El Quinto milonga, Nottingham

Originally posted 16.6.16

I went on from the milongas at the Cambridge Spring Festivalito to the milonga called El Quinto in Nottingham. My plan was to combine this milonga with another run regularly on Bank Holidays at nearby Beeston the next day. I stayed at the Holiday Inn conveniently just off the motorway and five minutes from the venue. Were you to consider this, the hotel doesn’t look up to much from the outside and the reception/bar area is as you might expect but I found the room itself fine with excellent blackouts. 

Entrance

Parking was conveniently behind the hall and free. You pay the entrada inside the entrance to the salon. I was greeted and as at Camtango asked to give my name though I did not learn my host’s. I was advised to walk behind the dance floor in a narrow gangway - a new innovation apparently, as - controversially - in Edinburgh - with which hosts the organisers at El Quinto have ties.

Telling unknown people what to do is one way I suppose. After all, I might have been a new dancer but I tend to find that people, even new people can work this out for themselves - or they demonstrate they cannot which is also useful for everyone. In that case a regular may quietly, wordlessly even, guide them the right way.  This is a form of social learning, I find that preferable and not just in practical terms - besides saving a new person from embarrassment it may show them a friend and an ally which, god knows, in many milongas a new person needs.   

I find what happens to you at the entrance can set the tone of a place. 

Much later I took a couple of photos from two corners of the room but as I walked back to my seat was told by the organiser that there was a “photo policy”. I wasn’t made to delete my photos there and then but was asked to execute care if posting them because not everyone likes their photo taken. Yet whole room photos are very useful to convey a sense of venue, numbers, ronda, and type of hold or embrace prevalent in the room. My photos are not at all intended and rarely do focus on individuals. It is a shame really because of the 26 or 27 people in the photo I was going to use not one of their faces are visible, nor are they near the camera yet it shows the attractive room nicely. If you want to see it, do get in touch. But as I say below the rules are strict there so here is a photo of the floor instead:

I asked where I could change my shoes. There are two Ladies rooms to the rear of the salon and a convenient bench outside them to change shoes. Most people seemed to observe etiquette in this regard which was such a relief though it is still not quite universal, even in civilized milongas. 

Atmosphere and Invitation

Still, there was a distinct sense of everyone trying hard to “do the right thing”. That is good I suppose in that most requests to dance I saw happening were by cabeceo.  The downside of this rather self-conscious observation of milonga etiquette was a somewhat stilted atmosphere for the first two or three hours or so. Feelings about atmosphere especially as a visitor are very subjective but someone I found fun and relaxed felt the same. 

Even so, at least five men invited me directly, or as good as, but not in impossible ways. I did not for (nearly) the most part find it difficult to refuse, feeling sure and relaxed about my reasons. 

Room and seating

The room itself I thought was lovely. It is used as a wedding venue. There is a high ceiling, beautiful windows, attractive lighting. It is also one one of the coldest venues I have been to. People told me this was usual here and I noticed blankets hung up outside the ladies room with a sign from the hall management saying: If you are chilly in the hall please use them. Luckily I had a good wrap. Someone said to me recently at another cold dance “How did you know it was going to be cold.” I don’t. I just anticipate that it might well be, because it often is! 

There is a bar, also free water and a refreshments table which that day had biscuits and cheese, cake, sausage rolls, grapes.

There was a card of rules on all the tables (see photo).

Seating was at tables, then there was the gangway around the hall and some seats without tables behind these for the more retiring or for latecomers. Visibility of potential partners was excellent. If you wanted to move seat I would not say it was a particularly easy place to seat-hop. I felt it more a “keep your seat” kind of place. I like this and find it civilized though it can be hard if you arrive alone and unknown and don’t have people to chat to. This was my case but I chatted to all the people around me - at least half a dozen - and despite dancing very little this, watching and listening kept me there for several hours. The chat I found relaxing even if the atmosphere I felt was, in some way that I think was related to the rules, a little less so.

Numbers, floor and dancing

The photos I have show about thirty but not everyone is necessarily in the photo so there may well have been more.

The floor was old and I had previously heard possibly rotten in parts. When I saw it I had misgivings but my first two tandas on it were with a lovely dancer with a warm, fun personality, and it was simply a joy and pleasure to dance. In these conditions I was pleased to find the floor unproblematic. Sometimes I find a floor becomes difficult by the type of dancing one accepts. Thereafter I did find it so and with the knee/back problems which I could not risk aggravating I quit dancing early.

There were only a few guys in the room I really wanted to dance with that day and I danced very little, partly because I was no longer in the mood for dance due to the sound issues (see below). I wasn’t really paying attention to the girl dancing but find it is generally always better than most guy dancing.  Had the sound been better I might have tried my luck with the women later on though I find I need the atmosphere to be relaxing for that to work.

Music and sound

The DJ was Solveig (Bergen, currently in Norwich). 

I had hopes for a great set after hearing Solveig earlier in the year in Cambridge, but at first I was alarmed. There were two good Di Sarli sextet instrumental tracks and then La Estancia which I don’t think is the best for dancing and Maldita which is very like it. Luckily my partner was great and so it did not matter as much as it might otherwise have done, or as much as it would have mattered to me if I had been dancing in swapped roles.  I find better examples of early Di Sarli here - all lovely tracks for me. 

In El Quinto I recall next about another two tandas of slow, leaden, Guardia Vieja type music I did not know similar to the start at El Amateur. I started to wonder if I had made a terrible mistake. Then there was a very good D’Arienzo tanda but it had been slowed down and thus I could not imagine dancing it. I looked to the DJ in astonishment and frustration. Tanda after tanda was like this. I queried the slowness with the DJ but she was not aware of it which astonished me further. It made tracks I knew to be famous unidentifiable, even the orchestras became hard to identify. I knew them yet did not because something was so wrong. I heard Rodriguez tracks I knew I knew and was eventually able to associate orchestra name with the weird sound but still the track names remained bizarrely out of reach because the link between name and right sound had been cut like a rope bridge hanging by just one side.  There was also a significant crackle in one of the speakers which the barman I think helped to resolve. Much later towards the end of the afternoon the slowing of tracks either fixed itself or I got so used to it that I no longer noticed it but it completely put me off dancing - even in the other role. I have never had an experience quite like it. It was a shame because after the very shaky start in musical choice the tandas soon became of the sort I remembered from Cambridge - mostly great and mainstream.