Like the Septonathon, the Etonathon is not technically a festival, but a series of individual milongas requiring no pre-booking. However, since I’d very much enjoyed the approach of treating the last one like a festival by doing the lot, I decided to do the same again.

This one was a little more … committed. And perhaps I should have been: ten milongas over five days, and with two minor exceptions I was there from start to finish at all of ’em …

Preamble

The event had required a little extra planning. After the bow ties were so well received, several followers told me the expected standard was now one per milonga, so I’d had to boost my collection to ten.

For accommodation, I’d been pointed in the direction of the glamour hotspot of the Egham Travelodge, as a number of visiting dancers stay there. This has plentiful on-site fine dining options (it’s above a Waitrose), and my room had stunning views of the hotel gardens.

As all I was doing there was sleeping, I didn’t have time to check out the spa or champagne bar. There was no casino, but the hotel made up for this with an exciting game of chance: everyone’s room keys demagnetised on a random schedule and you then got to find out whether anyone would answer the entryphone to let you into the building at midnight.

To top off the luxury experience, there’s a chauffeur-driven transport service available just the other side of the road. This not only offers a virtually door-to-door experience, but takes in all the sights along the way.

As preparation for dancing all ten milongas, I sought advice from those who’d attempted the complete set last year.

My smart-ring reckoned I was up to the challenge, though it did caution against dancing the milonga tandas.

The hall

I’ve noted before that my pre-tango self would have been somewhere between bemused and horrified if he’d been told he was going to end up spending significant chunks of time in village halls. But hey, what do our pre-tango selves know anyway?

One thing that does bear repetition is the absolute miracles village milonga organisers achieve in transforming the most mundane of halls into, well, what you see in all its blurry glory above, and in the videos below (in less blurry form).

This one is equipped with a really excellent sprung floor, and is a delight to dance on. Attaining the perfect Goldilocks condition between sticky and slippery is also miraculous; it’s rare indeed to not hear a single person complain about the floor during a multi-day event.

The DJ line-up

Choosing DJs for the event must be incredibly challenging! You have ten milonga slots to fill (with nine DJs, as Charles fills the first and last slots), and a crowd who are probably more opinionated than most when it comes to music choices (who, me?).

Our inclination toward opining may be the same, but tastes vary significantly. The same DJs will have some dancers leaping out of their chairs and others digging into their bags for paracetamol. Given that, it’s something of a miracle that the hit rate is so high for so many dancers.

I knew I was on safe ground for several milongas, with some of my all-time favourites on the roster. They indeed lived up to expectations, with some absolutely beautiful sets!

Three of the DJs who were new to me – or at least, I hadn’t danced to their music since the personal DJ database I started at around a year into tango, and one of them went straight onto my A-list. (As many of you know, I have notes and personal ratings for the DJs at every milonga I’ve attended since then, and it’s turned into my most valuable tango possessions. For me, the music makes or breaks a milonga, so I choose many of my events on this basis.)

It’s always interesting to hear friends’ views on the DJs. There are times when some have markedly different views to mine, which isn’t at all surprising given personal tastes. Other times, though, impressions seem remarkably consistent, and that seemed to be very much the case here.

An unofficial encuentro

Like a popular festival, the ‘thons are big enough fixtures on the tango calendar to attract dancers from far and wide. Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Germany and Italy were all represented, and those are just the examples that spring immediately to mind.

Of course, there’s also a strong local crowd, many of whom I know well from Tango Secrets, as well as a significant proportion of Feast regulars.

Back in September, I described it as an unofficial festival, but really it’s more akin to an encuentro in feel. The floorcraft is unparalleled: line of dance, leader cabeceo, and adjusting the size of dance to the available space are all near-perfect.

What was especially notable to me was there was one exception (there’s always one exception …) who was initially zig-zagging randomly between rondas and beyond. But just a short time later, he was doing every bit as much non-stop twirly stuff all safely within the couple’s own space. Charles said that while he does have words with offenders, quite often it seems they get the message from the rest of the ronda.

I had to laugh when I accidentally became an exception myself. Regular readers will know I love to walk, and always enjoy taking advantage of the space in the first tanda or two, After that, there is also often a window of another tanda or so where there are just two or three couples in the inner ronda, often also there to walk. I took my partner into the inner ronda for some walking and then discovered that (a) we were the only people there and (b) there was plenty of walking going on in the outer ronda! Is a one-couple ronda a floorcraft breach? Answers on a postcard …

One big difference between an official event and a DIY one like this is the dancers. There were a few of us doing the lot, but most people were coming for anywhere from a single milonga to two or three days, so the mix of dancers was constantly changing.

