Le Tango around the World!

ok, we are now the Thursday after the festival, and it is only now that everybody has left.

In my previous posting I mentioned that I had decided not to worry too much about how much I would dance, and especially I did not want to worry too much about with whome I would dance because the level was so high, and the politics and power games so important…. I have been lucky to get to know some people who are part of the ” best dancers group” in the previous years, and have become friends with most of them… so, the first night of the festival it was all: ” so nice to see you again”, ” I did not know you would be here”, ” I have’t seen you in a while, what’s happening with you” etc etc….big hugs, big laughs, lots of chatting around with people…. I love the first day of a festival, it is always so much fun. and then the dancing started…. well, I pretty much did not stop dancing this year…. long sets with my friends and with new people. Fabulous dances, great embraces, lots of rythm…. and the whole time on the beach, in a great city… sorry don’t want to make you feel bad telling you all that!

Some friends from the States were here as well. those who have been in Sitges before usually promote it a lot because it is such a unique place to dance and have the festival. We have the beach, Barcelona is very close, lots of dancing, group of friends, but when you come here for the first time and don’t know anybody … it is really difficult. Some followers took on the job of asking the men to dance as they would not have been asked otherwise, and some decided to wait to be invited…. the first option is a lot of work, but at least they got to dance (after all, the men have to do that all the time). And I have also talked to some leaders from the States who also had a more difficult time to dance here!

So, I have had many conversation with many people about that. It had already started in the States as I have had complaints about that division of dancers at the marathon.
Well, I’ll share some thoughts.

For us follows, we feel that the men (the good leaders we want to dance with) play a big power game, that they only want to dance with the young and pretty, good dancers or not, and of course those amazing dancers. We complain when the best leaders don’t ask us to dance, we say no to some of the not so good leaders who would actually ask us to dance… and sometimes we give out bad vibes when we are sitting down!

For the leaders I talked to, it is a different story. Of course they want to dance with the good follows and the pretty ones, but also, they feel the pressure of having to dance a lot with many people. they feel that when they arrive on the dancefloor, they see many women looking at them and that they are kind of trap into dancing, that women come to them, try to start a conversation in the hopes to dance etc etc and they feel uncomfortable! They love to dance but want also to be able to choose who they are dancing with. The ones i know spend a lot of time on the dancefloor and dance with many people, but what you have to understand as well, is that if you dance so much, you don’t have the time to look around and see who else is there you don’t know and want to dance with. On a floor with 300 dancers, if you don’t take the time to stop and look, you cannot see those who might be good and who are not dancing.
It is a tough game for both sides, and the way I understand it now, is that it takes time to know people, it takes time to get in the round of dancing, and also, the better you get and the best energy you give out, the more you will dance.
I guess Leaders are from Mars and Followers from Venus! or something like that! But at the end, it should still be a dance we do for fun, because we like it, because we want to dance. And we should give the best with any leaders or followers we dance with.
I know, for me, I rarely say no to somebody who ask me to dance. It is sometime a risk as I don’t know how good the dancer is, but I have to say that I have had mainly great surprises and not that many bad dances. And if the dances are bad, i don’t have to continue dancing with that person. I have danced with people who were total beginners and when i meet them later, they became some of my favorite leaders. Had I say no at the time because I only wanted to dance with the ones I considered the best, i would have missed a lot!

So, to tell you a little more about the Sitges thing… well, the festival started on Wednesday with the “official milonga” meaning the ones organized by the festival. Then at 3am we all went to the Paseo, which is the boardwalk, and there danced until 8 in the morning. On Thursday we spent the day at the beach and at 7.00pm, the dancing at the beach started… yes on the sand, in swim suits and shorts and tee shirt, and sometime in the water! Can’t have high level dancing there, but it is so much fun (not for the knees ufortunately!). then, the official milonga, then the paseo from 3.00 to …. well 9.00 or 9.30, then a swin in the sea, and we were going to breakfast, meaning that the usual bedtime was 10.00am!…. and we kept doing that until Sunday.
You could see the people getting really tired for lack of sleep and too much dancing, you could see the energy of the dancing growing as people were having more and more fun dancing and getting around the crowd…. and you also have to realize that even at 7.00am… we were about 200 people still dancing! It really is an amazing thing. there were so many people dancing this year that between 3.00 and 6.00 am the dancefloor was so crowded that it was difficult to dance at time. Some were going to sleep and coming down to dance at 6.00am… all fresh and full of energy until the end of the milonga…
Monday, many people left but we still had the dance on the paseo, and finished… again… at 9.00am or later! If you want to see pictures of it, go to http://www.unmomento.net Fredi has been taking many pictures that are online already, you’ll have a good idea of how many people there were…. when it is light and you see people dancing… it means it was after 6.00am!

