Cafe Baile: world music, dance and tango at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Dance Ihayami, one of the acts at Cafe Baile

Before children, for two or three years I used to take some of my holiday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  These days during August I avoid the traffic, the parking problems and the pedestrians with a death wish and read at home instead.  But if you can run the gamut of the Royal Mile without picking up a slew of flyers, Edinburgh in August can be fun.  It feels a bit like London at this time.  The greater human variety lends something of that exciting buzz I still feel each time I go back to London; for context I now live in the middle of Scotland.  At half past five on Leith Walk I enjoyed the mix of people who have finished work, interesting-looking visitors, a man in drag with wonderful pink and silver make-up and outside the Omni Centre an impromptu African music and dance act with drums and masks.  I felt sorry for two young men in sharp suits who I took to be performers but realised had the thankless task of trying to sell a finance product on the street at that time. 

Cafe Baile is part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  For £9 you get a flavour of some of the Fringe music and dance acts with about half an hour of social tango dancing at the start, the end and in the middle.  It takes place three times over three weeks and I have been going for the three years that I believe it has existed in at least its current form.  This year, it has moved from the Jam House to the slightly more clinical atmosphere of Lauriston Hall. There is a bar.  In the past I have found the acts to be middling to good, a few are superb; one or two have been toe-curlingly terrible. It is all part of the rich mix you expect from the Fringe.   

In previous years I learned not to sit in the front row in case  I became a "volunteer" to an act and later to sit where I pleased - but to know my boundaries.  The hypnotic belly-dancer "Shantisha" who seemed able to move parts of her body quite independently from one another tried to persuade me to "volunteer".  I felt momentarily like Eve with the snake - entranced and appalled; not by the act but at the prospect of being on stage. I have seen for myself you never know what you might be getting in to with these things.  As with so much of life it is not unlike what happens in the milonga: during the social dancing someone I know by sight walked across the room to invite me directly.  He wanted to dance but I did not.  I was sorry to have to do so but relieved when to both requests I said "no-thank you".  Later, I asked a friend sitting next to me if he wanted to dance the Rodriguez, but he too knows his own mind and chose the girl he'd arrived with, sitting on his other side.  That's what can happen with asking, only with friends, there are no hard feelings.

The social dancing is attended by some locals and there are often a few visitors who dance tango too.

Since I have stopped going out to the local milongas as much, I have joined a non-fiction book group in Edinburgh instead.  The first Cafe Baile this year was on the same day as the book group which happened to be taking place a bit later in a pub at the end of that street so I decided to drop in to  Cafe Baile first.

There was a queue before it opened (a bit late), so the room was fairly full from the start.  There were about three tandas before the first dance act but nobody danced the first tanda.  I got up to the second Donato track of the second tanda but only danced one track.  I apologised to my friend and we sat down.  The fourth track was good but it was too late for us.  Nevertheless she agreed to the next tanda, which was vals.   I often hear good vals and milonga tandas in sets with tango tandas I do not want to dance.

It was hard for some visiting women dancers to get dances which is unsurprising when they are mixed in with the non-dancing visitors around the three sides of the dance floor. It illustrates the need for suitable seating where there is tango social dancing.  

At the first Cafe Baile there was scattered applause of the social dancers at the end of some tracks.  It felt very odd because of course this would never happen in a real milonga.  I didn't know whether to feel pleased they like the dance we love and might try it some time or whether to feel dismayed that our ordinary social dance looks to them like a show.  The idea of being a spectacle is for me, anathema.  

But how interesting it might be if someone used an event like this for experienced dancers to invite the curious who have never danced to try moving as one to tango music, without telling them what to do (and making them self-conscious), or pushing them around.  Experienced dancers meet new or potential dancers so rarely because most drop out of class before getting near a milonga or they are intimidated  when they do go because their class experience is so remote from what actually happens in a real milonga.

I did not go to the second Cafe Baile and had not intended to go to the third because it doesn't have the continuity of a milonga, the dancing time seems to be shorter this year and I don't want to sit through an act (or three) if it is poor.  If there was a separate area you could break away for a drink or snack I might feel differently.  

But a dancer had recommended some stand-up comedy by "an Argentinian", who also dances, not too far away.  I was only able to go on the same night as the third Cafe Baile so decided to drop in there beforehand.  I arrived when the doors opened.  Numbers at this time were about two thirds down on the numbers for the first one.  The DJ was quarter of an hour late and by the time the music started at about 1915 about twenty five people were there. The numbers picked up  with more local dancers arriving over the next ninety minutes.

I stayed for the first half hour set of social dancing but did not want to dance, then stayed for the first set of acts.  I enjoyed the Indian classical dancing by three women dancers from Dance Ihayami, soft and strong, elegant and grounded and the mind-bending Japanese electro act Siro-A.  

Then I went on to the comedy, getting waylaid by flyer-touts in the dark Cowgate and lost in the dank and eerie sidestreets.

I stopped by my book group for half an hour on the way back and then went back to Cafe Baile for the last set of social dancing where a friend persuaded me to dance two of the Di Sarli.  Then we danced all of the Troilo, swapping roles throughout. He said there were some very good acts in the second half.  

Photo by Shetland Arts shared under Creative Commons license.

Talk: "Special" music and applause

2014

Dancer A:  I was puzzled by the music this afternoon. I arrived towards the end of the first hour & there was nothing I recognised. 

Dancer B:   A favourite DJ of mine reported the same of DJ "X". He said he will not go again.

