Conversations about cortinas in Pant

At a festival milonga in Edinburgh last year I had a conversation with a visitor about "tango in Pant" and about silent cortinas. I went to the Pant milonga in Shropshire recently and there met Leander and Mike, ex-students of Sharon Koch who runs that milonga. The conversation in Edinburgh had been with Leander. She and Mike took over TangoCheshire some time ago and teach in Wilmslow, with milongas on the first Thursday of the month. Mike, Leander and Sharon seem to share a philosophy about musical organisation and milongas. All are connected to Eric Jorgeson's El Corte in Nijmegen which is well known for playing no cortinas.

I found no cortinas probably more frustrating than I had anticipated. Since all the tables were at one end people staying on the floor between tandas did not block invitation by look. Actually though, my impression was that since most people know each other they just ask one other to dance. People in Glasgow tend to know each other too but these days most men with respect for themselves and the women they want to partner tend to invite by look.

Since Tango Cheshire also has silent cortinas but, apparently, seating is not all at one end I asked Leander how seated dancers manage to see across the floor if people are standing on it during a cortina blocking the line of sight for invitation. “They put on their glasses” she said. I laughed but she had implied that it is a non-issue for them - or had just dodged it.

Still, I do not want to dance half a tanda of one orchestra and half of another. I want to dance a full tanda of the same orchestra with the same person. In Pant, some people did clear the floor after one “tanda” but by no means all. They hopped on and off the floor like random rabbits just as the whim took them and indeed this is what at least some of them do seem to like and prefer. For me this is not at all about respecting the music. I find it makes for a disjointed and broken evening and it become hard to find partners at the time that one wants them.

Most of all I felt no natural sense of the tanda here. Last year I had asked Leander how people learn to hear the differences in the orchestras if there are no cortinas. "Precisely because there are no cortinas, we hope they listen more carefully" was the reply - but I did not see that in much evidence. Besides, people seemed to dance to great and to very poor tracks more or less indiscriminately - though as everywhere, never totally because the floor was usually busier to good tracks.  

Leander and Sharon had similar views about silent cortinas. This seemed to be that the people, not the music have primacy: Why break a flow of dance with someone when you need not or when you are having a good time? But I think you have nothing, really, without respect first for the music. When I asked Sharon she indeed turned the question back to me: “Why have them? What is the point of a cortina? If you are having a nice time why break it up? But I felt I was talking to someone who sees black where I see white and did not feel that would be a productive discussion so let it go without debate.