Tango in Sussex... Three: The Dancing

30th May 2011

Tango In Sussex One | Tango In Sussex Two - Saturday classes | Tango In Sussex Two A - Sunday classes | Tango In Sussex Three

Introduction

This entry is a review of the milongas at the TangoBootCamp / Festival in Sussex over the weekend of 28th - 29th May.

(Note: I headed off on Sunday evening so I didn't attend any of the sessions or the cream tea Milonga on Monday 30th May).

Saturday

The Saturday Milonga ran from 9pm to 4am.

There were two rooms:

  • Upstairs: Traditional Tango Room
  • Nuevo and Tangoable Chill Music Room

Upstairs, there were a couple of live music sets, from Joe Powers & Oscar Acebras, at 10:30pm and at 11:45pm, and a dance performance from Joel and Alina at 11:15pm.

Overall, I mostly stayed downstairs, I wanted to work on my nuevo and there was more space to dance. The upstairs room was busy - lots of people there, so obviously very successful. I listened to some of the live music, but I missed the performances - to be honest, I don't usually bother to watch performances now, if there's dancing available elsewhere.

I enjoyed the evening, the music and people were great, and I collapsed exhausted around 2am. If I hadn't been doing 4 workshops on the Sunday, I'd have stayed longer.

Sunday

There were two milongas - a "Cream Tea Milonga" at 4:45pm - 5:45pm, then an evening Milonga from 8pm onwards.

There was some accompanying live music from the lovely Tracey Martin, playing sax to a few of the nuevo tracks, which really made the music deeper and more vibrant. I'm a big fan of "live accompaniments" now.

Alexandra and Stefano did a demonstration also - three tracks, two tangos and a milonga - which was lovely, and they both cleaned up nicely.

Sunday's evening milonga was relatively quiet, but I liked the atmosphere, it seemed more relaxed to me.

Conclusion

Generally, I'm used to large-scale Modern Jive weekenders, where the emphasis is on the social dancing, rather than the classes. It seems to me that Tango festivals are generally the other way round; the emphasis is largely around the classes, and the milongas are not quite such big, dominant affairs in relation.

For example, the milongas at Tango Mango were lovely, but you wouldn't go just for the milongas.

That's not to say that the milongas at this festival weren't nice - they were. But I wouldn't have travelled there specifically for the milongas, as there are always good milongas in the London area on a weekend.

That said, the Saturday night was probably the best weekender-Milonga I've encountered. So it was definitely worth attending.

~ David Bailey, 1st June 2011