Sitting with a strange man

Apologies! Happy New Year! I did say I get a bit distracted by dance.  After Christmas between going away, writing about dance and actually dancing I am afraid I forgot about the greeting.  I celebrated the New Year at the Sheffield Queer Tango Marathon and continued dancing immediately after midnight.  What a way to start 2019.   If my dances this year continue anything like the way they began, it augurs well.  May yours be as delightful.

To resume - how you arrive at a Buenos Aires milonga, alone or accompanied, determines whether you will be treated as single or not. 

Most immediately being treated as single means, as a woman, you will be seated in the women's section if there is one. Usually you share a small table with another woman or a slightly larger table with three or four women.  By being given a table with others you are already, in a sense, looked after, explicitly by the host and implicitly, sometimes, by those at your table.  The women's section always faces the men's except in El Beso, where I remember, in at least two of the milongas or practicas, the women's area filled both longer sides of the room, because there were so many of us. The advantages of this arrangement are that you have a seat which you keep, there are no visual barriers between the parties making the agreement to dance and everyone knows where to find you.  In a busy milonga, this is invaluable, especially where you are a stranger. 

One of the maddening things in many European milongas is not being able to see some partners because you are both sitting on the same side of the room and those sitting between inadvertently block your view of one another. Men can move to a better position to invite but not everyone likes to go on the prowl for dances.

The disadvantage of the Argentinian system is that if you are finding the milonga trying there is nowhere to break out to, nowhere  - bar the loos, or outside with the smokers - to go to regain your composure.  That said, if you are finding the milonga difficult it is no mean feat to, in that same environment, change a state of mind so you might as well leave.  But, because you sit, almost in solidarity, with other women there is a sense of mutual support.  In my nerve-wracking first week in Buenos Aires I remember being gently encouraged by kind, perceptive, understanding Argentinian women to smile, to look at the men.

In Britain and in Europe women and men can move around more easily.  Some milongas have areas that are more conducive to chat between men and women who arrive alone than in the traditional Buenos Aires milongas where this is virtually impossible. But those areas where you make your own way, socially, are useful given there is, currently, no substitute for the Argentine system which accommodates newcomers well.  Recently, I attended a busy English milonga in a church.  Finding the atmosphere oppressive, I moved between four different spots trying to find peace and composure, eventually discovering it next to a behemoth of a stone pillar from where I neither invited nor was invited but I suspect that was the subliminal point of that choice.  But when one has warm, Latin women at the table and for the evening, women with whom to share recommendations, successes and failures, composure comes more easily, with no need for perch and flight around the room.  

Men arriving alone at a traditional Buenos Aires milonga will be seated in the men's section unless they indicate they will join a mixed group of friends for, say, a birthday party.  If you arrive with a man, you will be seated at a table with him, in the couple's section if there is one, which in many milongas is a 'couples and friends', mixed area. 

The men do not face the women in all the milongas.  In this case there are tables for men and tables for women which may be adjacent to that of the opposite sex.  It is not as easy to invite or be invited but it still works.  A woman would not be seated with a strange man nor vice versa.  Only, that did happen to me once in Gricel. I was put at a large table with a youngish male tourist and felt most uncomfortable - thus do we quickly adapt to other ways of doing things.  Perhaps he felt awkward too.  I do not remember an acknowledgement.  To sit at a table with someone and not even recognise their existence - inevitably we only act thus towards people we care not one jot about or whom we actively dislike.  Only those with the toughest hides will congregate in such watering holes.  Wanting to change the dynamic I asked him some casual question about the environment, probably the kind of thing that I guessed a man might like to be thought to know.  His reply betrayed his own gaucheness. No surprise that this was the milonga with the shoddy music which I left early to José's confessed chagrin.  I have a vague memory of flowers that I do not have with any other milonga so there may have been a  tanda de la rosa.  If so, that is likely when I escaped.

At another, less traditional place: Milonga de los Zucca in Salon Leonesa, I arrived late. Much later still, perhaps because of the hour, a young man with whom I had danced but who turned out to have other designs, came to sit at my table. He tried to engage me in conversation that was not to him evidently unwanted and to eventually make his proposals for the short remainder of the evening about going on elsewhere.  Again, I felt uncomfortable as much just by the fact that he had come to sit at my table as anything else.

