No chat?

The question of how you can chat when when your seat in the milonga is fixed preoccupied me before I went to Buenos Aires. 

It is true there are milongas where there is no fixed seating and in theory if you knew people you could I suppose chat to them. I tended not to go to places without fixed seating. 

I worried whether I would chat at all, anywhere. But no, even with my wretched Spanish I did not for a moment find chat a problem in Buenos Aires inside nor outside the milongas. I chatted for hours to hosts or travellers in my accommodation, to other dancers, people who owned or worked in accommodation for dancers, to locals, expats, tourists, milonga hosts, bar staff, Ladies room attendants, DJs, tour guides, people on tours, people in shops and kiosks, bus drivers, taxi drivers, subway attendants, even passengers on public transport - or rather they occasionally said things to me. In fact, all the things I worried about (and what did I worry about beforehand - how to pay for drinks?) were not the problem. Things I had not anticipated were more difficult but overall problems were relatively few. 

Still, before I went I worried: what if no one chooses me? What if I sat conspicuously not dancing for hours?  In those circumstances, how would I, who loves to chat, who loves to meet people, who loves the random conversation had by chance, how would I sit all night next to women I might not like and probably couldn’t talk to in Spanish even so? And who knew if they would want to chat? But these were not generally problems either:

Even if you do not chat, there is a lot to observe and listen to in the milongas.  The Buenos Aires milongas besides are so very different to the European milongas I have been to that there is even more to observe than is usually the case. Many women do not chat, choose not to chat, maybe because there is so much to see and hear.

When you are given a seat at a table or even when you enter the Ladies I found it normal to acknowledge everyone and say hello. And that might be all the interaction there is, especially if there is already a group at the table. Women may not necessarily start talking to you. Perhaps they are a bit put off by these closed northern types coming to their milongas and interacting so nervously and differently to the way they do. Yet the default position of most, possibly all local women I found to be kindly. I often started conversations with a question, made friends and discovered many interesting things. People seemed to appreciate my lamentable efforts in Spanish - and sometimes switched to English.

Still, it does happen that you are sitting with people you cannot talk to or do not want to talk to and you are not dancing either and you have perhaps watched for a while already.  At these times, even well before this point it is normal that you may want to chat.  Occasionally I saw a woman, generally a tourist I did not know but had maybe seen before and was curious to meet. Or, more likely, I saw someone I knew - often a local or an expat, or they saw me. You can talk to people not at your table as you pass theirs when you arrive, when you leave, when you go outside for air or to and from the bathroom.  I saw relaxed local couples greet friends on the way to or from the floor or between tracks as they happened to part from the embrace beside people they knew.  Or you can perch. 

For the record, perching is not a term I ever heard. But perching happens after the tanda starts when it is looking likely that the majority of invitations are over.  If you then see your friend or they see you and, say, you are both alone, one of you can go and talk to the other for a track or even the rest of the tanda "perching" while the chair next to them or next to you is free if the person who occupied it is dancing. I think this is female nature among many of us, but perhaps not all.   Perhaps too it is a complete faux pas but I saw this happening and did it too. This applies I guess more to the women. Men move around more - to the bar, some lounge about or stand but I think women are more focused and specific in where they go, in how they move around the milonga because in the traditional milongas women do not move randomly about and certainly they don't just (apparently) casually hang out around the salon the way people can do in Europe. But when the tanda ends you have to leave whoever’s chair you are perching on before they get back to it.  You cannot just swap seats in the milonga - not even at your table. When you are given a seat at a table you are given a fixed position at that table. Having said that, there are exceptions. I gave up my seat once to stay chatting to a friend well after midnight in Gricel but at that time there were more seats empty than taken.  

After people have sat down and are looking for their next dance, their neighbours do not talk to them to give them opportunity and focus to do this. This is surely just good manners and it mystifies me that it is only partially observed and only in some milongas here because after all the cortina and the start of the next track only lasts a short time.