Milongas in Amsterdam

Amsterdam can be a tougher place to dance than the rest of the Netherlands, being often said by the Dutch themselves to be a more closed milonga scene but this is often said of big city scenes in Europe compared to dancing in the provinces.

On the other hand there are more milongas than in other towns and they are all bikeable.  There are probably more experienced dancers here in one place and the music I heard in the milongas was mostly from the Golden Era, though that is not the same things as saying it was all the mainstream, popular, traditional music that many like to dance. You might also hear tandas from each side of the Epoca D'Oro but you are much less likely to hear non or neotango than you are outside Amsterdam.

Making a weekend of it

To make a weekend of dancing you might go to De Plantage (review) on Friday (2215-0200). Dancers were perhaps aged 35+ but most were older than that when I went. I heard another option is the new El Berretín milonga. I see that there are different milongas on a Friday at the Academia de tango.  I got the feeling that is a younger crowd than De Plantage but I did not meet many who mentioned it when I was asking for recommendations.  Ditto, Fenix milonga. Both of these are on Tangokalender.  

There are actually a few different milongas on Friday but there never did seem to be, whenever I checked, much on in Amsterdam on a Saturday night.  It's a shame they couldn't move a couple of these Friday night milongas over to Saturday.  That, and not finding a single Airbnb in or even for miles around the city for under £100 is what decided me to go to Antwerp instead to hear a DJ who had been recommended:  Jo Switten.

On Saturdays in Amsterdam there is sometimes, or used to be Milonga Lounge.  I heard from a recent visitor that the milonga had stopped but it is still advertised on Tangokalender (advert here) though the website mentions no milongas. I enquired about the DJing there once but the performance style pictures (and here) and the fact that no locals I knew ever mentioned it as a place to go put me off. Video. From that it seems quite a young scene, especially the women.  Tangokalender shows one or two others that pop up occasionally but don't seem to be regular and nobody ever mentioned them.

The only other option was Tinta Roja run by Lucas whom I met in Edinburgh where he once DJd . The music then was very mixed for me thought there were some great, classic tandas.  But he seemed a nice and friendly guy and I regret not taking him up on his offer to look him up when I was over. According to his Facebook page, he has a free practica 17 till 20hs and a milonga on the first Saturday of the month. Few Dutch I met mentioned this practica but a UK friend of the host said the dancing on the night it became a milonga was the best they found in Amsterdam and that the vibe was young and informal and she thought the music was great. More about El Berretín and Tinta Roja soon.

You might also consider milongas outside Amsterdam for a Saturday night.

Later  I learned many good dancers apparently go out on Sunday when the top four milongas take it in turns.

El Cielo (review) - first Sunday

La Bruja (second review) - second Sunday

Tango11 (review) - third Sunday

TangoTerras a/h IJ (review) or De Plantage (review) - fourth Sunday. The De Plantage Sunday edition starts at 1830 and goes on for 5.5 hours. I heard it attracts more people from outside Amsterdam than the Friday night version.

I also danced one Sunday afternoon in the Oosterpark (review) which is a free summer milonga. Gorgeous setting, seating inside the bandstand, terrible floor, iffy music, free ice cream!

Top milongas, top DJs, top venues

La Bruja or Tango11 are reckoned by many locals to be the top milongas in Amsterdam meaning they have the best dancing.  The video about the encuentro run by the host of La Bruja was the spur for me to go to the Netherlands in the first place. I should say that of any milonga I have contacted, this was the least responsive in that when I enquired about closures in August and September, about needing a ticket for Tango Train and possibly another earlier enquiry I never did get any response.  Certainly at La Bruja the first time I went there seemed to be plenty of good guy dancing - but I was already apprehensive about going and could get none which made me shut down to the guys sharpish. On that occasion I danced with the women instead who were warm, open and good dancers.  I had a nice time.  Many people, including good dancers from within and outside Amsterdam told me they don’t go to either of these milongas but especially La Bruja because of a perceived closed atmosphere.  Some of those who do go from outside said it took a while for them to be accepted.  Depending then on how you rate your prospects or the kind of experience you are looking for you may or may not want to risk one precious evening there. 

La Jirafa (Jacob) in La Bruja was the best DJ I heard for traditional music in Amsterdam, followed by Age Akkerman in El Cielo. See the piece to follow on DJs in the Netherlands.