Those Europeans who don't like to be seated by a host in a milonga say much about the freedom they demand: to choose their seat, to sit where they wish and with whom. I found and still find this sort of 'freedom' overrated, in fact often detrimental. When you are new, to dance, to a new environment, a new milonga, a new city, it can be useful to be taken in hand, especially when alone.  It can be useful, helpful, less lonely and simply less nerve-wracking to be seated with people who are local and experienced but who have also come alone.  The way they do it in Buenos Aires is a way of being brought into an established community.  It is so different from the tough sink or swim approach with which newcomers and visitors are 'welcomed' in some UK milongas:  walk in alone, sit alone, find your level alone.  No wonder many people, especially beginners, think the milongas can be very tough.  The answer is not, as some do, to create 'beginner milongas'.  And beware adverts for milongas that call themselves 'warm and welcoming'.  Usually, that insistence belies the opposite.

So, supposed constraints regarding the way people are welcomed and seated in a Buenos Aires milonga can be usefully defining. Those who find that that long and naturally evolved system works well, fit into it, They see advantages of women sitting with women, of men with men, of couples together and friends together and the disadvantages of not so doing.

Something alive

Walled garden, Crathes castle, Aberdeenshire, Summer 2016

A milonga is a precious thing.  It is something alive, an organism, an ecosystem.  

When it is healthy, its various parts work in harmony, its atmosphere makes it glow.  An example:  the cortina exists to clear the floor so that partners can see one another to invite by look for the next tanda. If dancers dance the cortina or stay on the floor during the cortina, they undermine its purpose  and prevent others from finding partners.  

Another example: invitation by look is the most efficient, discreet way to invite, allowing men to save face if rejected and to accord women true choice.  But if seating, lighting or room size is poor, or dancers do not respect this system all of this suddenly is broken.  

If seats are taken by others, partners struggle to find you, the calm flow of the evening breaks up as you hop from seat to seat leaving a scarf here, a bag somewhere else.  But seating appropriate for friends, single dancers and couples is like nourishment or oil to this system - it helps it to function.  A host in a well-attended milonga might show you to a suitable seat, knowing which is your spot, if a regular, or where might be best if you are new or a stranger.  This accords the host an authority which is useful when s/he has to manage situations of for instance, dangerous floorcraft.  And it tells everyone that this is your seat, your host with the benefit of their experience placed you there, with care. 

A milonga reminds me of a habitat.  In fact I suppose it is - it's the habitat of dancers. Healthy natural habitats can grow wild:

Allean Walk, Queens view, near Pitlochry, early summer 2016

They can be cultivated, as in the header photo of  Crathes castle:

Or they can grow in the most unpromising places:

Banks of wildflowers growing inside/below a huge roundabout/intersection in central Manchester, summer 2016

They can be connected to other, special things:

Kitchen, herb and flower garden, Pillars of Hercules, June
2015

Cultivated wilflowers in the strawberry field/outdoor cafe at Pillars. August 2014

     


They can develop under gentle supervision and benign neglect:

Wildflower meadow behind Doune Castle, Perthshire, July 2016

A healthy milonga can be completely killed off by its system becoming so broken it no longer functions well.  Or by noxious influence, falsehood, politics, disillusion, lack of faith.  It can become a mere carapace, essentially dead inside.  It can become mechanical.  

The health of a milonga depends on the conditions in which it grows and thrives.  If it is run by teachers who refuse to allow anyone but their own students, or it cultivates that sort of atmosphere, it will be stunted and never thrive. If it is run by teachers who teach moves without music (here are 50!),  teachers who give primacy to movements and technique over music (and nearly all do) then the milonga will produce unmusical dancers and these are not dancers.  There are endless problems that can beset a milonga: the venue size, shape, acoustics, temperature, the music, the sound, the floor quality, the tables and seating, the lighting and lines of sight and perhaps most importantly, the quality of the hosting. Variations in these will attract dancers accordingly.

I am puzzled if people (usually hosts) say there are too many milongas. New milongas come into being because existing milongas are failing to serve a need.  This is why only weak and insecure hosts try to see off, dissuade even kill off competition in all the many ways they do.  Strong, secure, confident hosts just concentrate on what they do well.

