Milonga Information
All the milongas Friday through Sunday will take place at Springstep. Thursday's milonga
and Beginning class location will be announced in due time. Read on to learn about performances, music,
as well as costume information and the costume themes.
Performances & Music
Dance Performance
All of the evening milongas will include a few performances by the instructors or invited guests sometime between 11pm and midnight.
 Photo by Sorin Varzaru during the Vertical Milonga at TdlM 2007. |
Live and Recorded Music
With the exception of Saturday night, the DJs will primarily play Golden Age tango music, with a bit of Old Guard, contemporary and alternative tango music thrown in according to their personal style. The afternoon milongas on Saturday and Sunday will be primarily Golden Age music, with a tanda of alternative tangos every now and then.
Saturday night we'll not only bring you live music by Trio Garufa from San Francisco, we'll also open both rooms for dancing. In Hawkins Hall, DJ Shorey will split time with Trio Garufa, and in the Orange Room, we'll find DJ Robin. Shorey will play 100% classic tango, and Robin will play 70% alternative and 30% traditional. Dancers will be free to go back and forth between the two rooms.
Costume Notes
You may have noticed that costumes are suggested at most of the milongas. It's fun to get into the spirit of the festival (it's Halloween, after all!) by wearing a costume. However, since this festival is really about dancing and not about dressing up, you must make sure that you can move easily in your costume. Below we propose some ideas to keep in mind, but before that we want to answer a question you may be wondering....
 Photo
by Marty Katz, TdlM 2007. |
Why all the costumes?
First of all, we must note that there's certainly no reason why you can't dress however you want all weekend - if you wear a t-shirt and jeans or a three-piece suit the whole time, great! There is no dress code. But here's a brief explanation of why costumes are encouraged: there's a collective joy and unity that we get out of seeing someone be creative, take a risk, and tango happily and with total concentration on the dance while wearing a two-foot-tall purple wig and go-go boots or as a cross-dresser for the evening in a vampy 1930s gown or a tux with tails. It's just delightful.
Costume Caution
Be careful when choosing your costumes to make sure there is nothing that will prevent you from having a comfortable embrace, or to prevent a free range of movement. Keep your head pretty simple: certain types of hats and most masks (which are so popular on Halloween) will prevent a close embrace, as will decorative makeup that rubs off on your partner. And even if you don't want to dance close for some (strange) reason, don't wear anything that sticks out much further than usual. (It would feel like driving a minivan when you're used to driving a car - you and others aren't sure how close you can cut the corners.) If you wear something a little bit on the edge that you're not sure you'll feel comfortable dancing in, then don't forget to bring a backup outfit!
The Costume Themes
 Photo by Marty Katz, TdlM 2007. |
Thursday – Dia de los Muertos Milonga
Are you Mexican or a skeleton? Dia de los Muertos, the day of the dead, is celebrated at the beginning of November each year in Mexico. It's rich, colorful imagery is a strong visual inspiration for Tango de los Muertos. For this milonga, dress in traditional Mexican garb, or wear your favorite fashion-forward skull and skeleton clothes. Viva los Muertos!
(Pancho Villa, by the way, was supposedly a dancer of legendary stamina. Biographer John Reed claims Villa arrived late for an important battle, after an all-night dancing stint.)
Friday – The Language Milonga
Communicate and connect with your fellow dancers through that old-fashioned technology known as language. Transform yourself into a poem, a propagandist, a literary character or a lyricist. Go more abstract by artfully expressing your favorite letter, punctuation mark or part of speech. (Sure, those polka dots can be periods!) Or express an idea such as "embrace me" by just being so soft that no one wants to let you go...
Saturday – Gods and Goddesses
Perhaps you'll dress as a Greek god or Marilyn Monroe, but however you choose to interpret this theme -- whether literally or figuratively -- this is the night when elegance and glamour reigns.
Sunday – The Natural World
Dancing the nights away, we're more likely to see the sun come up when we're heading home from a milonga than after a good night's sleep, and much more likely to hear the birds awaken in Carlos Di Sarli's song El Amanecer than in real life. So for this milonga we bring nature to us! Enjoy dressing as a plant, mammal, insect, land form, mineral, or weather, just don't forget what you came for (to dance!) so be sure to retain your ability to move easily.
