This was a triple-first for me: my first tango weekender outside of the UK; my first marathon (unless you count a typical day in BsAs, of course); and more specifically, my first encuentro.

Actually, there was one more first: not staying until the end on any of the three evenings! This is totally unprecedented, and was, fortunately, for the best of reasons – I was just danced out on all three days …

Encuentros

Given that encuentros are not without some degree of controversy, it probably makes sense to address that first.

I remember being rather confused by the various different types of tango weekenders when I first started dancing, and even these definitions are rather simplified and could be debated and/or subdivided in various ways …

• Festival: Milongas, workshops, performances (and sometimes live orchestras)
• Marathon: Non-stop milongas
• Encuentro: A marathon which is invitation-only, or by application

A friend says that technically we can add encuentro milonguero to the list, where sustained close-embrace dancing is expected. I get the impression that’s most of them, but some are explicit about it, and position snipers around the room looking for the slightest hint of a chest gap.

Given that the vast majority of group workshops are sequence based, and performances generally find me shooting Nerf darts at the maestros in an attempt to remove them from my dance floor, then in principle I’m going to be happier at a marathon than a festival; they simply seem less common.

Some people object to the concept of encuentros, feeling it’s contrary to the inclusive spirit of anyone being able to dance. Personally, though, I’m comfortable with the idea that there’s a place in tango for everyone – it’s just not necessarily the same place for everyone. For example, if teachers want to have a milonga where they can dance amongst themselves, I see nothing wrong with that.

I’d also observe that even theoretically inclusive events can exclude people in practice. While I do occasionally attend one of London’s TICD events for social reasons, they do largely exclude those of us who prefer a dance floor to a battleground. The reason I travel to milongas outside London like Tango Secrets, Biela Tango, Tango Journey and Cambridge isn’t because I have a thing for trains or motorways.

While organisers can emphasise floorcraft – indeed, even put diagrams on the tables – that’s still no guarantee of respectful dancing. So I do think there’s a role for events where organisers vet participants to ensure that they’re people with whom they’d like to share a dance floor.

Even if encuentros didn’t exist as a formal event category, private invitation-only milongas would still be out there – they would just be more discreet. Again, it’s not coincidence that there are a number of these in London.

Warm Embrace was recommended to me, so I applied – that being nothing more formal than friending the organiser on Facebook. I assume Angelo checked out my friends list, found someone whose opinion he trusted, and enquired whether I was safe to be let loose on a crowded floor.

Getting there

Antwerp is pretty easy to get to from London, taking the Amsterdam Eurostar as far as Brussels, then a one-hour connecting train.

Purely as a point of random information, Ibis has one hotel called Centraal – which is directly behind the train station – and another called Centrum, which is 15 mins’ walk away. Coincidentally, we opted to begin our stay with a 30-minute walking tour of the city; it’s very pretty.

There had been talk of making the last couple of hours of the warm-up milonga in the afternoon, but then this happened:

But that’s one of the best things about tango weekends: not that I dance every minute – as I once would have done – but rather that I can dance anytime I like. The previous week had been a very long one (for entirely positive reasons), and I needed rest as much as dance, so it was really lovely to just pick and choose when to go.

The encuentro venue is a little too far to walk (while maximising dance mileage in our feet), and a little too close to Uber. However, Antwerp has the transport technology.

Warm Embrace

While an encuentro sounded very much like it would be my sort of thing from a floorcraft perspective, they do have a reputation for attracting very high-level dancers, so looking out onto the dance floor to see the standard of dance was slightly intimidating.

But my general approach with intimidation is not to give it time to establish itself. Tina and I danced a lovely tanda right away, and I then cabeceod a woman opposite for the beautiful Di Sari which followed. Both dances were delicious, and I immediately felt right at home.

The floor was relatively small and very busy, but was filled with simple, musical dance. It felt like Angelo had arranged for a dance floor to be carefully lifted from BsAs, transported to Belgium, and gently placed down in the city.

Mirada and cabeceo was effortless. There were times when the floor was almost as crowded as anything I’ve experienced in BsAs, but with a couple of exceptions* the floorcraft was so beautiful it wasn’t an issue at all – and if there was the merest hint of a gentle brush between two couples, each would smile and wave an apology. The ronda felt like a living, breathing thing.

*At one point, in the refreshment area, another leader asked me how I was finding the event, and my enthusing included the floorcraft. He agreed, then added, “Well, apart from a couple of guys.” We compared notes, and sure enough, it was the same two … But there was no opportunity for them to do more than take too many back-steps when the floor was busy.