The most traditional salons (in layout) were El Cielo, La Bruja and De Plantage and as venues I liked them all. They all had good floors.  None of these are places were there is much standing for invitation, particularly among the women.  There was some among the guys but not in a bunched up, desperate, pushy or intrusive way that I have minded in other places still less the girl standing and loitering at the cattle market experiences of the milonga weekends I have been to.  There were a few guys standing around the bar in De Plantage but when do guys not stand around a bar?  A few guys stood at the short entrance end of El Cielo one or two trying too hard to invite and girls and guys stood around on the short, entrance end at La Bruja, mostly in a natural, social way or because they met and chatted with people when moving around the room.

I think in Amsterdam despite how the guys were the first time I would like La Bruja best if La Jirafa were DJing because of the music, the venue with its good dimensions for invitation by look which is pretty much exclusive there; tables and seating, good illumination, good floor, good dancing, elegantly dressed people and the nice bar.  But because of how it was the first time I would have to steel myself to go to that milonga in its regular Sunday slot  and we all know that steeling oneself is not the way to go into a milonga, so I am not sure.  Still, for all those reasons it is an interesting place to hang out even just to watch, if you can make your mind easy with that.

Many said Los Locos on Tuesday night is good. I have not been yet. I hear it is a practica til 2130 and then becomes a milonga. The impression I had from people is that the feeling there is warmer than at some of the other Amsterdam milongas.  Other than that there doesn't seem to be much in Amsterdam, midweek.

Dancing in the Netherlands - an overview

Photo: P.J.L Cuijpers

The articles to follow are what I learnt about dancing in the Netherlands over three trips in August, September and December 2016.  I have been to about a dozen local milongas in the Netherlands, some of them more than once. All impressions are merely that of a visitor. George Orwell was probably more reliable than most of those reporting on the Spanish Civil War by dint of the fact that he fought there and was acutely aware of the deliberate propaganda and the merely lazy and hence inaccurate reporting of the facts.  Yet he said, wonderfully:  I warn everyone against my bias, and I warn everyone against my mistakes. ('Homage to Catalonia')  I hope some of mine might be corrected by those who know better.

The big dancing centre of El Corte is not mentioned because I have not been.

Reviews of Dutch milongas I visited.

What’s on: Tangokalender was most often recommended and has a useful sorting feature showing which milongas are on closest to a particular town - great if your geography of Dutch towns is vague. There is also Torito. 

Pictures of some Dutch milongas on Ojo Oscuro. 

What happens when nowhere is far away

No city is very far away in the Netherlands meaning you can explore milongas across the country by train much more easily than I find is the case in the UK, where milongas are often in village halls sometimes only practicably reachable by car. However, the Dutch who travel any distance to dance outside their locality seem to be in the minority.   I asked one DJ if she had come far for that evening. She said, Yes, twenty minutes.
- By car?
- No, by bike.
I heard this kind of response about staying local confirmed in Amsterdam, in Utrecht and for the Nijmegen area from which one may (only cautiously) extrapolate.

However, because many towns are nearby and some people do travel - at least to the next town with a milonga - it is not difficult to find someone you have met previously - especially in well-known milongas like the Waterlelie (review) in Leiden or the sell-out Oranjerie milonga in Arnhem.  I find this to a much lesser extent with UK milongas where, largely because of distance, most dancers tend to stay local - and a few travel far.

There is though quite a divide between those who dance in Amsterdam and those who generally don't. I sensed it was in some cases almost ideological, on both sides - that isn't how we dance, isn't the music or the atmosphere we like.  But if so it was done with a typical tolerant Dutch shrug - It's just not my way; it's their way, that's fine.  The Dutch are so non-judgemental that, as in California I found it can be hard to get a true opinion, an actual view in the flow of "anything goes".

That divide that nonetheless does seem to exist between Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands is no bad thing.  It becomes difficult when Utrecht for example seems to have a few milongas but no milonga I heard called really traditional and from what I saw at the end of last year seemed to be struggling to get one going.  That means that Amsterdam and perhaps one or two other milongas will suck in the dancers from, say, Utrecht who are seeking a more traditional experience until a more balanced scene catering for different tastes become more widespread.  Or perhaps not - people may compromise some preferences for what can be a more relaxed atmosphere outside Amsterdam.

