Arriving at the Feast always feels rather like coming home. It’s my favourite festival, and even for me it’s always filled with familiar faces.

But the experience of arriving here this time was especially wonderful. I couldn’t even count the number of welcoming embraces I got from people telling me how good it was to see me back after my enforced absence. I also had many partners assuring me as we walked onto the floor that we could stop if I needed to …

There’d been a certain amount of negotiation with my surgeon. I’d originally been told to expect a recovery time of 4-6 weeks, and the Feast was five weeks later. Complications had, uh, complicated things somewhat, but after I showed him some video of social dancing, a tentative deal was reached where I could dance if I promised to take it easy and stop if there was any pain.

Taking it easy is not exactly my usual style when it comes to, well, anything really, but I duly placed my hand on a copy of Pugliese’s En El Colon Volume 1 and swore a solemn oath.

Devon’s welcome was less warm

Locals claim Devon sometimes has good weather. Their case wasn’t helped by being sent emergency alerts about Storm Darragh.

Since these are accompanied by a loud siren even if your phone is on silent, it was rather fortunate this was issued between milongas: the combined noise of 200 phones going off during a tanda could have been … interesting!

My caravan got into the dance spirit by spending Friday night rocking and rolling, so it wasn’t the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had, but when I opened the door the next morning to check, we were at least still in Paignton.

Oh, and just to add to the weather fun, my caravan decided to supply an Ignition Lockout error message instead of heat on the first night. The on-site engineer took a brief look and called in a gas engineer, who was thankfully able to persuade the boiler to boil.

Taking it easy

In my defence, I’d like to say three things.

First, while I was committed to keeping my ‘take it easy’ promise, I wasn’t entirely sure what that should look like in practice. I normally dance the majority of tandas, so arguably anything significantly less than that would qualify.

Second, I did start with good intentions. In the first evening, I actually turned up after the start of the first tanda! And danced about every third tanda, which is surely the very definition of restraint? I also skipped the Friday afternoon milonga entirely, knowing I was likely to dance the whole of the evening one.

Third, my experience of my lessons was mirrored in the milonga: I felt no discomfort at all while dancing.

But, uh, yeah … There was a gradual ramp-up to dancing the vast majority of tandas. (I nearly said ‘except for the milonga ones’ but I did actually dance a couple of those, albeit as a follower.) I blame the DJs and the followers.

Delicious dance

The latter because the quality of the following was, as always, amazing. The biggest challenge of the Feast is trying to dance with everyone already on my dance card while also fitting in some new partners.

I also love the variety of styles of dancing. Someone once said that followers get to dance a different style every tanda, while leaders only get to experience their own dance, but I haven’t found that to be true.

Even if someone does a ‘pure follow,’ they still bring their own style to the dance. Everything from the feeling of the embrace to the texture of their movements is different with every follower, and that inspires differences in my own dance.

And, of course, most followers at the Feast are collaborative dancers, so we’re creating the dance together, and I’m following as much as leading. It may be a cliché that the only leader is the music, but it’s absolutely the case.

Speaking of following, I didn’t get as much chance as I’d have liked. There were plenty of dual-role dancers present, but when there’s so much wonderful music, and so many beautiful followers, it kind of feels a waste to substitute my clunky attempts to follow. But I did manage a few tandas.

Interestingly, the following experience I find easiest is milonga, which exactly mirrors my experience as a beginner leader. While most beginners hide from milonga, I’d found dancing it easier than tango because you can simply dance steps and rebounds. As a follower, when I didn’t have to worry about pivots, it was much easier to just lose myself in the experience. Many thanks to my leaders for the opportunity.

Arrestable offences

It wouldn’t be the Feast without one or more DJs committing arrestable offences.

I’d previously had to file a police report about David Prime’s Christmas cortinas, and thought this had done the trick when his first set contained only one. However, he was merely saving them all up for the Sunday afternoon! My lawyers will be in touch.

He also played several (count ’em, several!) alternative tandas. Including his infamous Non-Tango Last Tanda, which has been known to make grown men cry. Don’t listen to any wild claims you may hear that I danced one of these.

Then there was the other David. The Thomas variety was behaving perfectly well until The Frankentanda! He does have form for audio editing, and this year he excelled himself by creating a song that never ended. It had at least eight fake endings. The paperwork for this is also in hand.

Fernando added to the chaos by bringing out the food an hour or so before the end of the Saturday night. What witchcraft is this?

Speaking of food, I arrived at the biscuit table to find this:

I’m demanding a full public enquiry.

Then there was the Saturday night ronda! Or, rather, there wasn’t. Often at the Feast you’ll make it the whole way around the floor in the course of a tanda. On Saturday night, you were lucky to move one side of the floor. I think the record was a tanda in which we moved about eight feet. Next time I’m bringing a taser.

On the Sunday afternoon, having danced one side of the floor in the first song, I made the mistake of commenting on this to my follower, contrasting it with the previous night. During the next two songs, we moved four feet. One friend had the theory that people just get used to dancing on the spot on Saturday and don’t recover.

The final milonga

Fernando always DJs the final milonga, and he wasn’t taking any prisoners: it was straight into the grown-up stuff! That’s a compliment to the remaining dancers, though he did over-estimate us at one point, thinking we were capable of dancing to two different songs at the same time.

I’ve mentioned on at least a couple of occasions that the final milonga of a festival somehow always feels like the most magical to me, and that was again the case here.

That’s despite the fact that, by that stage, we’re all so tired that our technique is probably the sloppiest it’s been all weekend. But I’ve speculated that, counter-intuitively, that may be part of the reason it feels good.

Maybe that’s part of it: none of us expect too much, or have the energy to work too hard, or the mental capacity for critical analysis of our own dance.

We just all accept that, hey, we’re all sleep-walking here, so you get what you get!

There’s often also more space on the floor in the final milonga, with room to walk, though that wasn’t particularly the case this time: more people than usual stayed to the end.

A renewed appreciation for tango

The past six months have been ‘interesting.’ The exceedingly frustrating saga of trying to complete the sale of my old home and the purchase of my new one, and finally having to admit defeat on my goal of moving before xmas.

Having to say goodbye to one furry monster, and the other giving me a big scare (which, so far, appears to have been merely a very expensive infection).

Being unable to schedule a BsAs trip due to uncertainty about when I’d be moving, then having to cancel a planned holiday in the States thanks to the small but real risk of needing emergency surgery while I was there.

The very long wait for the planned surgery, and the unpleasant complications which followed.

One or two other events I won’t go into.

And, of course, being unable to dance for six months.

All First World Problems, but still stressful. It made me realise the role played by tango in my life, not just in terms of the pleasure of the dance, but also as a source of wellbeing. We half-joke that tango is therapy, but there is a lot of truth to it! I’ve arrived at milongas feeling tired, heavy-hearted, uninspired, annoyed and more; I’ve never left one feeling any of those things (ok, maybe tired, but only after first being energised).

Tango is also usually part of my everyday life. I play tango music every day, and if I’m moving while listening, then I’m dancing, even when I’m home alone. That too had been missing.

So it wasn’t just the dance I appreciated having back in my life, it was also everything that flows from it.

In less than a week, I’ll go from my favourite festival to my favourite milonga – Tango Secrets on Friday. I hope to see some of you there!