Closed events

Linlithgow Burgh Halls

I want to pick up on what MOCKBA said about the 'committee vote' issue regarding closed events.  I understand that objection to be that there is something distasteful about the selection of attendees to closed events like marathons or encuentros.  One argument against these is that milonga culture is traditionally open to all who understand how things work in a milonga.  Obviously if someone behaves in a way that is going to physically harm others they are likely to be ejected, as one would expect, but otherwise, milongas tend to be open. 

There are variations.  I have heard about milongas in Europe that are more or less homophobic or can be on certain days or when certain people turn up.  In Buenos Aires at least three years ago you were asking for a lot of trouble dancing with the same sex in a traditional milonga.  You can argue that view is old fashioned, politically incorrect, illegal, out of step, out of date.  But attendees in these places tend to be over fifty, often well over sixty. They are not going to be around forever and there is also a view that they are protecting a traditional cultural form.  Buenos Aires is not London.  It is culturally,  a very different experience.  

I have less tolerance, repulsion even, for what used to be a milonga in Sheffield in the north of England that wanted to say it was a little corner of Buenos Aires in Sheffield.  I thought it sounded lovely but what it meant in practice was that they wanted to run a milonga so traditional that women dancing together was in no way acceptable.  So said the very uptight organiser to me.   If it was that traditional they wouldn't have teachers over all the time, because traditionally, recall, people did not learn to dance tango from dance class teachers.  Even today young Argentinians will say that people learned to dance at home, with friends, in parties.   That milonga no longer runs for, I would imagine, obvious reasons and has become only a practica where same-sex dancing apparently is OK but I cannot now imagine going.

In Spain and in Argentina there is disbelief and disgust for the kinds of selection to closed events that you hear about in other parts of Europe. Some organisers demand that you have or open up your Facebook accounts so they can poke about among your friends, to see if you know the right people! You have to answer intrusive, ridiculous, questions about such as who is your favourite European milonguero, how many encuentros you have been to and so on.  It's horribly undignified and demeaning.

But in Europe, people say we do things differently here.  Tango, and dancing to it, emerged in Buenos Aires to fill a need.  I tend to view the emergence of encuentros and marathons as a response to a need.  Local dancers are not finding the music and dancing they want locally, or even when they travel to other local milongas.  So, they have made something different - something which seems to work and for which there is a market - at least for now.   But as Mockba's comment elicited, there is a world of difference between being invited to an event and applying to go to a closed event.  In one, you have the rigamarole, practical disadvantages and humiliation of selection and in the other, you don't.  Plenty of people though, don't like closed events and many  - probably the majority - can't afford that sort of trip.  I hope that encuentros and marathons are a stop-gap until there are more and better local milongas, especially in the cities where you would expect to find them.  But in Edinburgh, there are nearly half a million people, the tango scene has been going for over twenty years and it still doesn't have a regular Friday or Saturday night milonga so it is not a destination for a weekend of tourism and tango and there are as yet no signs that it will become so.

I made a brief foray to the Bristol (UK) encuentro in 2014 which ran I think twice.  I did not enjoy it. I felt trapped and stressed and out of place. It was a hothouse atmosphere with huge DJ egos and people stopped dancing to applaud songs I just thought it weird to applaud - weird to applaud at all actually. I never saw that happen after a tanda in Buenos Aires. It required registration but it was the first time they ran it so I doubt they were that fussy. After long delay I started going to events requiring registration last autumn for the reasons others do, outlined above. But a lot of these events struggle to find enough people to go. The Marbella event in November which required registration had a hard time attracting people. I was one of a scant handful of non-Spanish residents who went - we were possibly only two, me and a prickly Swede. The Murcia event was better but hardly packed to the gills. I had a random message recently on Facebook from a stranger inviting me to his festival in Spain. If people struggle to find attendees for open events it could be a warning about difficult it can be to get people to turn up. Similarly, the milonga weekend in Ramsbottom must have, sadly, left the organisers heavily out of pocket.

A view in favour of invitation-only events is that it is an opportunity to get your friends together -  to see and dance with the people you like and that you rarely do see or dance with. Who would censure a private party?  Milongas can be harsh, hurtful, toxic, stressful environments, especially I think for women and yet you can also find wonderful experiences.  So it would not be surprising if people wanted to create private, more intimate events with like-minded people where the atmosphere was more likely to be enjoyable and cherished as such.  You can rarely find though, enough people locally to make this viable.  A milonga is exciting partly because of the strangers, the friends of friends perhaps, hence the attraction of international, invitation-only events.

One thought against regular closed events is that there is an impact on the local dance community because a private milonga isn't quite the same as a private party among just friends.

Here is an illustrative example of a closed encuentro, Sueño de Escocia, that was run locally here in Linlithgow Burgh halls in central Scotland last year. The low-key website that there was, has gone but there is still video.  I was not invited. I knew the hosts before they moved to Scotland.

