The weather gods usually deliver torrential rain and gale-force winds for my Feast visits, but since this one was in a ballroom noted for furnace-like temperatures, they of course opted instead for a heatwave.

To be fair to them, I don’t usually do the summer one, but having missed out on spring I was feeling in need of a fix …

As indeed is the hotel. If an estate agent were listing it for sale, they’d describe it as having ‘great potential for an imaginative buyer.’ I think my room had more broken fixtures than working ones, the bathroom lighting was homeopathic, the sheets had a thread-count of about 12, and I think the lift was their attempt at a casino – place your bets as to whether that next creak, shriek or bang signals your imminent demise.

The non-functional air-conditioning had been the main reason I started skipping the summer editions, and this year was no different. Fernando had drafted in reinforcements in the form of a portable unit and extra fans, but you could still offset the cost of the festival by engaging in a spot of steel smelting between tandas.

Floorcraft was mostly a matter of navigating from one fan to the next, with bonus points for ending a song in front of one. My poor traditional fan got such a workout it’s now in need of its own surgery.

Food & drink

Breakfast-included hotel bookings at tango festivals are entirely fraudulent where I’m concerned, as there is zero chance I’ll be vertical even for the most civilised of timings. The Victoria Hotel’s timings were far from same, with breakfast finishing in the middle of the night at 9.45am.

Yet for reasons I can only ascribe to witchcraft, I did actually make it to breakfast on two of the three mornings! This is just as well as it beats the dinner by some considerable margin.

But while the food may be school dinner standard, I do really like the sociability of everyone eating together. There was even some non-tango talk! Admittedly the most dramatic departure from the usual conversation topic was the Unsolved Case of the Purloined Lemon Drizzle Cake – and the heist did take place at a milonga, so perhaps it doesn’t entirely count.

The tea station appeared at times to have fallen victim to Beecham’s cuts. At any one time, you might find tea, coffee, hot water (for rather low values of ‘hot’), milk and biscuits – but rarely all at the same time.

You’d think replacing a milk jug would be a simple affair: bring a new full one, take away the empty one – but how little imagination you have! Fernando had been chasing it for 10 minutes, and Haris suspected they’d gone in search of a cow to milk. When I went to reception to chase it again, his theory wasn’t far off: “Oh yes, I was about to email the porter.”

However, the staff are so sweet that it’s hard to be annoyed. I found the best attitude was to treat it all as performance art.

Fabulous DJs

Although Natasha and Haris had taught at the Feast before, I’m not sure whether Haris had DJ’d before? If so, it must have been before I instigated my habit of keeping notes on every DJ at every milonga as he didn’t have an entry. He does now: his music selection was absolutely beautiful. I’d been sad that I couldn’t get away early enough to make Hector’s afternoon milonga, but this made for a dream start.

Early on Saturday afternoon, Stania made a determined attempt to kill me by playing almost non-stop rhythmical music, much of it fast. That isn’t always my thing, but her selection just kept calling me to dance. I got very hot and not much rest.

When Christian took over at 3pm, he managed up a unique achievement! He not only played an OTV tanda I loved, but so much so I had to go and ask him what it was (Coqueta, Chloe, Adíos Argentina, Vent Norte). He continued the mostly-rhythmic vibe, but again made it hard to get any rest.

Richard Slade already had plenty of A-rated entries in my database, and notched up yet another one with a wonderful set on Saturday night. Again, any hopes I’d had of taking it easy were dashed. The attempted murder by exhaustion perpetrated up by Saturday’s DJ team finally caught up with me when I was forced to crawl upstairs to bed at 11.30pm after nine hours of very much dancing and very little sitting.

The esteemed Michael Cummings kicked off Sunday afternoon. It had been a week of way too little sleep leading up to the Feast, and the oven-like temperature of my room wasn’t exactly helping matters, but I knew there was no chance I’d be doing much sitting during his set. He did show a little mercy on Sunday afternoon by starting out very gently; I still had to dance, but at least a little less energetically for a short time. As ever, the energy built during his set and I had to somehow persuade my body to keep pace.

The run of familiar and favourite DJs continued with David Prime. He clearly considered us well warmed-up by this point, so there was none of this gentle easing-in business! Nor was there any opportunity to sit. Normally I’m guaranteed 24 minutes of rest when he plays his infamous non-tango tandas (the subject of criminal investigations in several jurisdictions). For the second of these, however, I made the mistake of standing in the vicinity of a follower friend who dances That Sort of Thing, and the next thing I know I’m being dragged bodily onto the floor. I did warn her that if he played Sound of Silence I was unplugging his speakers. He didn’t, but the less said about my dance during that tanda the better.

As for Fernando’s set in the closing milonga, I no longer even pretend I’m not going to be there from start to finish (*Skyfall exemption applies). He moved quickly into the big romantic and dramatic stuff that remains my absolute favourite despite now dancing all the rhythmic stuff too (except milonga, obviously). It made for the perfect final evening.