Dancer A:  I could recognise the orchestras for the most part but not the tracks. I danced an OTV [Orquesta Tipica Victor] tanda I didn't know with a stranger & found the music hard. But strangely everyone applauded the DJ after that tanda....

Dancer B: Unfamiliar music and hard to dance. The kind of music some people find sorely lacking in real milongas. I can understand why they applauded.

Dancer A: They also applauded DJ D's Rodriguez foxtrots. I like them but not to dance and I didn't think they needed applause.

Dancer B: I have only ever heard applause for tandas in encuentro-type events. I could not imagine it happening in city milongas such as BsAs, Berlin, Paris etc.

Dancer A:  I asked some people I knew about the applause. The partner of a DJ said that people were very appreciative of the music. Maybe they were all very experienced & it's true most people had been dancing for at least 5 years. Still, I was not generally with them on their musical views.

Dancer B: I have to say I believe it is an affectation used to demonstrate appreciation of the music by people in which genuine appreciation of the music is minimal. The feeling that the music genuinely gives does not lead one to applaud.

Dancer A:  The music became more familiar later on but still a lot of stuff I didn't know. DJ "A" liked it. She said playing unusual stuff made the event more special. 

Dancer B:  Special is an excellent word to describe it. Another is "alternative".

Dancer A:  DJ "B" said apparently these organisers like DJs who play this kind of less familiar music. 

Dancer B: This is one reason why they organise such events. The number of people who like this kind of music is so low that to get enough of them in a room to dance with each other, they have to run special gatherings.

  Having said that, in Germany and the Netherlands, there are a few regular milongas like this. I would sometimes turn up at unknown milongas advertised as 'traditional', with just fingers crossed. I recall one in Germany where DJ "C" played not one single track I recognised all night. Instead, there was an endless, uninterrupted stream of third-rate music from BsAs orchestras that never made the grade. What many DJs call C-sides.

  I learned a lot by chatting to the (small number of) regulars. They told me how they really liked that DJ "C" plays refreshingly new traditional music every night, rather than the same boring classics. I watched these people dance. They don't actually dance to the music playing. Which is no surprise, since they don't know the music playing. They do a homogenised instruction-based dance that goes as well or as badly to any tango. And this is one reason why they think that DJ "C" is playing different music every night. The music played is so immemorable, and the dancing "to" it is so remote, that they can't actually recognise whether the music is a track they've already heard. They would not know if exactly the same music was played the following week. Musical amnesia.

 This is the total opposite of the relationship with the music typically enjoyed by the best guys in a traditional milonga. Such a guy knows every single piece that is played, and if he doesn't it is because the DJ has messed up. He recognises each piece from the first second or two of the sound. He knows every single beat and note of each track of the hundreds that are his personal favourites. That's essential to him giving his girl a good time. The music is like a familiar and loved garden. He's taking his girl on a walk through it.

Dancer A:  That is an excellent point. And I do feel that. I recognise tracks from the first beat or two or I don't know them. I almost never have doubt on this. I truly hate "leading" pieces I don't know. Several times in the past I have had to excuse myself mid tanda because of that. 

Dancer B: I refuse. Like you, I'll walk off the floor rather than fake it.

  Yet some only like music they don't know. I know another DJ who says she hates to dance to music she's heard before, so a trad music night was for her "a nightmare".

Dancer A:  So what happened to DJ "C"?

  She is now well-known as a promoter of their manifesto against the focus on Golden Age Greatest Hits that 'we've all heard a hundred times', and for the 'undiscovered treasures' that we have not. It is interesting reading.

Applause: Apollo and Marsyas

The contest between Apollo and Marsyas,
National Archaeological Museum, Athens, 215. 330-20 BCE.

  So Midas announced a music competition.  The audience gathered in the forest.  People leant against trees and rocks, waiting for the concert to begin.

  Apollo appeared and the crowd fell silent.  His lyre rang out, tinkling and glittering.  The sound rippled across the glade, spreading like sunshine.  The listeners felt warm, as if golden light had filled their hearts.

  The crowd rose to their feet, cheering.

  Then Marsyas played his flute and a low sound, like gentle wind, echoed through the forest.  The sound seemed to lift the listeners into the air.  The notes rose higher, and the listeners felt as if they were flying!  Then with tumbling notes, Marsyas brought the listeners back down to earth.

  The crowd were silent.  They did not clap, or cheer.  They did not even smile.  Marsyas was sure that nobody liked his music.

  Midas addressed the crowd.  "I think you'll all agree who the winner is!"

  Apollo grinned, and Marsyas hung his furry head.

  "His music moved us so much, we could not clap or smile. Marsyas is the best musician of all!"

  Now the crowd cheered!  They stamped, shouted and roared for more until Marsyas played again.  After that Marsyas became famous.  He played his flute all over Greece inspiring people to make their own flutes from bones, wood and reeds.

- From Greek Myths: Stories of Sun, Stone and Sea by Sally Pomme Clayton (Author), Jane Ray (Illustrator).

I have occasionally heard applause mid-milonga at the end of a track or tanda. It has never been at an ordinary milonga though, always at a special event where the audience - I mean dancers -  evidently feels moved to demonstrate particular appreciation.  And yet each time for me it has felt  strange and unwarranted.

Applause at the end of a milonga is altogether different. Here in the UK at least it is a customary thanks to the DJ.

Thanks to Sally Pomme Clayton for permission to quote this passage.
Image 'Apollo and Marsyas' from the Ancient History Encylopedia licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0