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| Lunan Bay |
Our favourite beaches are the long expanses Lunan Bay in Angus and St Andrews West Sands and Tentsmuir in Fife, backed by its pine woods. Of course there are gem-like tiny beaches but there is a promise of something wonderful in those those long, majestic expanses, something maybe about an extended free day of pleasure represented by that lengthy exapnse.
A: How many people danced those last two tandas out of interest?
B: Everyone there, which was about five couples since some had left after 3 hours (esp. classgoers) and many after 4.
A: That's a real shame. If I don't know the place I often like to settle in for an hour or two and then get going with the dancing. I loved that about Buenos Aires, how much dancing time there was. Long milongas as standard. You can really relax when there's no time pressure. At the Cambridge New Year milonga - that there was only an hour to watch, an hour to try to pick up any guy dances I fancied and an hour with the women. It felt hurried.
B: Quite amazing to the see that milonga duration at three hours. Sadly I think that's to cater for the classeros who want to be 'batched up'.
What's nice is that this year's edition of that milonga will be five hours long. I don't know that I'm going though because I and others found over two days recently the good music by that DJ was played far too loud.
Hoy Milonga shows that many milongas in Buenos Aires run for six or seven hours. El Arranque and Nuevo Chique were both running for seven hours on the Thursday that I drafted this piece. Milonga de Buenos Aires in the Obelisco venue on a Friday was running for nine hours. We in Britain are only in the last few years dragging ourselves out of the kindergarten/classero three hour milonga. Many milongas in the UK now are lasting at least four hours, sometime five or more.
These are the regular five hour + milongas in the UK that I know of. As you can see it has little to do with location. If you hear of any others, please do say. The ones I have been to have my summary memories in italics.
Beeston Bank holiday milongas by Lisa Cherry-Downes by Nottingham (five hours) , the next one being Monday Jan 2nd. Lots of food! Prefixed by classes. Needs better guy dancing. Review
Cafe Domingo, a monthly five hour tea dance in Bristol by Andrew Oldroyd & Michele Tedder. Genuine, warm hosting from Andrew. For venue, dancing, music and atmosphere this was my favourite place in 2015. Review
El Quinto, five hour milonga, quarterly in Nottingham by Mick & Susan Morgan. Nice venue. Cold, rule-bound, self-conscious milonga. Needs better guy dancing and from experience and reports, needs better DJs Review
La Milonga de Exeter, five hour milonga by Fernando Guidi. I keep hearing how nice the host is.
Manchester pop up milonga. 5 hour milonga roughly every two months run by a group of friends - John, Stephanie, Helen and Paris. Check Facebook group. Great welcome, lovely decor, mostly standing room, good for socialising, quite dark, very small dance floor for the numbers. Review
Menuda Milonga, Cranborne, Dorset by Richard Slade (5.5 hours). Lovely venue, accommodating host, famously hard to break into if unknown. Attracts people from far away. Plays Guardia Vieja.
Tango Stafford’s five hour tea dances run by Geoff and Pauline.
Tea and tapas was a five and a half hour event in Cardiff . This was a £15 ticket inclusive of food. It was organised by a group of friends but unfortunately there seems to be no group to keep an eye on what might happen next.
El Arrabal, 5 hour mothly milonga in Oxford by Miriam Orcutt & Dante Culcuy. Oxford Tango Academyl. Quite dark. Tabled seating but not per BA where solos are seated with others by the host, so lonely for unknown solo dancers. Pretty good music - some drama. Review
Their Barn milogna is four hours long and it says on the website that it is sometimes preceded by a class. This is useful for those who wish to avoid those weekends to avoid the inevitable influx of class-based dancers which usually means worse dancing compared to social dancers and often a poorer ronda.
Tango Light Temple, 5.5 hour weekly milonga in Shoreditch, London by Pablo Rodriguez and Naomi West Tango Space
The short-lived milonga by Manchester-based Tormenta Tango was also five hours.
What is interesting is that the majority of these are not, to my knowledge, run by teachers and do not have classes beforehand, demonstrating that social dancers know what social dancers like. In this list the only non-teaching organiser I am aware of who bring in teachers before milongas is Lisa - and the dance standard was correspondingly poor, also with many leaving before the end having already spent a long time in class.
At multi-day milonga weekends I prefer one longer milonga over two shorter ones. I hear about buyers less inclined to pay for two four hour milongas in one day when they would rather have e.g. one six hour milonga. Besides being less overtly exploitative it is more relaxing with less pressure to try to cram in all of one's dancing into a shorter time.
