No pressure

I remember dancing with a delightful family about eighteen months ago.  There was a mother, her university age daughter, the daughter's boyfriend who was a musician new to dance and the daughter's younger teenage brother who was taller than me and had never danced before.  Mother and daughter had been to Buenos Aires, the mother often. This was before I went there myself. I asked her daughter what the dancing was like there. She said it is calmer, especially in the first tanda, when it is just walking and getting to know you. 

That is partly I think why you need four tracks,  this time to get to know someone. In the traditional milongas there they are not as rushed.  The milongas are longer, they are busier than regular milongas here, people come and go more than they do here. People take a long view:  local women (and a long-visiting expat) told me some men didn't dance with them for years, or had stopped inviting them and then suddenly they invited them again.  I was struck by how little women seemed to question this, as though there is no point trying to work out the logic to it - which is probably true.  It reminded me of a novelist I stayed with in Brighton who had been to Buenos Aires as a non-dancer.  This was shortly before I went myself.  She had insightful things to say of the people, particularly of the men.  A born raconteur she kept me laughing in her kitchen as I made tea or snatched salads between dances that December.  "But didn't you wonder why they were like that?"  I asked of her impressions.  "No!" she said breezily, drawing out the vowel. "I don't go in for analysis.  It just is what it is"  

The daughter also said the men in Buenos Aires don't feel the same need to put in figures as Europeans. I like guys who are restrained that way.  They don't show you everything at once.  They surprise you even while you think you know them.  I remember dancing with a man quite regularly for months and realising he was very slowly introducing new things. It is a patient man who takes the long view.  In my experience they tend to be older guys.