The dancing population of the Netherlands as a whole seemed quite large to me. You have then a whole country with a well-connected airport, easily accessible internally by public transport and bike, with many milongas, a lot of dancers, a fair degree of cross-pollination between milongas, an apparently co-operative local milonga scene (after all, they organise a festival of the regular Amsterdam milongas), DJs from nearby countries like Benelux and Germany and a generally very laid back population. It is an attractive proposition - and that is before mentioning that the men are tall and the women embrace in a close, relaxed and natural way. 

I found biking in Amsterdam to be unquestionably the fastest and easiest way to get around between milongas though in that city you need your wits about you. Biking I found superlatively good in the Netherlands generally.  I biked and trained a lot. See Biking in the Netherlands. I heard on my last trip that there is also a bike-hire scheme at local stations which means it is getting easier for visitors to participate.

Meeting people

Openness in the Netherlands does not necessarily in general mean warmth and openness from the get-go in the way that you do feel that tactile warmth in Buenos Aires and in southern cultures from men and from women. Certainly I found the Dutch far from unfriendly and within three trips I was offered overnight accommodation at least three times. Openness to the Dutch I found means that they may be more willing to talk about most things openly. In actual fact I find the British as much or more open though one's access to one's own culture makes it hard to be objective.  Despite what the politicians say class and the related problem of social inequality is in any case still so rife in Britain that it is difficult to generalise.

I found the Dutch independent - they like it, they respect it and expect it in others. Is there anything the Dutch don't like to talk about? I asked a tall Dutch girl.  We met in Dundee airport but she lives in Aberdeen. Money, she said and I sensed later there was truth in that. Characteristically though, the Dutch will be open about the fact that they are not open about money.

In the milongas I found many Dutch happy to chat. While most did not make overtures to a solo visitor this is characteristic of many milongas and some certainly did. I mean social chat, not walk-up dance invitations. But if you want to meet the Dutch in their milongas, as in most places I have been, you the visitor might well have to initiate chat yourself. 

I found and heard from many Dutch people that the Amsterdam milonga scene is quite closed. There can be good dancing but the attitude is not necessarily especially warm towards visitors. The 'Northern Mischief' (visiting separately) also found this, certainly in one milonga. There were exceptions. The hosts of TangoTerras (review), La Bruja (second review), El Cielo (review) were all welcoming to me but I mean the dancing population. For example, De Plantage (review) on Friday I found a quiet, reserved place as you might expect for a late-starting milonga for older locals but some people were certainly pleasant - socially - to a visitor. It was not a cold atmosphere there. I did not feel invisible there as I did the first time at La Bruja or at Tango11 (review). To an extent you make your own destiny and at slightly chillier places or places where the women are putting the work in to get noticed you may also feel you need to work harder to get noticed - if, that is, you think these things should be about work and putting that kind of 'effort' in and you have the temperament for it.

On the other hand, milongas outside Amsterdam I found more laid back, socially.

Swapped roles 

It was quite easy to dance with women in Netherlands. It is not that I saw many women in swapped roles - I did not but they all seemed to twig quickly to invitation even from a woman they did not know and many were interested.  Gratifyingly, some seemed interested in me before I was saw them.  It's so different girl interest from guy interest.  Girl interest is very liable to mean nice dancing.  Guy interest very often does not!

I rarely saw guys dancing together. They seem to do things quite conventionally in the Netherlands, which surprised me. Maybe that was just chance or perhaps tango attracts the more conventional people in Dutch society.  That said, I saw one of the best dancers I have ever seen in swapped roles in El Cielo (though she danced both) - and virtually all she did was walk. Girls, huh!   I think there's a lesson there, for the more adventurous and open-minded gents - or those who just really want to learn to dance.

Invitation

In the milongas I went to everywhere in the Netherlands invitation was mostly, but not wholly by look. More often, if you chatted with a guy, I found he was very likely to invite you, but as everywhere the better the dancer, the less this happens. I can’t say though that I had much chat or dance with many great dancers but I was probably just cautious because I went to many places, I was alone and there was a lot to take in each time. I look back and find I danced with a handful of great local guy dancers over three trips.

Up next: Milongas in Amsterdam: making a weekend of it and a visitor's summary of the top milongas, top DJs and top venues

Trust in the milongas: a high-risk game

The next Brain Game (see previous) was about trust. How strange! I thought - two tango-related subjects next to one another. Later I realised that many mind-related subjects are connected to interpersonal relations which is what the milongas are about. 

