London is getting a face lift!

I feel I need to say sorry for not to having been able to keep the blog updated as frequently as my good intentions were set with that in mind initially.

London is getting a tango face lift! That is how I am sensing it. There are new milonga clubs, in these places there are new teachers/faces teaching, working and attracting old and new dancers to their tango school/milongas.

It seems that there is a modern concept entering the tango scene: "Customers' needs must be met"!

This simple, well tried and tested concept that the customers' needs should come first had a very steep hill to climb with the London Tango scene's organisers. Fortunately the "Market Forces" began to play this market like any other and suddenly real Competition was born. Although it is yet not mature enough to go the whole way and to let the customers really express their wants and needs but things have started to improve already.

There is a long way to go till all organisers read the writings on the wall ...but we are getting there.

The tango dancers/students had hoped that there will be a time in London when competition will start to play its role and the message eventually begins to reach home that customers need are to be treated. Customers in tango scene are intelligent adults who expect to be given a minimum standard of service.

It is about time that the old "school" mentality needs to stop. No more school master/mistress treatment to dictate how our evening night outs are to be spent.

Perhaps it must now be accepted that we, London tango participants, are mature enough to see dancing and learning to dance tango not as a religiously organised affair (with rules and regulations that might send us to eternal damnations if we break the preached mould) but more as true means of taking pleasure in good company, music that we enjoy as opposed to organisers' personal taste, and to embrace friends whom we love sharing our joy of tango evenings with.

So I recommend you not just by voting with your feet whether to attend milongas or not but also by speaking out and aloud to the organisers and to tell them that their taste of music is not enjoyable or it is too loud, too quiet that you can hardly hear it at parts of the room or many other basic issues that they seem to ignore like the toilets being dirt, blocked, inadequately supplied with towels etc, or that the place is too dirty with dust and grime or even that they are being too greedy for charging as much as they are for entry fees or drinks (sometimes both) for what they are servicing us the customers.

There are now some new places and some old places that are getting their act together and we hope that the spirit of better customer service is one that will become stronger and more successful in London.