No chat?

The question of how you can chat when when your seat in the milonga is fixed preoccupied me before I went to Buenos Aires. 

It is true there are milongas where there is no fixed seating and in theory if you knew people you could I suppose chat to them. I tended not to go to places without fixed seating. 

I worried whether I would chat at all, anywhere. But no, even with my wretched Spanish I did not for a moment find chat a problem in Buenos Aires inside nor outside the milongas. I chatted for hours to hosts or travellers in my accommodation, to other dancers, people who owned or worked in accommodation for dancers, to locals, expats, tourists, milonga hosts, bar staff, Ladies room attendants, DJs, tour guides, people on tours, people in shops and kiosks, bus drivers, taxi drivers, subway attendants, even passengers on public transport - or rather they occasionally said things to me. In fact, all the things I worried about (and what did I worry about beforehand - how to pay for drinks?) were not the problem. Things I had not anticipated were more difficult but overall problems were relatively few. 

Still, before I went I worried: what if no one chooses me? What if I sat conspicuously not dancing for hours?  In those circumstances, how would I, who loves to chat, who loves to meet people, who loves the random conversation had by chance, how would I sit all night next to women I might not like and probably couldn’t talk to in Spanish even so? And who knew if they would want to chat? But these were not generally problems either:

Even if you do not chat, there is a lot to observe and listen to in the milongas.  The Buenos Aires milongas besides are so very different to the European milongas I have been to that there is even more to observe than is usually the case. Many women do not chat, choose not to chat, maybe because there is so much to see and hear.

When you are given a seat at a table or even when you enter the Ladies I found it normal to acknowledge everyone and say hello. And that might be all the interaction there is, especially if there is already a group at the table. Women may not necessarily start talking to you. Perhaps they are a bit put off by these closed northern types coming to their milongas and interacting so nervously and differently to the way they do. Yet the default position of most, possibly all local women I found to be kindly. I often started conversations with a question, made friends and discovered many interesting things. People seemed to appreciate my lamentable efforts in Spanish - and sometimes switched to English.

Still, it does happen that you are sitting with people you cannot talk to or do not want to talk to and you are not dancing either and you have perhaps watched for a while already.  At these times, even well before this point it is normal that you may want to chat.  Occasionally I saw a woman, generally a tourist I did not know but had maybe seen before and was curious to meet. Or, more likely, I saw someone I knew - often a local or an expat, or they saw me. You can talk to people not at your table as you pass theirs when you arrive, when you leave, when you go outside for air or to and from the bathroom.  I saw relaxed local couples greet friends on the way to or from the floor or between tracks as they happened to part from the embrace beside people they knew.  Or you can perch. 

For the record, perching is not a term I ever heard. But perching happens after the tanda starts when it is looking likely that the majority of invitations are over.  If you then see your friend or they see you and, say, you are both alone, one of you can go and talk to the other for a track or even the rest of the tanda "perching" while the chair next to them or next to you is free if the person who occupied it is dancing. I think this is female nature among many of us, but perhaps not all.   Perhaps too it is a complete faux pas but I saw this happening and did it too. This applies I guess more to the women. Men move around more - to the bar, some lounge about or stand but I think women are more focused and specific in where they go, in how they move around the milonga because in the traditional milongas women do not move randomly about and certainly they don't just (apparently) casually hang out around the salon the way people can do in Europe. But when the tanda ends you have to leave whoever’s chair you are perching on before they get back to it.  You cannot just swap seats in the milonga - not even at your table. When you are given a seat at a table you are given a fixed position at that table. Having said that, there are exceptions. I gave up my seat once to stay chatting to a friend well after midnight in Gricel but at that time there were more seats empty than taken.  

After people have sat down and are looking for their next dance, their neighbours do not talk to them to give them opportunity and focus to do this. This is surely just good manners and it mystifies me that it is only partially observed and only in some milongas here because after all the cortina and the start of the next track only lasts a short time.

A relaxing way to do things

Centro Región Leonesa

I usually feel disturbed without space for invitation and acceptance. I like - often prefer - to sit with others but I do not like seat hopping. It is very useful to have a seat for your handbag, perhaps a wrap and a table for your own glass.  If you have your own seat partners know where to find you.  Provided the floor clears during the cortina as I always saw it do in Buenos Aires, men can invite discreetly from their seat with neither sex standing, bunching, blocking, milling about, prostituting and all the attendant stress and unsuitability of all that for invitation.  

