I skipped over this clip a few days ago because the beginning is useless, and the dancing starts with milonga... But it's worth watching. The milonga is interesting. Maipu 444 is a venue some of the best dancers come to -- and their milonga is largely 'lisse', without the quick, 'traspie' steps. Then the leaders show their partners back to their seats, women to the left, men to the right. (The two ends of the room are women and couples.) Then there are two tangos. The next tanda doesn't start until the floor is cleared. This is a fairly clear, well-lit picture of what a moderately-busy milonga is like.
Makes me nostalgic looking at all these milonga clips. At the time I was a bit overcome by social awkwardness at the formality of it, and by my uncertain castellano and tango, but looking back I'm struck by how at home I felt, what a pleasure it was to be there.
According to YouTube this is Maipu 444 on a Wednesday night, but that night is the gay milonga LA Marshall, so there must be some mistake, or the programme's changed... It's definitely Maipu 444. I was living just up the road.
Antonioni's L'Eclisse came and went... It just didn't enter and occupy my head, as did La Notte. Same theme, tho', personal dissatisfaction against a background of Italy's 60s plenty. Vitti and Delon just didn't make it real, as Moreau and (to a lesser extent Mastroianni) made La Notte real.
Thanks for posting this - it's great to see regular dancing at a milonga, and I'm always interested to hear the cortinas that are played :-)
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed watching it too.
ReplyDeleteCortinas can be a bit variable though. Here they are OK, but there's one night at Canning where ALL the cortinas are Beatles songs. It's funny for half an hour then gets plain irritating. & you go back next week and he's still doing it... But if you go to Canning on Monday night, Silvia, Tete's dancing partner, is DJ, and she has an incredibly varied interest in music. I found I was listening for the cortinas to see what she was going to come up with next. To hear flamenco after certain tango songs is quite special. At other times it would be bits of old Stones songs or experimental rock. Afraid I don't have any videos of those evenings.