Today I’ll be going to Barcelona and dance at one of the local milongas. I am quite exited about that as Barcelona might be the city where I’ll live and I want to see what the community is like.

More of the plans and the rest of the travel in the next post!

anso

Many of you are sending me notes to wish me well in my travels…. i am posting some here or at least some summaries….  Thanks to all of you for showing your support in what can be described as a crazy adventure!

************************

Anne Sophie  I wish you many beautiful things to come. Thanks for all the fun and good times you brought to us. 

And I will see you again.  Take care  *******************Dear Anne Sophie,  

 I haven’t been able to come to the tango classes because of my travel schedule, so I haven’t had the opportunity to wish you well on your great adventure. It sounds great.  

********************************************  

Dear Anso,
I wanted to thank you for all the lovely times I’ve known in Argentine Tango with you.  Your classes were always infused with your great spirit and I know your community will miss you.  You had much the same impact on our small community here in Virginia Beach, and they were glad to have had the experience of you.
Please know that I wish you all the best of luck in new endeavors and in whatever you do in your future.
Alan and I will be leaving for the Florence, Italy festival at the end of the month and will be staying in Italy for another week after the festival.
Please keep me posted on where you are and what you are doing.  Life is permitting us to travel a bit more and perhaps we could catch up with you somewhere sometime.
Until then, warmest regards,

********************************

I have always said that I wouldn’t stay in Washington DC too long. For me it was a transition period, something I had to do to live away from my family, from Belgium from what I have been used to do before. I took the job at the World Bank because at the time it was a great opportunity for me. But all along I knew it was only for a short period of time. It actually turned out to be much longer than I had expected. The 2 years I was there for turned into 12… mainly because of my involvement with the Tango community.
but for me it also meant that I never wanted to feel home in DC. I had a cute little appart that served its purpose, but at the same time, it was just a place for me to stay while I was in DC, it has never felt like home, a place I wanted to come back to and that meant a lot to me.
Now that I am in Belgium to visit, I am thinking about it and I am not sure either if it is home for me. I have left here so long ago that many things are not me anymore. I grew up here, I still know the places, my family is here, but same thing… it is not home. I hope that one day, I’ll settle somewhere and feel like that’s my home.
But at the same time being back in Belgium brings a lot of memories. And this time something special happened to me. I met with my first love… and when I said first… it was the fist! I was probably 8 or 9 or something like that. Our families were friends and we used to play a lot together.. when it actually changed into something quite different… even when we were so young. Unfortunately when we were 10 he had to leave and move to a bigger city (where I live is really in the middle of nowhere!:-)… but for some reason, he always stayed in my heart, I was always hoping I’d see him somewhere, that we would meet again and be like nothing had happened. But the years passed, and eventhough we met once in between, our lives changed and I moved to the states, and he has his own life as well. So, because he had to find information on Argentina for his daughter, he found my website (the good and the bad of being so present online! )…. sent me an email and we have been in contact since then. And yesterday we met… again… after (oh… dare I say it )….. about 20 years! It was nice… we remembered the good old time (or something like it), laughed, smiled about our feelings in our childhood and were really happy that we found each other again. jst because the first love is so special, just because even during all those years that we were appart, having our own separate lives, for some reason we still were thinking about each other, just because life is always going to surprise you somehow… this was something I’ll cherish for a very long time.
So, our lives have separated again, but thanks to the email, we’ll keep contact and be more present in each others lives.
So, Belgium is where I grew up, I am not sure it’s my home, but my roots are there, the experiences that made me from early on happened there, and he was definetely a part of it!

Here I am in my appartement… and the movers are here to take everything …. now remind me… why do I have so much stuff???? it is a small appart… studio on top of it.. and I have so many boxes!!! time to really simplify!! well, I’ll have to.. leaving from a suitcase for a while will change things.

From today on… I’ll be homeless if you want, not really, I have so many friends who have opened their houses for me that I’ll always have a place to stay.

more soon