My seat, besides, defines my own space and makes my relations from it to other people, especially potential partners, clear and defined. My own seat and table can feel occasionally like a prison but more often like a haven in the sometimes psychologically turbulent world of the milonga. It is relaxing to have your own seat, even more so, if you are a regular, your own table.  No wonder such a privilege is coveted there.

Much of the time in Europe seating in the milongas, the use of it, the lighting and room size are so problematic for some of us that getting to the dance floor can be a miracle.  This is especially true if you do not know the milonga or where is the best place to sit, or where there are seats but in reality nobody sits there. In the central, traditional milongas of Buenos Aires that I attended most often I did not find things to be like that.  All of that is taken care of so whether you know the conditions of the milonga matters much less. 

 It is professional. I would arrive, pay usually outside the salon, wait to be greeted and seated.  I found women usually seat women and men usually seat men, but not always.  Occasionally I had to go and find the girl who would seat me and usually this was when she was also bar staff.  Sometimes bar staff seated me, sometimes the host and sometimes in several milongas it is Danny who is neither host nor bar staff but who specifically works seating people.  If you are alone you are seated either with other men or with other women. Or you will sit in the area(s) for friends and couples - or you may also be seated in this area if you are late and have not reserved. Reservation was common for some milongas and some venues like Obelisco or Centro Región Leonesa. Locals and expats seemed to do it often. 

In these milongas in Buenos Aires where you are seated seems to depend on many things like where there is space, whether you are are known and how known, whether you are a regular, perhaps your dancing I don't know, even perhaps how much they like you... Contrary to what I often heard before I went I found you can usually see partners but then I am tall and generally I prefer not to be in a centre front row regardless - not that I ever worked up the nerve to state a preference. Once on a quiet day in Salon Canning I saw much variation in seating. With plenty of spare seats some were sitting at the front, some at the back, some in the middle. So I guess people familiar with the milongas maybe do state preferences if they do not already have their own regular table. 

The great thing there is you keep your seat, guys know where to find you, bar staff come to you. It is so much easier. It is all set up so that those who want to dance can get straight to the business of invitation, acceptance and dancing  with the minimum amount of difficulty.  It is such a low-stress, relaxing way to do things.  I say again, we have so much to learn from them. 

In an ideal world...

- A whole post about the entrance to a milonga? The entrance is the door!?

- No! The entrance is a big deal.

How you are greeted sets the tone and where you sit can define your afternoon or evening. This post is about how I like the entrance to be. It is heavily influenced by how I often found it in Buenos Aires.  How I wish we would learn more from them:

You pay the entrada ideally - but not necessarily - outside the salon. It is how it happens in BA and I remember it at eg. the Stuttgart milonga weekend, La Redonda (run by an Anglo/Argentinian couple), the Cambridge Spring Festivalito (St Paul’s) (once) Tango West. In Buenos Aires I love the thick curtain, which in memory is usually red, that separates the street and/or the area where you pay from the salon.

Nobody makes you give your name, still less write it down on a piece of paper. Nobody makes you sign in. If I found out an organiser’s name, it happened most naturally when I was introduced to them by someone else. 

There are no rules, posters, leaflets or notes on display about how to do, well, anything. 

You are greeted - perhaps by the host or the person who seats you. The host may introduce themselves - but not necessarily. I find it hard to imagine a scenario where a dancer would not reciprocate in those circumstances. Then if the host really wanted to note down peoples’ names discreetly I suppose they could - but why would they? If people like a milonga they will come back and tell their friends. There is no other way more successful.

If you are unknown you are told where the facilities are including where to change shoes/leave coats.

If you are unknown and arrive alone it is assumed (for seating purposes) you are alone unless you say otherwise - as you might in a restaurant. 

Also as in a restaurant you are taken to the seat which is yours for the time you are in the milonga. If I am somewhere I do not know, especially which turns out to have difficult conditions, I appreciate this even more. I do not enjoy walking in to an unknown milonga and wasting time and energy trying to figure out the dynamics of the room/seating/invitation or wondering if I am taking some regular’s spot or committing some other mistake or faux pas. I like to be given a seat, a democratic seat and get to the business in hand. I have never been to a milonga in Europe where things happen this way. 

