Warmth

I dropped into the Edinburgh jazz bar on Sunday almost by chance. I was hungry and remembered as I walked past that there was some people from the Queer Tango scene who go there at that time to dance blues. In the Ladies someone said a warm hello. It was a new tango dancer from the QT group who danced amazingly, naturally well after only a month. That’s the nice thing about that group. Their teacher goes with them to the local milonga and dances with them. 

The new tango dancer told me where she was sitting with her friends. The seating was cabaret style at small tables, some of them pushed together. I got a drink but didn't want to gatecrash her large table of dancers so sat at the back to watch for a while. But she came to find me, chatted to me, sat down, and then persuaded me over to her table where she introduced me to everyone. It was simply the warmest, most sensitive gesture of welcome I've seen in ages. It isn’t that she has decades of social and hosting experience. She is young so it must simply be that she was brought up to be like that or is just that way naturally.. 

A guy from the milongas was there. He knows many dances. We only danced once two or three years ago, I’m not sure why. I suppose I assumed he didn’t want to invite or he assumed I didn’t want to be invited and then gradually - partly through choice, partly to protect my dodgy knee - I danced less and less with guys conventionally.  But he welcomed me too. And then when I was about to leave after half an hour or so to go to the milonga he said persuasively that I shouldn’t leave without dancing. I wasn’t ready and pled my outdoor shoes but I expect I will go back. 

In my experience in the milongas this sort of welcome from habitues is amazingly, sadly rare even - especially - among the well-heeled, well-educated middle classes of the south of England which should indicate that those sorts of things have nothing to do with warmth. It is because of this friendly group of Queer Tango dancers that I have started going back to the regular milonga in Edinburgh which I'd effectively left for the best part of two years. The blues dancer had evidently been warned off entering the milonga scene by people who do other dances along the lines of “tango is such a cold/snobby/unfriendly scene”. 

We in the milongas have in general an appalling reputation for welcoming new people and visitors and welcoming them not mechanically but genuinely, warmly with the same sensitivity shown by my new friend. I once saw a host crash - metapahorically - in supposed welcome into a group of new people a regular had brought to the milonga.  The same host has a tendency to crash, bulldozer-like into conversations between other people. This isn’t welcome, it’s assertion of dominance.

Look around your local milonga and see how very few beginners come into the milonga from class. So those we bring with us, visitors, the curious who drop in are as precious to the milonga as newborns to life. And yet mostly they are treated like Spartans: survive or die. The attitude reminds me of one recounted by the former local from a small island off the west coast of Scotland towards new residents:  It was quite a tough approach: we’ll ignore you for now and see if you’re around/still alive in a year.

Do you like the milonga? I asked the blues/tango dancer. I like our corner of it she said cautiously. When they weren’t there on Sunday I missed them.