MILONGA- Tea Dance
When I first arrived, I was given a schedule of the milongas (dance parties) in Buenos Aires. It contained a solid 3, 4 pages long table with names of the party, locations of the party, time of the events, and the name of the organizers.
There are endless varieties of milongas available everyday, which can last from minimum 4 hours long to 8 hours long; some start as early as from 3pm, some start as late as from midnight. On the slow days such as Mondays or Tuesdays, there are 7 milongas to choose from; on the hot days such as the weekends, there are 30 milongas. The available selections are simply mind blowing to say the least.
Picking the right milonga to go from that list to requires just as much skills as picking a winning horse at a race from a newspaper.
Each milonga has its own style, ambient and clienteles. The host-organizer of each party has a lot of influence over the venue of the event which attracts a certain crowd. So for newcomers like me, not only I have to remember the name of the places, but the days on which a particular milonga is going to be held by a particular host. And in additional, I find out that Saturday nights are usually couples' nights at many milongas. So it would have been fatal for me to attend those milongas without a male partner.
As I travel alone, I tend to ask for advice from my friends which, also can be quite confusing. Because just like picking horses, my friends have their unique taste influenced by their personalities and age groups, not to mention their social and cultural backgrounds. They may have different favorite ones to recommend.
Nonetheless, I managed to go to a few so far. Let me start off with my first tea dance, at the...
CONFITERIA IDEAL
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The most classic looking one, that
meets our (foreigners') expectation of what tango salon
should look like. Simply elegant, and filled with
decoration from the Art Deco's era. This is the ground floor, which is set up for restaurant. But somehow it has a terrible odor. Someone told me it is the smell from cats, perhaps the building is so old that it is infested with rats and therefore the owner has to keep some cats around to control the mice. |
| Classes are held here from noon to 3pm. Milongas are from 3 to 10pm. After that.. milonga for cats and mice??? |   |
The pictures below from the 2nd level Main Dance floor. The room was hazy from the cigarette smoke and from the inscents they were burning, probably to disguise the odor.
It was an interesting way to spend the Monday afternoon. The patrons there tend to be the older crowd, at their 60s if not older. They probably have danced tango through out their lives.
The older generation like that tend to dance tango a different way; they are not much into the analysis of dance motion but more for the feeling. As the result, while the milongueros (male tango dancers) may think it is cool for them to bend forward at a certain moment to the music, they may be pressing the back of the ladies to the point of potentially injuring her back.
After two hours, I had to quit because my back was hurting. I managed to stagger home, laid flat for a few hours, and decided to go to another milonga to stretch out my back.
It is common for people to hop from milonga to milonga, much like our bar hopping. Well, technically speaking, on a Saturday, one can hop among 30 milongas, from noon to 6am Sunday, for solid 18 hours, that averages out to be almost 30 minutes at each milonga!