I liked being seated with other single women. If I am alone or new somewhere being seated and being seated with women takes the pressure off.   Once only in Buenos Aires I was taken to a table with a single man. It felt extremely odd.  It was an evening with live music in Club Gricel (not Daniel and Juan's). I didn’t like anything about that milonga and left after about an hour.

Upon arrival, people acknowledge each others’ existence inside the salon. Some of us in Europe can be so bad at that and it creates such a poor atmosphere.

Bar staff come to the table and take your order.

Catharsis

A guy came to sit on a chair to my left. Like me he was visiting for a few days from I think Wroclaw. While we watched he cracked jokes. I had been feeling the strain the last couple of days, his humour was cathartic and I was grateful for the easy banter.  

He had seen my friend was new in the milongas.  In a stage whisper he said Ask your friend to ask that girl to dance with me. He indicated the girl to the right of my friend.  He leaned across me - Ask her for me he hissed again. I knew my friend was safe but looked at the visitor askance at this attempt to play a newbie joke and we all laughed.  He didn’t get the dance he was hoping for. You dance with me again! he said. 

No! I said in mock outrage. Besides, I will dance the rest of the tanda with my friend in a moment. 

Ah, he said feigning injury. What do you call it when a girl says you know, no, to a man? I gave him a “Don’t come that” look and was annoyed to feel my heartstrings tugged even though I knew he had contrived the situation and just for fun.  But I could not bring myself to tell him the word I was sure he knew.

I wouldn’t be a second choice anyway, I said, avoiding it.

Third, actually, he said evenly in his apparently artless English that I knew to be anything but without guile, yet the very brazenness was part of a game. I looked at him, predictably speechless at the affront yet knowing it was in jest.  He looked.  The tension sung in the air a moment then we broke down into laughter that continued quite a while. 

Eventually, he said: You will change, you will come back and dance with me.

Really? 

Ah yes, he said.  Women always do. I gave him another look between scepticism and pretence at being impressed.  At least, my last resort, I can tell myself this he said and again we laughed. 

I met a local girl in the Ladies. We both wore pink dresses.  She had long blonde hair that reminded me of another woman from Stuttgart with whom I had danced at the 2015 Edinburgh International Tango Festival, though that women had been as tall as me.  I had seen her in the regular milonga that week and though she had looked I had not been brave enough to invite her. At the festival she was sitting at the end of a row with no chairs at right angles and no bar or obvious place from which to invite anyone sitting there.  Because of the seating that year in the South side venue she was in a very difficult position for invitation. She did not appear to have danced much yet I knew she could dance. I wished now I had invited her in the milonga instead. The only way to invite was to prowl round and loiter by the entrance. I hated the idea that I would try to invite, she might refuse and in that exposed position I would suffer.  This was before I for the most part stopped moving from my seat to invite women because I feel that indiscretion too much.  I persuaded a guy friend to come and pretend to chat to me by the entrance and to tell me if she was looking.  Do guys do this?  Do guys suffer such anxiety for us? I wondered thinking the situation absurd but finding no other way.  She did look, we danced and she was a dream to dance with.  I have been wanting to dance with you she said to my relief.  I looked for her when I travelled but did not see her.

The girl with similarly long blonde hair wore a dress that was very pretty and I said so.  She returned the compliment.  She wore specs.  Later I saw her dancing and thought her beautiful, happy, slim and a good dancer. Later still, shortly before I left we fell into chat. She said she had been at Tango Loft on Friday then to a milonga in Darmstadt on the Saturday which she said was lovely. It turned out to be Sascha Weinberger’s milonga  though he was away that weekend. I have wanted to hear Sascha DJ for a long time along with other German DJs Thorsten Zoerner of the Dusseldorf TangoAtelier  and Christian Walker of Freiburg (does anyone know if he has a regular DJ slot?). Her weekend - Friday at Tango Loft, Saturday in Darmstadt, Sunday at El Amateur seemed like a good idea. Before I left she embraced me.  Because I had liked her straightaway I was only half-surprised at her warmth and openness.  I felt happy too.  With the relaxed chat that evening I started to feel myself again in the milongas and for the first time that weekend.  I was sorry it was just before leaving.

