What can we do to contribute to the health and continued development of Bay Area Tango community?

Tango is fun.

It makes us happy.

But Tango is also responsibility.

What can we do to contribute to the health and continued development of Bay Area Tango community?

Here are my answers:

Milongueros and milongueras: 1- Dance better. 2- Behave better. 3- Dress better.

Milonga organizers: 1- Choose good DJs. 2- Give milongueros the necessary set up a milonga should have. 3- Pay attention to what actually happens on the dance floor. 4- Get to know, greet at the entrance, and say goodbye at the exit, to everyone coming to the milonga. 5- Introduce new people at the milonga to the regulars. 6- Travel to Buenos Aires and go to traditional milongas with high level of dancing to see how things are organized and run there.

DJs: 1- Go to Buenos Aires and visit milongas to learn how to do their job, not one time, but several times a year.

Teachers: 1- Stop trying to attract customers by showing them steps inappropriate to the milonga, and therefore, to Tango itself. 2- Go to the milongas, and show their students and the community that the way they teach is the way they dance at the milongas. 3- Go to Buenos Aires not one, but several times a year, study there with the milongueros, meaning: the ones that dance Tango. Prove themselves to have their place in the wide Tango community, and not to be mere local instructors without any connection to Buenos Aires, and therefore, to Tango.

To follow these guidelines, we will get together and put them in practice in all my classes and events through the Bay Area.
I am looking forward to seeing you and dancing with you.

Join our classes!!!

Milonga at El Beso. Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires trip.

What I get when I pay the entrance fee of the milonga?

Written by Marcelo Solis on December 18, 2012. Posted in Articles about Argentine Tango. Leave a Comment

When I go to the supermarket, I buy groceries, take them home, and then do with them pretty much whatever I want.

The same happens with any merchandise I purchase.

If I decide to become a member of a Club, I only take home my membership card and the pride of belonging to my beloved Club. The Club stays where it is, and I come to the Club for whatever activity (social, sports, etc.) it is for.

When I come to the Club I belong to, I have to observe behavior For example: taking a shower before getting into the swimming pool, no diving, no smoking…

If I do not follow these guidelines, I will first receive a call, and eventually will be expelled from the Club if I keep ignoring these warnings.
When I come to the milonga, I first pay at the entrance. What am I getting for my money? A dance? A glass of wine? A snack?

I may get all that, but I am also receiving something more important. All these are elements that the organizers of the milonga provide you with the intention of enhancing the experience of attending.

The money I pay at the entrance is used to organize it: pay the rent, arrange the chairs and tables, clear and clean the dance floor; the lighting, the ventilation of the room, the DJ, the sound system, the personnel that takes care of everything, and for all the freebies organizers give you to make you and all the milongueros and milongueras feel more than welcome to the home of Tango.

The milonga is where Tango lives, where Tango is kept alive.

When you are at the milonga, whether a well-known milonguero/a or a new good student, you are making it possible that Tango lives. You bring Tango to life, in your body, in everything you do with your body, not by dancing only, but by everything you do.

Once we start dancing, we realize that everything we do is dancing. Dancing feels so natural, It makes us feel so at home in our bodies that it makes sense to see all aspects of our life from the point of view of being at the milonga.

The fee we pay at the entrance of the milonga is not the price of what we are getting for that money. The $10 does not make a milonga a profitable business. The true organizers of true milongas do it for the passion of Tango, not as a business. With that $10 you just contribute to the necessary setup of the milonga. But in reality, the milonga is pretty much made by you.

Since it is you who actually makes the milonga, the milonga will be the way you are: the quality of the dance, the behavior, the outfits of the dancers, the ambiance, all these characteristics of the milonga are what you bring with you.

Not liking the milonga you attend is comparable with living in a neighborhood that you do not like.