El Cielo in Amstedam, Tango train edition

Photo credit:  P.J.L. Cuijpers

This was an afternoon milonga with a bar that ran for several days during Tango Train. There was also a warm, cosy cafe serving food during the later afternoon and early evening. Of the venues I visited this was my favourite and the one that felt most like a good venue for a regular milonga. It also had the best DJing of that I heard at the festival - though some of the others were pretty dreadful. There was some good, unextravagant dancing. 

Downstairs there is a large room where you can change shoes and leave non-valuables. There is also a coat rack near the cafe entrance.

Apart from Tango Train, DJ duo Age and Sebastian run this milonga every first Sunday of the month in the same venue. It has been going for two years. Website. I would say the music and dancing in the video on that site is representative of this milonga.  Notice the display on the video shows Biagi with Duval and also a tanda by De Caro. I think this is a ‘something for everyone’ milonga, rather than a 'music for most people' meaning it does paddle in both sides of the mainstream - in Guardia Vieja and in the later vocal drama typical of Duval and Laborde in the late forties and fifties. The majority of the music though was from the Golden Era. I recall with relief no issues with sound there.

But how nice - a simple website with a picture of the salon, video of the real music and dancing, a map, the essential information.  And how nice too to see no list of rules just “Bring your best cabeceo & mirada”.

The salon was galleried but the gallery is not used.  In the salon there was a front row of tables with chairs and a rear row of just chairs but people on this row tended to share the tables in front for drinks. There was a good floor that had been a basketball court but was renovated or relaid in recent years.  

Every day there were different helpers on the door. I was struck by how friendly and welcoming they were.  Sebastian when I first met him on the door was also courteous and smiley. Age was the same but very quiet.  There was mercifully no sign-in sheet I remember, or at any of the Tango Train milongas I went to except La Bruja.  I had several brief conversations with Argentinian-born Sebastian who I found polite and guarded but then he looked busy; they both did.

Wednesday

Pieter was in Amsterdam for the day so after some foggy sightseeing by (one!) bike we went to the afternoon milonga. 

Host Sebastian was the DJ this day.  I was not keen on the D’Arienzo/Laborde but there was enough good music for me. There were B sides and miss tandas but I danced three tandas with guys without quitting on the music although it would have had to be truly appalling for me to quit on a guy I don’t know. And I danced quite a bit with Pieter so the music must have been mostly OK. I remember wishing I had not got up to the OTV because it was ropey. OTV can be unreliable I find with DJs one doesn’t know, compared to, say Caló . One would have to be a pretty terrible DJ to play a bad Caló tanda but goodness knows it happens.

The ronda was busy with two clear circles of dancers.  Each of the three afternoons I went to this milonga there was a nice mix of ages from students to retired people. Nearly everyone was experienced and the standard seemed good, certainly above UK average. I felt responsible in those conditions and danced with Pieter mostly in swapped roles. I was impressed when we did swap as he stayed in that ronda very well despite this being only his third experience of dancing tango socially though he has danced other things. No one else was that new or dancing swapping but I thought people tolerant and I hope and do not think we were obstructive. With hindsight, another day when it was less busy would have been better with a beginner especially in an unknown milonga.  I have had opportunity to learn this lesson before in  - at least - Letchworth and Stuttgart but I suppose I am still telling myself one cannot always tailor one’s opportunities to the ideal conditions.  

I saw the DJ Jens-Ingo who has taken, with his friends, loud exception to me in an online DJ forum from which I now stay away. He struck me as scarier than I had expected. 

Otherwise the atmosphere was good, upbeat and with energy.  That was the day with the best guy dancing of any day I was in Amsterdam.  

In between dances with my guest I looked to and immediately found a dance with pleasant, young and handsome Niraj currently living in Scandinavia. He had danced something like just a couple of years. It was his first trip away for dance and he was a memorably good dancer, subtle and gentle and I guessed would become more so. He was a nice guy so I took a risk and asked if he would dance a track with Pieter sometime. He did later, very courteously.  I think it was the first time I saw a guy invite a beginner guy successfully by look in a milonga.  They danced a whole tanda which I thought exceptionally nice of him.  It was as useful as I had expected.