"I came out to Altrincham on the tram, 20 mins from central Manchester. Found The Craftsman, a modern nondescript bar two minutes from the station. Went upstairs to see through the plate glass window 3 people and obviously the teacher holding their stomachs and going across the width of the room pivoting. It was so earnest, so typical, I nearly laughed but at the same time I can't tell you how my heart sank. I remembered something from the website about 'exercises' at the start but hoped I could skip those or watch. I couldn't bring myself to stay though and it wouldn't have been right. I noticed the blurb on Tormenta Tango website sounds like it’s veering towards classes. But it is already happening. I suppose this is the "practice" phase of teaching before the actual charging. I nearly took a photo, but couldn't bring myself to in the end and thought it would be mean.
I walked up to the door as the guy pivoted with his class crab-like back towards it. He asked if I had come for the tango. I said yes, hesitantly and asked when the dancing began. He said about 2030. So here I am in the Slug and Lettuce down the road, on a hunch it might have been fractionally less loud than the Craftsman bar (it isn’t) - killing time. On the upside, food is half price on a Monday. The barmaid is sweet and got my order in less than half the 40 minute wait time she warned me about. On the downside, the music's terrible and the food isn't up to much.
*
So I was rather dreading it although I wasn't too worried about what happened here. Still, I thought I should come clean upon introduction. It wasn't an issue and I was glad I went. A number of people had already said Mat's a nice guy.
The room is spartan: seats down one side, a heavily talc-ed floor, bright bulbs.
I found 3 older couples taught by Mike and Leander of Tango Cheshire with whom I danced yesterday in Pant. There was also an interesting lady two years back after spending forty in California. She volunteered in day centres for seniors where she met a polyglot Ivan Shvarts who also runs free tango for veterans. Apparently he believed a lot in dancing tango for health. When we had a conversation about guys treating girls well she said Ivan said that too.
Much later, after I’d danced with four of the people there, Mat invited me. He is tall and I liked dancing with him enough to want to put on heels for the first time since August. Before that was probably over that May bank holiday weekend. Heels three times in six months. All that trust felt strange. Heels make a huge difference to the sense of trust but I think he understood. He said he likes to swap in the practica (like Esquina Porteña for 'tango work') not in the milonga. Different guys have different feelings about this - I get that. It's good when people are clear although he is probably the first guy I've met who wants to swap only outside the milonga. Anyway, we did swap and danced swapping for maybe the last hour when all bar one couple had left.
Mat commented we had a voyeur. Someone was leaning out the window opposite smoking and watching, behind them a darkened room. I waved at them to come over :) Then I took the guide role in heels. I was surprised at the end to hear clapping!! Whoever it was had got a friend to watch and might have been filming. Mat called out the window for them to come over but they didn't :)
He said something like he'd just pulled the music together for the practica, that it wasn't proper DJing but a lot of the music he played was nice, the best I heard that weekend including the milonga in Pant (review) and the Manchester pop up milonga (review). He let me choose. I suggested we skip the ?second Pugliese or similar and he agreed. There was nice standard Laurenz instrumentals, nice Calo instrumentals, OK Pugliese, nice Fresedo songs, quite nice Tanturi.
By the sounds of things he is thinking of cancelling the practica which has been going since February I think because of numbers or perhaps he is just busy or has gone off it. I’m not altogether sure. People there said they usually have 15 and sometimes it is quite busy. But I asked around beforehand about this practica and met virtually no-one who had been though the ones who said they had were good dancers.
His milonga - 'El huracán' - had 48 the first time, 34 the second and they need that to break even. It's £12 and includes cake, prosecco and there's a bar. Someone from outside the area said me they thought the price a bit steep. I thought not, with prosecco included but had forgotten it is £16 if you want to reserve a table. I imagine it is a £4 supplement for the table, surely not each. I don’t know if you have to pay to reserve in BA. I never heard that. The milonga is in a dance school in I think Sale. He said they don't do it for the money and I believe him. After seeing the lovely pictures of first one I wanted to go to the second one but it was advertised at too short notice for me to make arrangements. I hope to go to the third.
Re numbers at the practica I said how I'd often noticed people treat practicas like social dances probably because they like social dancing and why not. So rather than struggle with a practica, why not meet the market demand and make the milonga monthly as opposed to every second month especially as there is nothing on a Saturday night locally. I’m not sure he liked the logic. He had wanted to do a proper practica where people practice and 'work' because apparently there are other practicas around that are really ‘just’ informal milongas.
When we swapped roles he joked to his students that they could correct the teacher now. I said “Are you a teacher?” knowing he isn’t, officially. “No”, he said a bit sheepishly. And then he said the loveliest thing I heard all evening: “Just a dancer who helps.” "
Note: as of this week, this practica no longer runs. Also, the website has been down a lot at this week and still is but the same page says milongas are still planned. The note I made of the next milonga when the website was last accessible is Saturday 19th November.
No comments:
Post a Comment