Mi primero milonga

Last night, I went to my first milonga. It was in the gazebo of a park on the other side of town. I had a good time and really enjoyed watching the dancers -- some were beginners, most were intermediate and a few were very, very good.

I only danced with one man, and I wasn't too happy with the dances. However, I later talked with two women over dinner (one is from my residence), and one of them had a poor experience with the same lead a couple weeks ago. Now, I don't pretend to be even an intermediate tango dancer, but I can follow reasonably well. Also, I will admit that I prefer a strong lead, and not a lead that makes a slight movement to indicate what I as the follow should be doing. There is a lot of small movement inherent in just moving around while dancing, and I find it difficult to follow leads who indicate via slight movement. This is also true with my salsa dancing.

Anyway, back to the lead. The two women asked if I'd noticed the lead's eyes. I said 'No, I dance with my eyes closed.' They then went on to tell me how he had serial killer eyes. When I think back to how he looked at me when I was thanking him for the dances, because I didn't like dancing with him and didn't want to continue and you should be graceful in withdrawing from a dancing partner, he just stared at me and didn't return the 'gracias'. In the end, I said gracias a couple times and just walked away. Quickly.

During the milonga, an older woman standing close to me collapsed. They stopped the milonga for about five minutes, and she was tended to. While people were shouting "medico", a medic never arrived. However, she was giving space and time and water, and her husband eventually took her home or to the hospital.

It's also worth noting that this particular milonga takes breaks in the tango dancing, and plays music for other types of dancing. One break was for a type of dance that I don't remember the name of, but I believe was another, older, traditional Argentinian dance. It looked very much like courtship and desire in action, and involved very, very little touching between the man and woman.

The other break was for swing dancing. To Dire Straits. Sultans of Swing.