As I mentioned last time, I’m no longer writing full blog posts for milongas, just a few snippets of things that stand out.

The first of which is what definitely counts as my best ever reaction from a new follower …

I cabeceo’d her after seeing her dance in my kind of style. It was a lovely Pugliese tanda, and we had a really great first song. I did the BsAs-style thing with a new follower: taking time to get comfortable in the embrace with nothing more than weight changes for the first 20-30 seconds, then slow walking for the first few phrases before some equally slow ochos.

As the song ended, she tilted her head back, looked at me and gave me a Carry On style “Hellooooo!” followed by “Who are you?”

I laughed, and told her I was Ben. She introduced herself, and we had a delightful tanda. She was an active follower, who at first took advantage of invitations to dance at her own pace, and later proposed things which I managed to pick up on and run with. She went straight onto to my favourite follower’s list.

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I danced a milonga tanda with a friend. We hadn’t danced one for quite some time, and she told me how much my milonga had improved. “You’re so much more confident with it now.”

It had helped that it was a relatively quiet floor – it was toward the end, some people had left already and the usual number were sitting out the milongas – so there was room to move, but that was very nice to hear.

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Two of my other favourite followers from Tango Space were there, and I had two or three lovely tandas with each of them.

One is a Salsa dancer, relatively new to tango, and didn’t know milonga – which I didn’t know when I cabeceo’d her. Or, rather, I asked, but she didn’t understand the question so said yes. It turned out she didn’t, so we instead danced tango to the half-beat. That was a little strange, but worked surprisingly well!

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There were two followers I didn’t know who I added to my hit-list when I saw them dance. One left early, but I got the chance to dance with the other, which was as lovely as I’d expected.

One problem with my mild facial aphasia is that I use shortcuts like clothing, which only work on the day! She was wearing a very distinctive dress, so I had no problem identifying her when I wanted to cabeceo her, but would have no clue next time. I hope she wears the same dress …

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Finally, one of my favourite followers who I only see at Los Angelitos danced with me and said “I see you picked up some new things in Buenos Aires.” I hadn’t thought I had, much, but she gave as an example a time when I simply had her walk around me. It was so simple, I hadn’t thought of it as a new thing, but realised that yes, I had picked that up there somewhere there, and she said BsAs was the only place she’d been lead that before today.

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The milonga ran for an extra hour today, as it had Mara Ovieda as a guest DJ. By the time it finished, we were hungry, so four of us headed to the Vietnamese restaurant almost next door and had a very enjoyable chat over dinner – complete with an excellent Argentinian Malbec!

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Next up will be the Tango Space milonga on Tuesday, where I’m told Mara will also be DJing. I’m looking forward to it!

Image: Shutterstock