It was also immediately clear that the event lives up to its name: not just the quality of the embrace when dancing, but the friendliness off the floor too. There was a bar and refreshment table at the very back, partly partitioned by glass walls, meaning that people could talk without disturbing the dancing. It was very much like the coffee area at The Feast!

My tango documentary had apparently made it there before me, with several dancers commenting on it. I also got to meet a fellow tango forum participant who was attending from Germany; it’s always a pleasure when these anonymous usernames and Facebook profiles turn into real people.

Speaking of the refreshment area, the included food was quite something!

This was just a snapshot in time. At other times there were sandwiches, soup, and on the Sunday a huge pot of paella! Oh, and there was a free bar too.

The music was beautiful. I hadn’t experienced any of the DJs before, but all of them made it onto my A list. Most followed the pattern of more rhythmic music earlier, more lyrical later, but most of it was layered throughout.

The followers were just a delight. I recently wrote about how followers can have completely different ideas about their role in the dance – from a very pure form of following to 50/50 creation (or more!) – and yet be equally wonderful to dance with.

There’s a variation on the theme which I found very much in evidence here: where the follower makes the leader think everything is their idea even when it’s not!

For example, when I was leading a giro with small suspensions between each step, I had the sudden idea to take that a little further and lead a tiny hint of a reversal before the next step. I was still congratulating myself on how well this matched the music when something similar happened later in the tanda, at which point light dawned.

I subsequently had a similarly unexpected piece of inspiration with a different partner, and again realised that this too wasn’t actually my idea. That follower had also initiated it in such a subtle fashion that it had at first felt like my plan.

There were quite a few examples of this in the event – so many that it had me wondering how many of my past ideas were actually mine!

Speaking of subtlety, someone recently posted this to a tango forum:

I think my specific version here was ‘dancing here’ and ‘watching other people dance milonga here’! I generally use milonga tandas as rest times anyway, but after seeing the truly incredible level of musicality, speed and subtlety among the dancers here, there was simply no way I was going anywhere near the floor with my ‘mostly single-time and the occasional double-time interrupted step and rebound’ approach!

The first evening flew by, and I danced so much that I actually had to admit defeat by 1am – a full hour before the milonga ended. It was a genuinely role-balanced event, in practice as well as in theory, and Tina danced as much as I did.

The same thing happened on the Saturday night too! Indeed, Tina – who had run out of feet a little before I did – gladly accepted my suggestion of an Uber back to the hotel. Given how much I adore cycling home from a milonga in the quiet of the early hours (it’s my usual form of transport home on the rare occasions I dance inside London), that gives you an idea of just how tired I was.

The Sunday offered non-stop dancing from 1pm to 11pm! This required some strategic planning, and I figured that as there was so much food there, a meal break wouldn’t be needed, so we decided to turn up for the last hour or so of the afternoon milonga, then see how far we made it into the night. The answer, it turned out, was from 5pm to 10pm.

At one point, I impressed myself with a long-range cabeceo right to the back of the room, and in the ‘where are you from?’ chat between beautiful dances, she said ‘Here.’ It turned out she meant this in the most literal sense: she ran the venue!

By mid-evening, only the hard-core dancers remained, and by around 9.30pm there were more people in the bar area than on the dance floor.

Tina and I danced what I’d expected to be my final tanda of the evening, and it was really lovely. I was content to call that the end of the event, and then retired to the bar to join a group of wine drinkers. I passed a pleasant 20 minutes chatting, but then … Pugliese!

I’d successfully cabeceoed another woman in the bar before the first note had ended, and I apologised to her that I’d been drinking wine and hadn’t had a moment to grab a mint. She laughed and said her too. We had an absolutely wonderful dance to the best Pugliese tanda I’ve enjoyed in some time – so that, then, would be my official end to the event!

Except … it was followed by Troilo. I rushed back to the dance floor, and my luck was in: there was a follower I’d wanted to dance with who I’d never found free before, and there she was.

So I had three official endings to Warm Embrace, each as lovely as the next. Thank you to Angelo and all his chefs, bar staff, and other helpers; to the fantastic DJs; and of course to all the amazing followers! It was a truly wonderful weekend.

A German follower there who learned that it was my first encuentro said that she hadn’t been to a festival or marathon since her first one many years ago, and I could fully understand why. Given the festivals I love in the UK, I don’t think I’m quite ready to follow her lead, but I think for new events, encuentros are going to top the list. If they’ll have me, of course …