people to watch.

Attendees - Someone told me a table of people I mostly did not recognise were from Newcastle.  There was a scattering of regular Glasgow dancers who I see at other events. There were several beginners, and most of the rest I think were partners and friends of the organisers/performers/DJ including a few people from Edinburgh.  I danced quite a bit with women and swapped back and forth between roles with one guy but I didn't feel I danced well and found myself apologising at the end to my partners who were all very nice about it.

The DJ, Antonella Cosi, is the head DJ in Edinburgh and (seems to be, with her partner who is also part of her DJ crew) general organiser or at least announcer of happenings in the Edinburgh Tango Society.  They also host El Tango Club milongas in Edinburgh.  She has played in Carablanca tango club in London several times and I believe at several festivals.    The giveaway to the type of music she plays is in the shibboleths of her own DJ advert: “undiscovered” and “gems”.  

These words or similar (“hidden” gems, “rare”, “forgotten”) I have seen used by other DJs to describe their music.  “Vinyl” is of course a real term but also another shibboleth though indicative of something else. Wiser, in my view is her partner, Tom’s DJ advert, though again the word “entertain” suggests to me where the spotlight points.   In contrast I have found that really good DJs generally like to be very low-profile. The non professional ones often seem to prefer to dance than DJ and none of my three favourite (professional) DJs in Buenos Aires dance tango.

From here.

Cards on the table again, Antonella gave me my first opportunity to DJ.  It was at the Counting House in Edinburgh.  Setlists here.  These days however our approaches to just about everything of significance seem to diverge and we don’t tend to go to the same events.

The tracks listed below are correct to my knowledge but there was no printed copy of this set. Happily, it had few real hidden gems.   Perhaps it was coincidence that she played a more traditional set than I have heard (often) on her home turf  in Edinburgh.  Perhaps it indicates a change of direction away from the “undiscovered gems” so typical of Firpo, Guardia Vieja and as mentioned on her DJ profile the late twenties.  Closest to that “undiscovered” type music I try to avoid was the early Canaro tanda - I arrived during it.  I know the third track but it is so unlike the Canaro I prefer that I do not know the name.  The fourth was very similar though - El pinche (1935) which is heading towards my idea of a nightmare.  

The only other tracks very like that was another Canaro tanda later on, with singer Roberto Maida (all from 1935) - I didn't dance it.  Cambalache didn't get me up.  It's alright but it plods, I don’t fancy it, for sure not at that stage of the evening and it's a bit comedic for my taste. It’s not El rey del bosque (1939), but my mind, searching for the name of the track, headed in that direction.  Incidentally, if I’m going to watch a show, I like it in the vein illustrated in that video.  The performance is for fun more than for showing something off.  Besides, more than most performers the guy dances the music (but what music!).  Back in the Canaro tanda there was Golondrinas (swallows), though a track less evocative of those birds I find hard to imagine.  Noches de Buenos Aires on the hand, was nice.  The trouble is the whole tanda clumps and labours. La copla porteña is just this side of comic but in combination with these tracks I found it all too heavy.   

Similarly, the Donato tanda towards the end was a big miss to my taste.  I’ve noticed this problem with Donato before at another event with the same DJ.  Why that should be when there are so many well known, great Donato tracks I can’t fathom. I generally prefer the more playful Donato tracks but the opener El adiós (1938) is still lovely.  I would have danced it but I was starting to feel I had exhausted my possible partners by this stage of the evening and I missed this track.  I got up with a friend after the first track ended but decided to sit down again as the second track started and to stay sitting for the third. I don’t know the track names.  We got back up to La melodía del corazón (1940) although of those I dance this is one of my least favourite Donato track.  Earlier, the Donato vals, Con tus besos (1938) and Estrellita mia had been nice.  I heard the change of orchestra to OTV’s great vals Temo (1940) and thought that odd and a bit unnecessary but I didn’t mind.   

The milonga and vals tandas were mostly good for me.  I have said before that I have noticed often that many DJs do a better job of the milonga and vals tandas than they do on the tangos which to my mind is a better test of good DJing.

One exception here were the Rodriguez vals Clavelito en flor (1937) with Roberto Flores, En el volga yo te espero (1943) and Brindis (1943) both with Moreno.  There is quite a range of style in the Rodriguez vals.  I am not very keen on even the better of them at the best of times.  These ones I’ve been told are more like ranchera.  They’re fun for listening but I find them a bit too slapstick, like dancing when you're not in full control of your faculties.  I wasn't but still didn't dance them.  

The best tanda for me was the strong rhythmic Troilo-Fiorentino El bulín de la calle Ayacucho (1941) and the marvellous headlong plunge into that music.  It was well grouped with its famous friends.  I liked the Laurenz-Podestá tanda and danced it but Como el hornero (1944) was the weakest track.  The giveaway is also that it was in third place.  I liked the Tanturi/Castillo but find Madame Ivonne (1942) weak and a disastrous opener though I heard it at least twice in London in November.  Another very weak opener was Fruta amarga (1945) in the Caló/Iriarte tanda.  The lovely Marion (1943) should have gone first not second in my view and the tanda would have been the better for dispensing altogether with Fruta amarga and Seis días (1945).  As in the Marion clip the tanda finished with Nada, which was nice.

The Di Sarli/Rufino tanda was OK. In the Fresedo/Ruiz the second track Si no me engaña el corazón was the weakest.   I danced the first two Pugliese/Chanel but gave up for El día de tu ausencia and Nada más que un corazón which aren’t my thing.  La Cumparsita was one of the good ones.  I think it was the Troilo 1943.

There was rousing applause for the DJ from those remaining at the end.