The programme set up a game between two strangers who are offered a case of money. Each person is given two cards one saying Split, the other saying Steal.  Each player can choose to split the money or steal the money.  Each player shows the card indicating their choice at the same time. If both choose Split, both get to share the money. If both Steal, no-one gets the money. If one player Steals, only the Stealer gets the money. Most couples, strangers remember, chose to Split. The famous point was made that we are built to co-operate. I remember a friend years ago trying to explain game theory to me and saying that society can only tolerate a certain number of freeloaders. 

Here was the other interesting bit. The programme went on to say that when we trust, the brain rewards well-placed trust with the release of oxytocin. It is a reward system for trust. The programme said: Trust is like a currency. You build up this currency by being reliable, generous and consistent. You spend this currency when you trust other people to reciprocate. Trust is the glue that holds the structure together

Yet when you trust a guy you don't know not to crush you, hurt you or do  rough, uncomfortable or just plain creepy things to you on the floor, none of that trust has been built up. And it isn't just that he is doing those things to you.  If you the girl on your side are committing to a real dance you are giving yourself to him, trusting him to take care of you, so much so that you could hardly be closer to him, that you are even trusting him to take care of you while you close your eyes.

Some girls will try anything once on the basis that trust has not yet been built up.  They are giving the guy a chance.  But if it is unpleasant they tell you and sometimes you even see they do indeed become suddenly much more discriminating towards that particular guy.  This is the kind of girl who knows and acts in the belief that look is not feel and there is truth in that, though less I find as I get better at looking. With a knee problem I can’t risk that approach even if I wanted to. So how do you trust a guy you don’t know? You watch very carefully and for quite a while, everything he does on and off the floor. 

And that is also why second, third, fourth chances just don’t work. I find this true in life and dance.  A guy who wants a second chance in my experience is almost guaranteed to have no idea about what it is that makes the two of you incompatible and it wouldn’t be my place or my inclination to say what that is especially when  they don't ask. Very likely he may not have twigged you didn't like it though he may just get you aren't keen the way you were before.  Yet these types are not curious at all about why you were obviously trying hard to avoid his look or whatever his way is of trying to get your attention.  In any case they just want a second chance thinking that somehow their awesomeness will blow you away.  Very often, if you don't give them that second chance they may try to demand your attention which reveals even more of those true colours and ought to warn you that you were right in your first instincts.  If you mistakenly agree, they are liable do something else that make you remember why you dropped them after the first time.  And if you give in to second chances they can lead to third, fourth endless versions and all you are doing is compounding an incompatibility.  Men are simple creatures, said the Northern Mischief in different conversation.  But it is true a lot of guy psychology seems to be of the Me, Tarzan! type, to do with needing to be awesome, which is a huge blindspot.   

The programme finished by saying you can manipulate trust to lower your conscious awareness. I thought of guys who "lower your conscious awareness" by walking up, unexpectedly to invite women, who ambush you with invitation, or who blindside you. Or they manipulate you as I was manipulated in De Plantage by a tall man in braces with a rogueish smile coming to stand right in front of me and staying there, grinning, while I squirmed uncomfortably and gave in to what turned out to be - predictably - insensitive handling.  They must think we are stupid - that we don't know how things work, or that we are blind.  And we confirm them in those beliefs by accepting them.  Duh!  Don't do it, girls! 

Bizarrely though, the programme said this manipulating  of trust to lower your conscious awareness was a good thing because you miss opportunities through mistrust. This is where things fell apart for me. Some so-called opportunities are worth missing.  One person's opportunity is another person's enfer. I think the programme was saying: don’t always go with your instincts. Look at that key word though: “manipulate” trust it advises.  Manipulate.  Never a good scenario, that. 

Trust is based on experience and experience in the milongas tells you to look, watch and make an assessment about when trust is worthwhile. So I’m sticking to my guns. If some of us miss those close connections that might have been good dances because we don’t trust enough, or we don’t think the risk is quite worth it, maybe it is simply because of a combination of having an expectation we want met, knowledge of what the penalty feels like if it is not met and simply not enough experience in judging the gap between look and feel within the available time and over the numbers present.  What is going on there seems pretty complex to me so I am going to stop beating myself up about taking a long time to recognise as compatible for me guys I don't know in foreign places and missing dances.  If anyone else finds themselves in that boat, I hope you do too.

