A relaxing way to do things

Centro Región Leonesa

I usually feel disturbed without space for invitation and acceptance. I like - often prefer - to sit with others but I do not like seat hopping. It is very useful to have a seat for your handbag, perhaps a wrap and a table for your own glass.  If you have your own seat partners know where to find you.  Provided the floor clears during the cortina as I always saw it do in Buenos Aires, men can invite discreetly from their seat with neither sex standing, bunching, blocking, milling about, prostituting and all the attendant stress and unsuitability of all that for invitation.  

My seat, besides, defines my own space and makes my relations from it to other people, especially potential partners, clear and defined. My own seat and table can feel occasionally like a prison but more often like a haven in the sometimes psychologically turbulent world of the milonga. It is relaxing to have your own seat, even more so, if you are a regular, your own table.  No wonder such a privilege is coveted there.

Much of the time in Europe seating in the milongas, the use of it, the lighting and room size are so problematic for some of us that getting to the dance floor can be a miracle.  This is especially true if you do not know the milonga or where is the best place to sit, or where there are seats but in reality nobody sits there. In the central, traditional milongas of Buenos Aires that I attended most often I did not find things to be like that.  All of that is taken care of so whether you know the conditions of the milonga matters much less. 

 It is professional. I would arrive, pay usually outside the salon, wait to be greeted and seated.  I found women usually seat women and men usually seat men, but not always.  Occasionally I had to go and find the girl who would seat me and usually this was when she was also bar staff.  Sometimes bar staff seated me, sometimes the host and sometimes in several milongas it is Danny who is neither host nor bar staff but who specifically works seating people.  If you are alone you are seated either with other men or with other women. Or you will sit in the area(s) for friends and couples - or you may also be seated in this area if you are late and have not reserved. Reservation was common for some milongas and some venues like Obelisco or Centro Región Leonesa. Locals and expats seemed to do it often. 

In these milongas in Buenos Aires where you are seated seems to depend on many things like where there is space, whether you are are known and how known, whether you are a regular, perhaps your dancing I don't know, even perhaps how much they like you... Contrary to what I often heard before I went I found you can usually see partners but then I am tall and generally I prefer not to be in a centre front row regardless - not that I ever worked up the nerve to state a preference. Once on a quiet day in Salon Canning I saw much variation in seating. With plenty of spare seats some were sitting at the front, some at the back, some in the middle. So I guess people familiar with the milongas maybe do state preferences if they do not already have their own regular table. 

The great thing there is you keep your seat, guys know where to find you, bar staff come to you. It is so much easier. It is all set up so that those who want to dance can get straight to the business of invitation, acceptance and dancing  with the minimum amount of difficulty.  It is such a low-stress, relaxing way to do things.  I say again, we have so much to learn from them.