[Tango-L] Your milonga secrets

[Huck Kennedy]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 3:53 PM, larrynla at juno.com <larrynla at juno.com> wrote:
> Looking back over the last couple dozen threads I see almost no mention
> of milongas. Do you do them?

      An interesting question, Larry, in that it ought to be an
extremely ridiculous one, but unfortunately it is not, as apparently
quite a few people do not do milonga.  To me, unless one is a beginner
and simply has not learned yet, only dancing tango and waltz but no
milonga seems as patently absurd as having an American, French, or
Russian flag with only red and white, but no blue.  Or the Father, the
Son, and no Holy Ghost.  Or Moe, Larry, and no Curly.  Or health,
wealth, but no happiness.  Or a million other broken triad analogies.

     When someone tells me they don't dance milonga, I quietly shed a
tear for them, because they are missing out on some of the finest
moments tango has to offer.

     I've never held this against anyone, of course--well, except for
one woman who stepped over the line and utterly disrespected the
dance, actually having the audacity to haughtily say to me in response
to a dance request, "I don't do milonga--tango is serious and for
grown-ups, and milonga is just a childish clown dance."  I politely
excused myself from her company and never asked her to dance anything
else ever again.  After all, if she had such a dismissively
superficial judgment about something as beautifully rich as milonga,
how much could she possibly really know about the sentimiento of tango
or waltz either?

     I suspect many people who don't dance milonga are simply afraid
of it, since it doesn't seem to be taught as much as tango or waltz.
In the case of women, I find it can also be because too many beginning
leaders yanked them around too frenetically, forced them to take steps
that were too big, etc.  This fear is easily overcome with a more
patient and experienced leader.

     One personal note I'd like to add is that I only reach milonga
nirvana with the classic milonga music--anything newer I almost
invariably find to be too light and breezy, failing to capture the
earthy intensity of the dance, effectively trivializing it and
stripping from it its true essence; one might even go so far as to
say, emasculating it.

     A request to DJ's--please don't try and get cute by playing
obscure new "milongas" in an effort to show how hip and cool and
avant-garde you are--stick to the tried and true classics.  As regards
milonga music (even more so than tango or waltz), perfection has
already been achieved, and it's all been downhill from there.  IMNSHO,
and all that.  :-)

Huck