Edinburgh International Tango Festival: Saturday afternoon cafe and generally

My husband ran a finger below my eye. You look tired he said. I’ve never seen you with that before. Oh! I said, and looked in the mirror. I had slept little and it was true I had lines under my eyes. We're getting old he said laughing. And what the hell I thought as I went out to do messages in town before driving the hour to Edinburgh. The following week a mum in the playground said that when she told her husband she felt unwell he’d said “You’re getting old”. I laughed at her mock outrage in the retelling and at the coincidence. At least yours said “we” she said. I didn’t tell her my husband’s several years older than I. 

Entrance

This year six of the seven milongas for the EITF were in the same room. The venue was the Teviot building, part of Edinburgh University. You pay £4 entry for the cafe downstairs to the friendly volunteers. I knew one of them and was warmly welcomed. This year on the same level as the salon there is a cloakroom and chairs to change shoes. If it existed in previous years I had not noticed it. 

Refreshments

There were no water jugs or they were empty outside the salon. I went on a hike to find some through the warren-like building to the cafe a couple of levels back down. I came across the organiser there and mentioned it to him. Over the event sometimes there was water, sometimes not. During at least two of the other milongas in that venue I saw no table, jugs or cups for water. There are bars in that venue but the two I went to were closed. No one was drinking anyway. You couldn’t really risk it (see seating). With water unreliable or non existent people eventually got wise to bringing water bottles in with them.

In contrast I liked the tango cafe last year at Bailongo. There you could get decent food and drinks in the room itself.  I remember salad and cake. It was nice and contributed I felt to the relaxed atmosphere.  Two years ago at Bailongo the cafe conditions had been diastrous: the (differently managed) cafe area was right next to the dance floor which was sticky anyway, the space too small, no gangway, lighting too bright, everything had been wrong. But last year the room had changed and everything was much better. I liked the light and airy EITF tango cafe in the other Student Union building last year too though the seating had left a lot to be desired.

Rules

The tabletops had been made into diagrams of floorcraft. Distributed among these was also the most comprehensive list of rules I have ever seen. It was a pamphlet actually including another copy of the same floorcraft diagram. There were nearly fifty items to consider.  

The previous night

Before getting changed I looked in to the salon and spotted some women I knew who were visiting. How had it been last night? They looked uncomfortable at the memory. One looked positively unhappy. Guys had walked up to invite, even hand-offering one of the women said with an understandable shudder. I guessed such guys had not read/cared about the rules. But then I think things change successfully for reasons other than rules.  I said that with any luck it would be better this afternoon with more of that sort in workshops. In the evenings there is a bigger mix of incompatible people including workshoppers with less experience of milonga etiquette. Apparently the Friday night opening milonga had been busy and the ronda rough.

If I go to festivals - and I have tended not to, for all these reasons and more - I prefer the afternoon dancing for exactly this reason. The lighting tends to be better too.

Attendance and dancing

It was quiet when I arrived.  Fourteen people on the floor, one life couple who were good dancers I had seen before and a number sitting. There were mixed ages, mixed ability. There were some good dancers, many but by no means all of these younger. It got busier over the next hour and at some points it was really busy. 

The ronda at the EITF was one of the worst I can remember since...probably the last EITF. It is not bad at all in the single snap I took of this day as I was leaving but it deteriorated. It can be I think a problem with festivals where a crowd of people who don’t know each other get together, many of whom prioritise class moves over social dancing. So actually all those tabletop diagrams and rules shout that this festival is full of people who need this sort of telling.  But the truth is they are unlikely to pay it any attention because from what I saw, fundamentally the festival-going type do not care about the niceties of social dancing. Some guys do, I know and some, being class-dependent or just,  like me, miss years of experience in the ronda. But the ronda deteriorated over the three days I was there. Once during Sunday night the guy in front of me changed three times, though actually more than that because those three guys kept lane swapping between each other too. I remember once being between two good ronda dancers, which is to say they just kept their place, and thinking what joy, what peace, what uncommon bliss. I saw Edinburgh and ex-Edinburgh dancers with years of experience, who can get good girl dancers but who simply cared not one jot where they were or what they did in the ronda.  Such arrogance is a very Edinburgh attitude among that guard. Combine that with a large influx of London dancers, the more random elements of the Glasgow and Aberdeen crowds and a sprinkling of visitors and you have the perfect storm ronda-wise. On the last day I was so frustrated I felt like raising both elbows and attaching scythes to them, at which point I considered it might be wise to quit dancing. 

