Sunday night, El Beso.

It seems the milongueando starts tomorrow. I'm used to coming here and seeing the very harmonious world of BsAs tango, where music and movement are beautifully and effortlessly combined in dance, as if in a dream, upper bodies swaying and turning in all directions to follow the phrases of the music. But the milongueandonauts are out in force here tonight. The place is heaving, probably well beyond its safety limit: dancers are still trying to leave the floor when the next tanda starts. Of course, there are plenty of people here whose upper bodies move with the flow of the music, and once in a while I find my breath taken away by a few simple steps that show the music so clearly, which is what I expect here. But then there are also those whose feet, trained in 'tango steps' rather than in following the music, carry them away, and whose upper bodies are sadly lifeless, without music.

Curiously, a similar division is visible in the rock'n'roll tanda. American jive is different from Argentine jive, which is a bit polished and stylised, even a bit ornate too, jive with style. The visitor's jive I see here tonight, is not only more exuberant and totally lacking in polish, but much of it looks as if the visitors have grown up ignorant of any partner dance at all. Wonderful they've found their way to BsAs and tango, and I hope they'll get a lot from their visit.

A friend in London comments that watching London milongas is like watching your clothes in a washing machine! It's true, that agitated up-and-down, back-and-forth movement. Buenos Aires tango just doesn't look like that.