Something doesn't add up here. If a milonga is a local, neighborhood party - as it may be in BsAs - then hardly anyone would need to watch dancers to know who's who. Because they already know each other. Let alone watch for hours! Conversely, if one is a total stranger at a milonga then one's less likely to find partners for chatting, drinking, and off-the-floor socializing than to find dance partners ... so it'd be very hard for this person to spend hours without dancing and still be good about it. We can have a lot of fun dancing with strangers, not so much engaging in small-talk with them. If we were more adept for the latter then we'd probably still go to our friends parties today, instead of heading to some milonga ;)
ReplyDeleteThe optimal duration of a small-scene milonga should probably correlate with the number of guests. If you have 10 potential partners, that's no more than 3 hours of dancing, and therefore a 5-hour party plan makes no sense. And that's even without taking into account that some of your smaller-community friends get tired too soon or may have work to do in the morning. Or, indeed, are recent students who obviously don't yet dig every aspect of our pastime, but who we need to nurture.
I see your point. True, a new scene, especially in a remote area is unlikely to start with a 5 hour milonga. Apart from the London milonga mentioned here - the others are monthly or less frequent. When they are on, even if they are far from anywhere they can draw quite a lot of people. Menuda milonga is a case in point. I've met people from London who drove to that. In fact a friend and I came from Scotland (albeit we combined it with a milonga weekend nearby). Pretty much all these milongas are well-established or getting so. The idea I think with longer milongas at least in England is that they pull in people from further away because more dance time makes it more worth travelling to.
ReplyDeleteTo your point: "Does it, though?" Well, I think so. Evidently I seem to not be alone. I do spend a lot of time watching in milongas - especially ones I don't know. In BA I saw people dance a lot but I also many watching for hours. I know people here who do too. It depends - sometimes I'm up most of the night. Sometimes I sit most of the night, depending on my mood, who's there, the music and also how well I'm known. And I dance both roles so I have far more opportunity to dance than most. But I find long milongas relaxing and "mishortas" (not my term!) especially if I have to drive an hour each way - rarely worth going to. I also find long milongas attract better dancers.
Some people just like to dance and leave or drop in to chat to friends and I get that. 5 hour milongas suit them (because they can stay for part of it) as well as people who do actually prefer long milongas. 3 hour milongas only attract people who like mishortas (and those with no choice). No one's saying anyone has to be there the whole time - and in many places people come and go. It's like playing tandas in 3s or 4s. Play in 3s and you upset the people who like 4s. Play in 4s and the people who like 3s can just dance 3/4!
Mockba wrote: "If you have 10 potential partners, that's no more than 3 hours of dancing"
ReplyDeleteOr you could dance more with the same partners! :-)
Mockba wrote: "If you have 10 potential partners, that's no more than 3 hours of dancing"
ReplyDeleteIt also assumes you like all the tandas and can get the right person for the right music.
I'd like 3 hour milongas better if the ones there are were jam packed with great music and great dancers, but I often find the shorter the milonga, the worse the music and dancing. I think that's because short milongas are organised by teachers and attended by people who dance most in class, not by real social dancers.
I'd like 3 hour milongas better if the ones there are were jam packed with great music and great dancers
DeleteWell the scepter of substandard music and dancers it's a double-edged sword. Too many disliked tandas - either skipped for not linking the music, or danced but without joy - will eventually wear me out. If I expect poor DJing and few good partners then I'll plan to spend less time at a milonga, not more?
Being "jam-packed with dancers" is another double-edged thing. We've tried extending our monthly milonga by an extra (5th) hour and found that several hardcore dancers do stay on, but there are still too few people on the floor to keep the right energy level. It's an OK extra hour, but just isn't great amidst all the empty chairs and empty floor. And then we have to tear it down and to clean it up, and we get home an hour after the last guests get to their beds, and it just doesn't feel like the extra effort of the organizers was worth it. So I'm like, if the crowd is still strong at the scheduled closing time, then of course we'll add a bonus tanda or two. But not more.
I can think of four hour milongas where adding an extra hour would have just the effect you mention.
DeleteI think for their existence long milongas need either many local dancers, as in London or Buenos Aires, or surrounding pockets of dancers who may not be immediately local to the town or village where they are held but who are willing to travel for a longer event. This I think is the case with most of the milongas mentioned above.