Conditions

Lighting was OK though it was bright spots, - theatre lights I think. By the Monday certainly the lighting had changed to this (apologies for the photo quality) which was darker but softer and less blinding.  In the upper left and right sides you can see the lights they had used, now turned off.

The floor was good. The room itself is attractive. Room size and shape were OK but quite large. 

Seating: chairs, tables, access

There were chairs and some tables though more on one side. The small tables made people feel quite connected I think. Big tables in contrast split people into groups. If you are in family or friend groups which some (usually less central) milongas particularly cater for in Buenos Aires then you might expect large tables. But in the UK big tables often force together people who would not necessarily sit together and separate them from others. At the EITF the tables are the small and lightweight folding kind. They are a good size but too light and in those floor conditions were knocked easily and often. That is why you could not risk putting e.g. a large bottle on them. In Buenos Aires I found the small tables more robust.

Apart from the floor not clearing in the cortina the biggest problem was the lack of gangway round the room. People walked between e.g. two dancing couples at the start of tracks and on the floor during tracks. Not just couples but groups stood on the floor in the ronda to chat at the beginning of or between tracks. Both issues worsened during the afternoon and during the festival. The worst spot for arriving pedestrians paying no heed to dancing couples was at the entrance. One pedestrian bashed into my partner and I as we danced with nary an acknowledgement in her haste to reach her seat. 

Invitation

... was difficult because chairs were straight on to the floor. Being so close to the dancers, post-cortina after the first 10 seconds you had no chance to see. This happens in Buenos Aires too but I found you generally have more view of the room than in the Teviot salon because there can be more depth behind the seated dancers. Also at milongas with separate seating the seating is specifically arranged so that you can see guys often to your left and/or right and/or in front e.g. El Beso, Obelisco, Consagradas at Salon Leonesa, Salon Canning, Lo de Celia. Also, guys can and do often move around the room to be closer to invite if they are far away and /or the dancing has started. 

But because in Teviot there was no gangway it was nigh on impossible to move somewhere else if you had no luck inviting at first - unless you walked on the floor and upset the ronda along with everyone else doing the same. 

As the floor increasingly did not clear in the cortina it was even harder for people seated to see to invite. Sitting by the door to the left was a bad idea because the guys standing in the entrance meant your only chance was them or to try to seek invitation down a row (LHS of the photo) which is always problematic. The area to the right of the door was taken up by the DJ and ETS stalwarts. A corner at the far end was taken by other ETS experienced dancers. Everyone else fitted in where they could. I noticed visiting couples dancing often with one another and many visiting women not dancing and looking glum, though others did. The same was true, though less so for some visiting guys.

To get round the "I can't see" problem, many people, guys and girls but especially guys seat-hopped to try and get a view of girls so people never knew where to find each other and seats/tables got taken. Again, if you like a calm environment, it was not that. 

Atmosphere

I am not sure. I don’t know how many cared about the conditions but there was a lot of movement in and out of the milonga though whether to classes or because people weren’t enjoying it I am not sure. Either more people are wise to poor conditions or I am more aware of them but I had a sense some people were not sticking around because of the conditions or were not getting dances. And some were. And some were having a good time. 

I danced in flats with two local friends soon after arrival and two women visitors I had danced with before. I did not want to take chances with my knee with guys in those conditions. I found it chaotic, frustrating and noisy and left at 1630 after two and a half hours with much relief.

I had skipped lunch and went for good soup in the relative calm of Peters Yard five minutes away by the Meadows. Then I drove home yawning and with no desire whatsoever to return for the evening milonga when I suspected the conditions which had curtailed my visit would be exacerbated. I am much more of a local milonga girl - where those are good. Local milongas have had longer to get the music and conditions right,and these tend to attract the kind of dancers I like.