Five or six years ago I started dancing occasionally at the special events at Eton, attended at the time by this couple and many of the better dancers in Britain.  This couple was very different when I met them there. They were in a set of confident, polished people who all knew one another and were very choosy.  Next to that set, I felt like the poor, visiting relation when, after one of these events, a large group of us went out for dinner.  I was ignored by that group and if spoken to, heavily patronised.  Some aspects of those events could be a bit like that, pretentious, monied, very southern, and it is why a lot of people from outside the area stayed away or did not return.  But those milongas were also very popular.  The floor was good, the floorcraft was generally good for the numbers, the ronda was slow but it was usually packed and the music could be good.  They were  - and still are, in a new location - open to everyone which brought criticism of gender imbalance but that didn't stop people coming.

Now that this couple who danced there  - Kiwi, not southerners - have moved here, I go to the occasional milongas they run.  It is the best around, bringing in people from Edinburgh, Glasgow  - the twain never usually will meet - and many other areas.  The floor is good, the venue fresh and nicely presented, the food is healthier and better than average and the hosting is warm.  I preferred it when the host DJd but I think he prefers to dance!

I know by sight probably most of the people in that video who dance in the UK.  I don't know why I wasn't invited and I didn't give it much thought at the time.  Perhaps because one of the hosts had spoken with me about closed events earlier in the year and they knew I was not that keen. Perhaps because I'm just not "in" with any of that group in the video - neither the Scottish lot nor the English group. It's a set, a group, an in-crowd.  You have to be part of it.   You could 'apply' on the website but the vibe and rumour were that attendance was by invitation - it was unusual that way.  Most advertised events are either straight up about it being invitation only, or they say you have to register (meaning apply and for many events, and in some countries more than others, go through a hidden selection process).  In this case it was not clear.  Perhaps they were hedging their bets in case not all of the people who were invited accepted and they needed a pool of applicants as a top-up.  But who wants to go where they are not invited?   And yet a lot of people do feel hurt. They hear about something, they are not invited, they don't know why, they feel hurt, excluded, not good enough. One feels for them but personally, I just find it usefully clarifying.  If a friend had behaved unpredictably, I might feel differently but that is not the case.

These hosts have used various venues for their local milongas, open to all, as they search for the right place.  Some might say it was slightly distasteful that they used a local milonga to do a dry run of the venue which they then used for the encuentro.  But perhaps it was nothing so calculating.  You could say they tested out the hall on the local oiks who in the overwhelming majority were not then invited to the special event. You could say that was elitist.  But then, testing the venue was a sensible thing to do and I can't say that I blame them. You could also quite plausibly say that the milonga was a standalone event and nothing to do with the encuentro.  And we, milonga-goers were fortunate it was in a particularly attractive venue. You would be hard pressed to say that the Linlithgow encuentro was flagrant, in your face and a kick in the teeth to the locals. You could not even call the website 'advertising'.  It was all very hush-hush; perhaps most locals did not know it was happening.

Sueño de Escocia was so quietly organised I only heard about it on its opening day, from a friend in England who was also not invited.  Later, I heard too from someone who was very keen to go, applied and didn't get in - a lovely dancer, also in England. And I heard from a so-called friend of the organisers, again in England, who also wasn't invited.  I only heard these stories at different times, by complete chance, from a handful of people but already you can see that a number were put out or upset. Equally, I'm sure that the 150 odd people or whatever it was that went, had a lovely time. What will undoubtedly be true is that things are clearer to those not invited.

I went to those hosts' next open milonga in December.  I was on my way back from Glasgow and wasn't really in the mood.  I peeped in to see if there was anyone I wanted to dance with, else I would have gone on to do some local tourism. There wasn't, but just as I had decided to go elsewhere, I was spotted and warmly hauled into the room by the laughing organisers.  It was as nice a welcome as I have always received in Scotland at their previous events. They are good hosts and good dancers. So, do I think there is something wrong with invitation-only events and this event, illustratively? No, I have no criticisms. The hosts ran a party for their friends, for the people they thought would gel and it looks like it went very well. I think that's to the good. The fact is these places have a limit on space. Why shouldn't they get their own friends together if they want to? It's the same in people's houses. You have a party. You can't fit everyone in who you wanted to come or you don't think person A would go so well with that mix of people so you see them in other places or have another party and invite them next time. I think that's just normal social life. I have friends I see in the milonga, friends  I see in restaurants, friends I email, friends I see just at sailing. I don't get upset because some of my sailing friends meet up privately because that would be weird.

There are obviously some issues with holding a private event and closing the doors to the locals or to say, that nice dancer and nice person who clearly wanted to go and couldn't. But in this case these people moved to Scotland and they had a lot of friends from the places they lived in or danced in before.  They wanted to invite them, see and host them in their new area.

An event where you have to apply and be selected according to hidden criteria is a very different creature compared to one to which you are invited.  Think of it in dance terms.  In the latter you know you are wanted, as with a dance where you are invited by look.  In the former you are asked to essentially walk up and beg....and still you may get turned down! Not very like milonga culture at all.