Dancing after Christmas: Eton

Space in marriage is often helpful and I am lucky to have plenty of it. It is never more necessary for all couples I feel than after Christmas, before the divorce statistics peak in January. For the last few years I have gone away to dance for a few days and for some time alone. It is good timing for me who ordinarily looks after the children and it is nice for my husband who is away so much to have some time with them.

The first year I did this I went to TangoMagia a now-defunct festival in Amsterdam. I went not for the classes, just to dance a lot. By then I had been dancing about 18 months. The second year I went to to the Etonathon milonga weekend west of London. Last year I went to the Brighton milonguero cuatro, then to Eton, then to festive milongas requiring no pre-registration in Hertfordshire, London and Cambridge. 

I am not going to Eton this year. I like that you can pay on the door, I am delighted there is no gender or role balancing, the floorcraft is famously good and it never lacks home-made cake. The floor is good, the venue nice if cramped and short on tables and seating for those numbers and it is very crowded. 

I first went to an Eton milonga in 2013 and started going to its special events the following year. After going for a while to milongas in the south of England and becoming known, I always enjoyed going to Eton. It is many peoples favourite milonga. Even so in both 2014 and 2015 I have felt the multi-day events rather too much like meat markets with women especially sitting literally centre-stage for a good shot at being invited or loitering against pillars casting desperate sheep's eyes long after the time for them to sit down has passed. Some were not unwilling to block other dancers' line of sight during the cortina and once experienced that habit can unfortunately be contagious. I find that peculiar to dancers in the south of England, London particularly. Last year at Eton in chat I discovered a lot of women who had not danced, or hardly danced over three or four days which saddened me. I don’t like a competitive feeling in milongas, that "Choose me, choose me":

"That's why Eton multi-day can be such a hard environment for girls. You have to be really tough, really confident, really pushy in a terribly toned down but bright smiles sort of way. Brash really. It's competition - not that anyone means to do down anyone else, but they want what they can get and will stand and block and be hard and bright to try get it. I can't bear any of that. I've heard it called "making the most of one's opportunities" which might be opinion but struck me as equivocatory at best."

There are always extra women which never bothers me or presumably those who go. But then I know dancers across the south, dance both roles, enjoy other aspects of milonga life as well as dance and have experience surviving attending tough milongas alone and with only faint(?) scarring. If you are unknown Eton is another milonga which it can be hard to break in to. Depending on the usual various things - mostly who you know and the compatibility of your character to the settings - it can be difficult. On the other hand it also has probably more good dancers in a single place than I have seen anywhere else in the UK.

Another factor about Eton multi-day events is that I don’t think I have ever heard a DJ at one of them who was as good (for me) as Charles, who co-hosts that milonga with Sarah. Indeed I have heard there some weak to catastrophic great variety in DJing.

Eton multi-day events are much-loved by many and have perhaps a growing number of devotees although I found the last night of the final day (DJ Diego Doigneau) very quiet when I was last there. 

Just now though, personally, I would rather attend the ordinary Eton milongas instead which I would expect to be less frenetic and more relaxing.