milonga2

Time flew by so fast; next thing I knew, I had been in Buenos Aires in excess of two months. Almost night after night, I went to at least one milonga each time. I began to have a good feel of what to expect, and what I like or dislike in those places.

As tango scene there was more a social event more than anything, I found myself returning to the same milonga every week. Starting a new milonga would mean that I would have to make new friends with the dancers there. Without such friends, I would have been back to square one of sitting waiting for invitation.

In hindsight, I can safely say that my favourite milonga, thanks to the recommendation by Geoff, was the Saturday afternoon milonga at Lo De Celia. The atmosphere was very friendly; people there appeared to be genuine in enjoying dancing tango, rather than using it as a way to find a date. The organizer was exceptionally skillful in assigning seats to the guests so that eye contacts for dance invitations were feasible.

Nicolette and the ever charming Mauro.

The Gang of Four, Natalie, organizer and a great milonguero Rubin, Nicolette and myself.

Then no doubt my second favourite was Salon Canning on Friday nights. Salon Canning still had the best quality wood dance floor in town, square shape in plan, big enough for many rings of couples to dance around. This was where I met a lot of good dancers...

Marcello (far left) and his partner dancer (to his left), were from Santiago, Chili. These four ladies and gentlemen danced beautifully.

Laurie (originally from Brazil) and Luciano (from Brazil) caught my attention first time in Salon Canning.

I met Jan of Sweden at Salon Canning when he was with the group from Colorado. He was also a fine swing dancer, here doing a number with me on my final night in Bs As.

Salon Canning was also one of the more liberal milongas, where ladies could be a leader rather than a follower. Doing such in other more traditional milongas would have been frowned upon, if not being intervened by other tangueros in an attempt to break up the two female.

A lot of milongas were held at cultural and civic centres where space was ample and elegant, such as the La Nacional was held at the Italian Club...

One evening, they had a slide show of all the famous tango artists being projected on the wall, along with the music these artist were performing.

I danced with Chris Perkins with the tune Vie da Mia, which back when he started to dance tango, he thought was "Vitamina". He thought if taking that vitamin would make one feel that good as the song, he certainly should consider having that vitamin.

The place possessed much elegant charm, typical of an older building.

This is my favourite picture of Linda at the Club Espanol on a fine Thursday afternoon. The interior space was luxuriously restored, dripping with gold leafed carving.

The exterior of Club Espanol was equally elegant.

The famous Nino Bien milonga was at another cultural centre... It has the largest single wood dance floor among other milonga I have visited so far, so large that even after 10 weeks of almost showing up faithfully every week, I still could not spot my friends easily among the ocean of dancers there. They have the widest range of food and beverage in their menu; best milonga to have a meal and a sip of champagne, while watching the dancers floating by.

One lucky evening, I ran into the group from Colorado, Sharon and Margaret, at Nino Bien.

Linda posed in front of an oil painting at the elegant Lobby where Nino Bien was located.

I did not spend enough time to cultivate my friendships in La Viruta; I still had a tough time breaking into the circles of dancers there. Neither did I stay there long enough to make sure their music mix was indeed what has been advertised.

But towards the end of my stay, I also had the chance to try out some milongas :

Dandi, a cozy little milonga with a dance floor interrupted off centred by 2 columns...

... and Sunderland, an old and well established milonga in a gymnasium at the suburb, featuring mercury lighting so bright, that it was good enough for eye surgery.

Indeed, to a certain degree, besides dancing, milonga is a place to hang out and to experience life, be it good or bad.

I once had the bad luck to have things stolen from me, but at the same Milonga of the Porteña y Bailarin, I had the pleasure to dance with a young and amazingly good dancer who just picked up tango for 2 weeks.

Performance of Javiar and Geraldine at El Beso's Sunday night.

where we still continued to dance even after we have changed to our street clothes, or even when the DJ tried to play non-tango music to signal the end of a milonga.

I look forward to trying more new milongas next trip, and certainly would love to return to some of the milongas I had been before.