One last thing about those expectations - it should be obvious that everyone's expectation of what they want is different to their neighbour's. Yet I have found in the milongas it is a real giveaway when somebody says something which clearly assumes you ought to lower your standards to theirs. You ought to dance ‘socially’ as in “you ought to embrace him as a social duty” (!), two men diminish the leader pool by ‘selfishly’ dancing together, things of that sort. That is very likely to be the sign of someone who thinks they know what is best for you and others at which point the thing I know is best for me is to disengage because to point out the disparity to them could only be in very poor taste.

Tango, Travel and Happy Hormones (or not)

Until lately I thought travel to unknown milongas was a good thing. It got me out to milongas and heaven knows judging by the "I haven't seen you in sooo long" 's I don't do much of that in Scotland. Going away I met new people, sometimes even danced. But it was getting harder to do.  I was having fewer bad dances, true. I was getting better at spotting, by look, guys who would feel good but I was dancing less and less and it was stressful somehow. There was the worry about figuring out, within a limited time, who the good dancers were from a packed room of unfamiliar people. There was trying to avoid guys who walk up to invite and there was the stress as you realise that with every tanda you don’t dance the guys are thinking: Why isn’t she dancing? And then there was the worry they think you are too picky / too snobby / can’t dance / won’t dance / are just too much hard work, when after all, so many girls are nice to dance with and are on the edge of their seats waiting to be asked. I am not even long-dancing nor have any "technique" to speak of but given that attitude perhaps I just need to get a cat, a hunky lover or move to Buenos Aires. 

But aren’t we supposed to just control our attitude and everything magically turns out fine? A lot of what happens to you depends, we know on one's own state of mind. If one goes to a milonga closed, nervous, cross or stressed or becomes like that while there then the connections with people in dance or chat are, to state the obvious, unlikely to flow so well. It is not an easy thing though to walk into an unknown milonga alone and mentally hold your own while you are not invited by the guys you want as for example happened to me in La Bruja and on Thursday in El Cielo. Still, I have a lot of resources: I don't get bored listening and watching; I love milonga chat and find it easy, not to mention the experience of other cultures and at least some languages. Even so, I don't know that I could walk in again and again to unfamiliar milongas if I didn't have at least the option of switching roles. You reassert something in yourself when you get to invite, to dance, something that gets crushed when, as a girl, you are ignored, not invited or feel invisible to the guys you would like, or - worse - start to fall into the paranoia of suspecting the indignity of being invited for a "pity dance" from one of these.  On the other hand the few milongas there are with great music or even ordinary milongas with just a few decent tandas have often transformed my mood.

Tonight, my husband called me to watch something with my kids. I love the cinema with the kids, but I can't bear watching the rubbish the three of them will, left to their own devices, watch on TV at weekends. Yet within minutes and for the first time I was hooked. The series was I think a kids science programme called Brain Games. It said that the brain doesn’t like unfamiliar situations. It produces the stress hormone cortisol when faced with them. It said when the brain is faced with familiar situations it produces oxytocin, the happy hormone, the love hormone - something along those lines. 

It crossed my mind: have I been punishing myself in going to all these foreign milongas alone? Is this why so few girls I know do this - because they are sensible and obey their natural reactions? Is it a cortisol reaction that is making it harder to go to these unknown milongas? Is my body saying: Unfamiliar, scary environment, low payback, don’t go there! And how come - if familiar makes us all warm and fuzzy - I, like so many others say secretly  - don’t love my local milonga scene? I have become one of those picky tango people who travel. I console myself that when I travel I prefer the local milongas. I haven’t (?yet) sold my soul to be selected, abjectly, by marathon and encuentro organisers on the basis of my /nationality /age / clothes and (but seriously!) Facebook friends. 

I guess I do it for the challenge, the interest, the novelty and the chance of enjoying it though even that isn’t necessarily the main driver. I wonder what those hormones are called because I guess it isn't the same thing happening as with oxytocin rush induced by familiar situations. It turns out, said Hannah that, strangely, the reasons I travel to unknown local milongas are very like the reasons she is a mountaineer and fell runner. “Unknown milongas are your mountain tops” she said. Maybe I mentioned before that besides having two kids and a job in a completely different field she has a PhD in brain science. I’ll ask her what those hormones are called that make us do what we do.