It was an interesting contrast. At a formal event, it’s nice to know that if you don’t manage to catch someone at one milonga, there’s always the next one. There’s also something of a cozy feel of a fixed group of people.

However, it was also fantastic to see so many different people throughout the event, and to have so many people to dance with. Choosing between the two experiences is actually a tricky one.

Either way, there was an abundance of wonderful followers. I just had tanda after tanda after tanda of truly beautiful dances. I know my Tango Face doesn’t show it, but inside I was just beaming.

I only did a tiny bit of following this time. From memory, one whole milonga tanda and a couple of intercambio ones – all of which was great fun! I’m approaching competence when it comes to following steps and rebounds, and still working on the cross.

I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue

Radio 4 fans will be familiar with the pick-up round in I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. For anyone who doesn’t know it, a song will begin playing and the contestant has to sing or hum along to it as it is faded out. They are awarded points for how synchronised they still are when it is faded back in around 30 seconds later. I sometimes felt like I was a contestant.

While some like to chat for the first 30 seconds or so of the opening song, I’m more of a ‘dive straight in’ kind of guy myself. My view is that tango songs are short and many of them are too beautiful to waste by talking over them. However, the hum of conversation made it quite difficult to hear the music when there was a lot of chatter.

If my follower and I both heard enough of the opening notes to recognise it, we began the dance. The random rise and fall of the volume of the conversational hum meant that sometimes those first few notes were all I would hear for a while, and it became a game to see if we could continue dancing to the tune in our respective heads and emerge as successful contestants. I have to say we all got decent scores!

The etiquette of chairs

A random conversation led to me mulling about the etiquette of chairs. (Look, it’s me – don’t act surprised. Anyway, my previous uncharacteristically short blog post got letters to the editor from Outraged of Orpington complaining about being cheated, so don’t blame me for finding ways to write more without copying and pasting from September.)

A friend had been at an event with fewer chairs than dancers, so it was a question of finding one that was free at the time. She said someone got very uppity when she was sat in what he considered ‘his’ chair.

The etiquette in this situation seems clear: it’s a free-for-all, and he should position his uppityness in a place of limited light. At the other end of the scale, where there are more than enough seats for everyone, it seems reasonable to say that a chair is nominally reserved if you habitually sit in it during an individual milonga, have draped some clothing or shoe-bag around it and have your shoes beneath it. I tend to get to milongas early to do this if I have a preference for a particular table.

However, my view is that even with more than enough chairs, this doesn’t constitute ownership. Anyone can sit there when you’re not using it, whether that’s to come chat with people on that table or simply try a different position in the room. If your habitual chair is occupied, you just sit somewhere else until it’s free again.

The only breach of etiquette in my view would be to try to claim it as your own and position yourself there permanently when someone has clearly already done that.

Where does everyone else stand sit on this important question?

Magic or madness?

I mentioned a couple of minor exceptions to my start-to-finish participation. That comprised missing two first tandas, both dinner-related (and already enough for me to get questioning looks), and leaving an hour early once, when one DJ really wasn’t to my taste.

The rest of the time, I was there from first tanda to last, meaning a little over 40 hours over five days – dancing a very high percentage of the non-milonga tandas. Charles said there had been 240 tandas in total!

The big question, then, is whether this was magic or madness?

There’s some evidence for the madness side of the equation. Most of the time I went back and forth to my hotel between afternoon and evening milongas for a shower, second shave and change of clothes, so there wasn’t a great deal of time for rest, or indeed food. I think for future ‘thons I might brave the Toby Inn, despite the reports from former inmates.

My stamina proved sufficient. An EEG would likely have revealed I was brain-dead by the final milonga, and sleep-dancing through that one, but physically I was constantly energised by the dance, even if I did wake up on new year’s day feeling like 2026 was my age as well as the year.

I am, then, firmly coming down on the side of magic. It was a fantastic experience, and a delightful way to see in the new year. I plan on doing it again.

My heartfelt thanks to Charles and Sarah for all the hard work involved in making it happen, to the DJs for keeping me dancing, and of course to all my dance partners who provided the real magic.

As with the Feast, I tried to shoot a brief video clip of each milonga, and succeeded this time.