Organisers vrs dancers

I confess I see tango as a social event. I rejoice when I enter a tango venue to encounter a room full of familiar faces or abrazos; to greet them with a smile or a polite word, to sit at the tables around the dance floor and, while changing my shoes, to exchange a few words with the people next to me. Of course, there is the more personal social interaction of the tango, when we actually get these shoes on and our eyes meet an inviting gesture for a dance. When the music starts, and we translate its rhythm into movement, it's this very rewarding experience of harmony that keeps us hooked to tango.

However, what is a city that lacks a regular milonga for its tango community? How long can you just go to classes, listen to tango on the radio, or dance with your broomstick? A tango dancer is not a tango dancer until they enter a milonga.

With the urge of a tanguera that seeks for the materialisation of her identity, I seek for my milonga in the Midlands to be often met with disappointment. Lots of cancellations, few regular events, a habit of paralysis during festive days. Tango follows the term-time schedule of our job or our university. When our day planner is closed for the vacations, no tango plans are made in the city. There is a general assumption that there is no one around to dance. However, that is not true. People look for a place to dance in their town or city, they don't find it and they make other plans, or (in my case) go to another city where there will be able to tango.

What is the key into making tango in our city what it is elsewhere, which is of course a social event? Not to seek for it's identity, but make it. I've been thinking about founding a new regular milonga, to find out that there are not a lot of dancers who'd be interested in organising a milonga. Apparently, organising a milonga is a tough business, full of politics and dead ends. I hear stories full of intrigue and can't help but asking: Aren't the milonga organisers also dancers, who aspire to a social event after all? Why are they met with suspiciousness and mistrust?

Before deciding to organise a tango group at the university of Birmingham I found the experience of organising a milonga to be fun and informal, just like making arrangments to meet up with my friends. That was un otro caso at a different place, where a tango identity already existed and we were just hoping for a otra idea. Here in the big city, distances are important and politics play their part. The tango dancer can't become the organiser without taking up the organiser's role and behaviour. I can't but feel admiration to those that find the strengh to withstand the transformation. As for me, I still stand at a loss and hope that I will find a way to marry the tango dancer with the milonga organiser to organise a University of Birminghma Milonga in the new year.