Men will tango with me here, Men will waltz with me here. In fact, I`ve even found a couple of buddies who specifically like to tango with me, and one who likes to waltz with me. Until last night however, I`d only managed to score one milonga, at Canning, my first Friday night in Buenos Aires. It was a perfectly nice nice milonga, but didn`t have the Aaahhh factor of some of the tangos and waltzes that I`ve had here since.
Thing is, everyone seems to have their especial favourite partners for milonga. It`s a tough nut to crack. Last night however, I finally managed to get a memorable milonga.
Marisa has been doing a show a couple of nights a week at one of the swanky hotels in town. Last night she asked if I`d like to come along to watch. The show consists of a good standard tango trio, Marisa and her partner Claudio dancing tango, Claudio doing a brief Manly Argentine Folkloric demo, and a couple of very average singers. The show is in the hotel lounge/bar, and very strangely, the dance surface is carpet! Remarkably, Marisa and Claudio still did a good job at pulling off a decent tango performance. The audience talked through the singing (I understand this). They also talked to a lesser extent when the musicians were playing by themselves (which I found frustrating). Everyone however was attentive for each dance number.
The show has a locutor who does a spiel bewteen songs. At one point he talks about how tango has travelled all over the wold, and then he walks through the audience asking people where they`re from, whether they have tango in their country, and whether they dance tango. At the end of the show, he talks about how tango is a social dance, and invites a couple of tango dancers from the audience to dance with Marisa and Claudio as demonstration.
Of course, the night I was there, I was invited up to dance. The trio started playing – a milonga! So, my second milonga in BA was in a five start hotel lounge bar, on carpet, in my street shoes, in front of an international audience *chuckle* , with a fantastic dancer! At the end of the show, a few of the people in the audience came up to me a told me I was a lovely dancer *preen*
It was crazy. It was fun. And yes, it was memorable.
