Xmas Parties

This week and the next will be party weeks. At homes, offices, with friends, relatives and colleagues there will be many occasions to be merry and festive. However what I am looking forward to the most are the Tango Parties.

There are some notably good ones every year and in my opinion some of our best parties are held at the Dome, the Welsh Centre and the Crypt. This year we shall also be having the chance to experience the Negracha's.

From what I recall, the Crypt's xmas party offering us LIVE music, party drinks, and good food came up first at the top last year. It was a wonderful evening that many shall remember for being one of the best organised for xmas in London for many years.

I am hoping there will be more than one that we can have good memories with for this year.

Merry Christmas from 24tango bloggers.

Missing OS at Zero Hour

We all love OS. He knew how to spin those records every Wednesday at The Zero Hour – The Dome. He would study the dancers on the floor constantly and he would choose what to play next not by accident but by design, experience and knowledge. He was very rarely ever lazy with his job as a DJ. His choices were never made in isolation from each other or without considering either the dancers or the mood of the evening.

There was always a plan. It was shaped and worked on as the evening progressed.
His choices ranged from the classic to the ultra modern but he had a thread joining them together. That thread ran seamlessly and effortlessly through the songs of tangos, Waltzes, and Milongas.

He knew how to generate movement on the floor and build up the energy and movement on the floor. On the other hand he knew how to calm the crowd down after some ultra fast ones.

Everyone who visited the Zero Hour knows that there was something special about the DJ's choices, and almost everyone was pleased by the end of the evening.

He did not play the records to promote himself but he played them to promote the club. It was very common to see dancers to go and thank him at the end of the night for the pleasure they had. Sadly since he has left us from the Dome we have not had the same spirit there anymore. The records get played by what seems to be random and in a haphazard way.

It has been so bad on occasions that at midnight when the evening is finished "NO ONE" has a clue that it is over!!! The confused look on the DJ's face is the only message to those who are near him to see it that in fact he is also not sure what is to happen next!

Last week we had some songs played 3 times over in less that one hour and half!

It looks that the DJ has forgotten what the J stands for in his job as a DJ, no wonder he calls himself MR D! The impression we get is that he has not got a clue what the amplifier's knobs and buttons in front of him are there for either. The only bit of the equalizer he ever uses – if someone bothers to tell him off for – is the volume bar.

The records are often interrupted before they have properly reached their end notes. It has become common for everyone to be surprised if some songs ever reach their proper last notes. It all indicates that the DJ is very nervous and not sure when to change from one deck to the other.

"Dear OS please come back if it is possible at all!", we all miss him dearly and are very disappointed that his absence is filled by a DJ who does not even know how to fake it - never mind how to make it!

The really irritating thing is that there are so many good DJs available in London who would have done a better job but we ended up with the one who is missing a J in DJ.

Common! you guys at the dome, don't be so mean to us, give us the dome back with a DJ who indulges us, and not himself or you alone.

Milongacat is back!

Shades of Red

My only fear remains with you if you choose not to paint us in these songs.

I know there is no other for me who can carry my desires for life so deep and so long. The demands I leave with you.

Have I told you lately how I have found it impossible to be away from you. There is none that wish for more except your embrace when I hear any tango song. I am in love with the colours that you let us paint when we dance, I am in love with all those shades.

Shades of Red, the colour of life, the colour of tango, I am in love red.

The secret lives on

They speak none. Their purposeful "silence" is exchanged. The noticeable strength is in their momentary gaze, a communication that is to lead to shapes and forms. That is what will dominate their encounter. He takes his steps, walking towards her, she stands for him and waits.

It is not long before their bodies accentuate the notes and the rhythms of each song in soothing movements in harmony, enticing one another further and closer. Their moves display and play with invitations and challenges, temptation, excitement, and feelings. All still too careful, young, raw and tender. With another song the selfish pleasure zones where each had begun from start to melt and barriers are gradually getting ready to come down. There are openings for equally giving, and taking: sharing.

She can soon taste his addiction to tango as he does hers, it is closing in, with every move they know each other more. Her eyes are shut, all her other senses fully switched on. She studies him through him.

Finding herself at ease with him she lets her expectations to stretch beyond her norm. Her sensations urge and encourage her. Increasingly she wishes and wants some more. What she seeks is more of his gentleness; in touching and holding her firm she finds her own. Her ultimate desire is elusive. It is that feeling of security that she wants, allowing herself total surrender without compromising her stature and image of self. She knows this will only be possible if the two of them become dancing as one. Generously they share their synchronous beatings of hearts, breathing in, breathing out, the tingling heightened sensations of the other's feverish body embrace and touch.

She has begun to feel the reassuring numbing that is building up through her spine. This tells her the trance is near and might soon be on, this thought makes her lips part in smile. With fluidity in their steps they move closer and they begin to create life of dancing as one.

In a trance, somewhere between semi-consciousness and total joy, she is picturing herself in "the painting of a memory", one that is being drawn. Their creation is now alive in "the moment of Now".

With her eyes firmly shut, she watches herself dancing with him in the shimmering reflections that is projecting them. They are both certain that a secret is being born. "Will this secret continue to live on?", this echoes through the unfamiliar foreign words of another tango song. She confirms it in her mind; she has overcome; unabashed and blatant in the knowledge that the prey is caught.

Without doubts She can taste his tango addiction mixing with hers. It becomes the poison that defines life's desires:- wanting for living, extending and wishing be free and living without fear, fighting against despairs, reaching out for sharing of a caring touch, playing with lust, aiming for love, hoping to reach the very familiar ending that never has come, finding oneself being at peace, the feelings of being at home in the lands of unknown.

Would it last for "life" or is it simply for the living in the "Now" moments? No one dares to hazard a guess and nor should one, their secret is just born with the hope that it will continue to live on.

(Milongacat)

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.