Recent content by daisy_r

Personally I know that photos and videos make an impact on my decision of whether or not to go to a milonga/practica/lesson that I have not attended before, because if I can see photos of past events I will be able to tell how busy the dance floor tends to get, which dancers I might run into...

I don't think that this is a rare principle to have in the tango scene, I know plenty of people who won't normally dance milonga or vals tanda with someone they haven't danced with before, but maybe in this situation those leaders really wanted to dance, specifically, that milonga tanda with...

It would be interesting to see a map 3T and 4T milongas over the world. Most European cities I've visited have also had a 4T format, but they have all been capital cities, which is why I suspect that it's related to how large/varied/active the tango scene is. I do see 3T events a bit like...

It does depend on the event. At festivals and at higher profile events like Tango Feast and Tango By the Sea I see why it would be 4T, but most of the regular milongas I have been to in the UK outside of London usually have tandas of 3 tangos, not 4. I think 4T tandas encourage people to be...

Gender and role aren't the only things that matter, they may not even be the things that matter the most. Teaching style, approachability, empathy, availability, price, etc.. could all be important factors as well. My advice would be to first decide what you want to get out of the private...

Yes, of course there are many variables and it's impossible to truly isolate them from one another, and this is all coming from my non-objective viewpoint. I don't expect to find positive experiences everywhere I go, or every night that I go out, I'm just sharing a personal observation, which...

Just to clarify, I was getting plenty of invitations to dance, and I was also being aquite choosy and trying to find the people I thought would be good matches. This wasn't a case of not getting invitations, or of only being invited by people who didn't have a good enough level of dance, most of...

Hm, I still think it's at least partly about the event size. I've gone to milongas in other cities as a complete stranger and had fun dancing with people I'd never danced with before, so I don't think it's all down to "it's your first dance with this stranger". Some of my most memorable tandas...

Yeah, it's hard to describe exactly what I was reacting to, even more so now that a week has passed. Most of the embraces felt polite rather than warm. It felt like most people I danced with were going through the motions somewhat, rather than really feeling the music and dancing. Most of the...

I'm starting to think that large marathons and festivals aren't really my thing. I was at a large event (600 attendees was what I heard) a week ago, and although I think it was very well organized and I had some good dances there, I was finding it hard to really connect with most people. The...

I was in a new city trying to make new friends and I met a dancer. He showed me some tango basics and brought me to a casual milonga, introduced me to people, from that point I started going to dance lessons regularly (not just tango, other social dances too). I was very lucky, these lessons...

I started tango at the same time as a couple of other social dances. Overall I've tried Salsa, Bachata, Kizomba, Lindy Hop, and some folk dances, but in the last couple of years tango has taken over. Recently a few more local milongas started up, so I've been able to dance tango more often...

Yeah, I think it can get to the point of being addictive. It's a safer and healthier addiction than many others, because it gets us out of the house doing something physical and social, but it can also act as an escape. But if you're using tango as an escape, is tango really the problem? Ot is...

I don't encounter this problem that often. There are sweaty leaders out there, but usually none of them are so bad that it's a problem for me, or they use a more open embrace when it gets that bad. I guess you can either try to catch them at the start of the night for one of the slower tandas...

It takes time for beginners to build up their skill set; learning tango is pretty much a never ending journey, so in most places beginners don't make up a very large proportion of the tango dancing community. How beginners are treated in a community can vary immensely. It sounds like you're in...