Thank you all.

Wonderful dance

The summer edition of the Feast seems to be a Marmite experience: there are some regulars at the others who always skip this one, and others who apparently only go in June. That makes for the perfect mix of new and familiar dancers.

I of course had plenty of regulars on my dance card, though I still managed to end up with a few of those comical ‘I tried to cabeceo you’/’Oh, I tried to cabeceo you!’ conversations at the end of Sunday night or on Monday morning. It’s not a perfect system, but to me the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, so I am pretty religious about using it.

I also made a point of seeking out followers I didn’t recognise (which of course doesn’t guarantee we haven’t danced …). Random cabeceos are a pretty safe sport at any Feast, at least for the leaders: I think you’d have to be pretty unlucky to find any follower who isn’t lovely to dance with.

My approach to tango does require skilled followers for the ultimate enjoyment. Perhaps if you have a huge vocabulary, you use different types of movement to express range and texture. I mean, I do that to a certain extent – but for me it’s much more about how than the what. There’s no greater joy to me than a follower who can respond equally to the tiniest weight changes and the largest of steps.

Speaking of the latter, the summer Feast has one massive thing going for it: room to walk! Walking remains my absolute favourite thing to do in tango, and there were multiple occasions where we were able to take huge strides! Give me a Big Tanda, room to walk, and a follower who has both the technique and desire for it, and I’m in heaven. I was in heaven a lot this weekend.

I was raving to Hector about the ability of followers to respond to the most subtle of leads. There was a Pugliese song with the classic thumping bandoneons when the violins initially came in alongside them, so both instruments were initially expressing the same driving beat. I switched to dancing to the violins, which was nothing but a change in the texture of the same walk with the same size steps, yet my follower not only felt that but responded in kind. There were other examples, and each one made me smile.

I’ve mentioned before that Feast followers are a mix of those who like to do a pure follow, and those who favour collaborative dance. Each are wonderful in their own way, and I do really appreciate that balance. On the collaborative side, there are certain follower friends who know they have carte blanche to just go for it. With some of those, the embrace may have signalled that I was leading, but I was very much not!

Following fun

Speaking of following, I wrote recently about my much more laid-back attitude to this:

Relax! Treat it as a long-term project that will take years, and realise there’s absolutely no rush. A lighthearted adventure which is about the journey, not the destination.

I had enormous fun doing exactly that. I’d been very careful to brief my various leaders: steps and rebounds only, send me seven days’ written notice of any crosses, and there’s more chance of the hotel restaurant winning a Michelin star than there is of me following a pivot in a timely manner.

I’d also said that I’d stick to following in milonga tandas, because that doesn’t give my tango brain enough time to get any smart ideas of its own. A couple of women even managed to lead some double-time with me!

One dual-role dancer hadn’t got the ‘milongas only’ part of the memo, and suggested switching roles during the delicious Romántica Milonguera tanda late on Sunday night. To my utter amazement, I followed the second half of a very lyrical tanda just fine – though at least half of the credit goes to her very clear leading.

I also did Natasha’s excellent Follower Technique class. I take the view that technique is technique, so these classes benefit my leading as well as my following, and that was absolutely the case here.

I used to get annoyed when teachers spent the first 20 minutes of a one-hour class going round the room asking what each person is hoping to get out of it. I’d be standing there silently thinking “a lot more if you got on with it!” But I learned through Mabel Rivero that when the teacher is good and you’re paying attention, this can actually be the most valuable part of the class. They give little tips for each issue, and I generally get something out of each of those interactions. That was true for Natasha’s class too. (I may write a separate blog post about the class when I’ve had a bit more time to process.)

However … I find one danger with a good technique class, whether private or group, is that my brain gets over-excited and wants to immediately forget everything I thought I ever knew about tango and filter everything through this new lens. In consequence, I can barely stand up immediately afterwards, let alone dance.

This was again the case here, and one poor follower (she knows who she is!) fell victim to this when I tried a completely different way of leading a cross, and didn’t do it in the classic pattern as I wanted to be sure I was leading it. Oh, and I naturally chose a milonga tanda to do it, because if you’re trying something unfamiliar you obviously want to rush it. Visiting hours are 2pm to 4pm if anyone wants to take her flowers. (Ok, it wasn’t quite that bad, but I did have to promise not to do it again, then tell my brain to shut up and let me dance.)

The continuing healing power of tango

Lots of people kindly asked about my health or told me it was good to see me back on the floor. The exec summary is I currently have low-level chronic pain which usually but not always resolves in time, so we’re in wait-and-see mode. However …

I’d described the apparent healing power of tango in Sheffield, and the same was true at the Feast. I’m almost completely unaware of the pain when dancing, and it continues to be muted for quite some time afterwards.

I thought I’d end the blog on that happy note, so am saying absolutely nothing about GWR’s unbroken record as the worst train company in Britain …

My next scheduled tango is Tango Secrets in July and Cheltenham in August. Hope to see lots of you there!