I love cabeceo

Incidentally, I have been having discussions about cabeceo with a couple of friends on facebook. Yesterday made me love this even more.

I live in San Telmo at the moment. In the first week of my tenancy I went mainly to milongas in Palermo. But I am not here (just) doing tourism, I am working and I have to wake up early (very early) in the morning. So, finishing at 4am in the morning to wake up at 7am is not an option, or at least one I should be doing as many times as I did in the first week. So this week I decided to go to San Telmo's milongas and yesterday, wednesday, I went to Maldita milonga, literally 3 minutes from my door, in Peru 571.

Got there a bit late and Orchesta Típica El Afronte were on full steam playing on stage. Wow, what a sound! I looked for a place to seat, there weren't many left but there was a few chairs near the DJ. I sat and thought how was I going to ask to dance. The room was pretty dark and the place around the tables was pitch black. Tried to cabeceo for half an hour, obviously it didn't work. Then got my energy together and went to ask a lady on the table across "No estoy bailando" she answered to my request. I then magically got the looks from a tanguera near the bar and cabaceoed her to a set of milonga tandas, too bad she couldn't dance milonga... Then again to cabeceo for a lengthy tanda and no success. Went over to ask another follower to which she replied "Perdon, solo bailo con mi pareja!". At this point we had cabeceo 1- inviting directly 0. I then went near the stage and stared at a person who I saw dancing with more than one person... Success, double success as she was also a nice dancer. The night finished with yet another let down, a miserable "estoy cansada" after a direct invitation. Final result cabeceo 2 - direct invitation -0.

During the night I saw a few women refusing dances to men that gather their courage and went over to ask for a dance. They weren't bad leaders as I saw them dancing with other people. And my point is, cabeceo avoids all this crap of being refused in front of eveyone else.

I'm not sure if I am going to Maldita milonga (or for that sake, Bendita milonga) again... I found the space very awkward to get social dances... I left the venue as frustrated as I ever got since I arrived. Not good for karma. Not good.