He is, and is not.
"Isolated vs. cosmopolitan environment" does explain a lot of differences in perspective on travel to dance. Here we have many local teachers and milongas, a steady stream of big-name visitors, special events (balls, festivals, marathons, workshop weekends, retreats, etc. and even a Mundial qualifier) every month, and of course hundreds of regular and thousands of occasional dancers. We also get many tango tourists . . . I can't remember the last milonga where there was nobody from out of town, and reviewing my list of tango friends on social media, I realize that a third or more are from away.
For sure it's true that here, I can learn everything from the most compact styles ("milonguero" and whatever you call the walking-dead encuentro style), through flowing salon dance in all its variations, to tango nuevo and tango escenario. I have my choice of legitimate teachers of all of those things. (My coaches are fans of salon, and that has influenced me the most, despite my preference for a more compact embrace.)
Thanks for the kind words.
Yes. Earlier, I said that I have a salon background, but I went through everything from a strict "milonguero" phase with teachers who preferred that, to tango nuevo and huge, choreographed tango escenario with teachers who liked that. Such a range is easy to find here. My style is a hybrid, and when I look around me at the local milongas, I think that describes most dancers here.
First, thanks for the compliments.
I'm glad that so many people are saying this. People in my world saying the opposite has been a frustration for some years now. I'm starting to formulate the opinion that their perspective is rooted in something akin to one-upmanship: "Yeah, well, you might have worked hard and you might dance okay, but you've never been out there, man!" Whether that's due to relative dance skill or "buyer's regret" over having paid a lot to travel, I cannot say and don't care to speculate on.
I'd say the belief that you must travel to be a good dancer / experience tango would only be if you've lived in a small town and/or that town only has limited styles/poor dancers.
I guess that's a benefit of living in a large "destination city" (as you do and I do). That also might explain the people who are dead-set on travel being essential for tango, and who proclaim as much: Many of them have come to my city because it's a destination they visited/are visiting at least in part to find tango; so, from their perspective, they're right (they had to travel here from a less cosmopolitan place), and they're projecting the need onto everybody without pausing to think, "Oh, wait, I traveled here because it's a good place to dance, and he already lives here."
That surprises me; why should my hometown appear more pluralistic when it has significantly fewer inhabitants? And of course, I also follow the careers and journeys of some tango teachers. And in that regard, I must conclude that there must or must have been some stylistic diversity in London. Or could it be that you only managed to connect with your favorite tango when you were abroad? (Similar to the aforementioned Argentinian consul, who only dared to learn tango abroad, even though he had always wanted to do so at home.)
Thank you for expanding my English vocabulary! I had a good laugh!
So you're suggesting that I might, too, would have a negative influence on London tango if I were to visit? There are cities people fly to specifically to dance tango: Berlin, Paris, Rome, Istanbul. London isn't really on that list. Could it be that the foreign dancers who struck you as negative weren't actually dedicated tango dancers and had come rather for tourist attractions? During my active tango days, I frequently met Londoners in Berlin who were very good dancers; some were even members of DF.
I shouldn't make fun of what works for others, but despite my vocal preferences for compact dancing and good floorcraft, there are limits past which efforts to shrink the dance and avoid all risk of accident invade creativity and render the dance no fun for me. Everything is relative: I've had just two incidents in 13 years where I was accused of dancing too large, but I've been criticized for dancing too small on more than two occasions just since 2026 started. So, I don't want to be one of those critics toward somebody else . . . but at the same time, my girlfriend calls them "zombies" when they're out of earshot.
Yes there was, and still is if you look. But AT often settles to a particular style in an area because that's what customers want. I know some teachers, who teach in London, have also tried to educate on different styles.
You can find what you consider 'good' or 'bad', or milongas you'd avoid in future, anywhere. It's relative.
So you don't share the general outrage?