[Tango-L] Review of Practica X

[Shahrukh Merchant]

I hadn't been to Práctica X for over a year, maybe even two, so I 
thought I'd go check it out. I wasn't sure quite what to expect, between 
the reports of neck-high boleos and whirling dervishes on the one hand 
and wonderful dancers with exquisite connection on the other.

So here it is, just as I saw it (with no agenda to promote, other than 
the dispelling of any myths or misconceptions that may exist).

BASICS: Práctica X is located at Humboldt 1464 (between Niceto Vega & 
Cabrera) in the "Palermo Hollywood" neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. 
Dancing is from 10:30 pm to 3 am, with a class beforehand. Website is 
http://practicax.net/ though I found their blog at 
http://practicax.blogspot.com/ more informative. Admission price was $15 
pesos (a sign at the desk said "$10 until midnight" and I got there at 
12.02 (oh well). Anyway, that's about $5 less than most milongas.

THE SPACE: The space is really large with a high ceiling, comfortably 
subdued lighting (but not dark). There are tables on three sides of the 
floor setup just like most milongas, with the exception that there were 
no tables for two. There was no "greeter and seater" as at some 
milongas--presumably one just shares a table wherever there is space 
available. Seating was not really a problem. There was a small bar and 
coat check one one side. The bar sold a variety of soft drinks, wines 
and champagnes, and liquor--a fairly typical milonga selection, and some 
empanadas that quickly ran out. There was no table service.

THE FLOOR: The floor is a polished concrete floor. Sounds iffy, but the 
texture was really just fine for dancing, and many milongas in Buenos 
Aires have a polished concrete or tile floor. It is quite large, similar 
to the size of the floor in Salon Canning, actually.

THE CROWD: There were at least a couple of hundred people there. 
Definitely a younger, non-Argentine crowd. I would guess 80% 
non-Argentine, and 80% in their 20s and 30s (not the same 80%). I ran 
into almost a dozen people I knew, and all but two of them lived outside 
Argentina (was worth going just to be able to say hello to all these 
people!).

CABECEO: Non-existent (and, quite frankly, as much as I am a cabeceo 
fan, it would seem contrived in that environment, with most attendees 
coming from places where cabeceo doesn't exist).

MUSIC: 90% classic "golden age" Tango, just like almost any other 
milonga in Buenos Aires. There was one Salsa tanda, one Hugo Diaz tanda 
(hardly nuevo, but not classic either, though the more dramatic 
arrangement undoubtedly led to some larger-than-normal steps :-)) and at 
the very end  well after 4 am (they were going longer than usual that 
night) there was one "techno-tango" set (didn't identify the music but 
it was reasonably danceable as far as these go). Music was played in 
tandas, but without cortinas (except when they wanted to clear the floor 
for announcements or a show), so in general the floor would never clear 
completely. There was, thankfully, no attempt to have people dance Tango 
to non-Tango music.

Since it was the end-of-year party, they had an orchestra: Not 
NarcoTango, not Tanghetto, not even MufaTango ... but Los Reyes de 
Tango. classic D'Arienzo-style (albeit on steroids).

DANCER SKILL: Dancing was, on the whole, not noticeable better nor worse 
than at other well-attended Milongas in Buenos Aires. (I'll cover 
navigational aspects separately, since it was a heated discussion 
topic). There were a small handful of dancers who were nice to watch and 
a smaller handful of dancers whose dancing made you wince. The level of 
dancing was better than in most communities outside Buenos Aires, which 
stands to reason: Since most of the attendees were from outside Buenos 
Aires and since they spent the time and money to come to Buenos Aires, 
they would, on the whole, already have been vested in Tango before 
coming so you see something like a "cream of the crop" effect.

DANCE STYLES: 80% of the dancers were dancing a close-embrace non-nuevo 
style. Oh, probably more women routinely did their boleos knee-high 
rather than just-off-the-ground, but that was the only noticeable 
difference in this 80%. There was a noticeable minority dancing nuevo 
(i.e., more than in most Buenos Aires milongas), but a definite 
minority. Most but not all seemed to be doing it responsibly (more on 
that under navigation). From the 20% doing noticeably "nuevo" movements, 
perhaps fewer than half were overtly nuevo, which is to say, very open 
position, large degrees of turning away from the partner, etc. I didn't 
see a single colgada (not the whirlybird kind anyway) nor a back sacada 
for that matter.

ROLE REVERSAL: One viewing of two women dancing together, one viewing of 
two men dancing together, one viewing of a woman switching roles to lead 
a man. As one would expect, no one gave any of this a second thought 
(not outwardly anyway), but these were the only exceptions to the 
traditional roles that I saw.

NAVIGATION: For the first half of the milonga, the floor was full but 
not crowded--I counted perhaps 50 couples at one point. I had no 
problems navigating and did not feel that navigation was a challenge to 
the point that it became unpleasant. There was enough spacing between 
dancers that no one was really in anyone's way. There were maybe the 
"usual three" exceptions to that, i.e., three couples (well, guys I 
guess) making somewhat of a nuisance of themselves in terms of dancing 
inconsiderately, so as long as you weren't too near them, things were 
OK. I actually did an experiment by dancing up close to a couple of the 
"big" dancers, to see how they would handle it. I tried to be reasonable 
about it: I did not sneak up behind the guy i.e. I made sure he could 
see me, I did not put my partner in harm's way i.e. he would have hit me 
not her and I didn't keep this up very long (otherwise a good argument 
could have been made that I was the one being the jerk!). They were 
disconcerted, I'm sure, and certainly felt that their style was being 
cramped, but in no case did any of them proceed to dance into me anyway. 
So I was prepared to give it a "Fair" rating for navigation (it's sad 
but true, just not barging into someone intentionally merits a "Fair" 
rating for navigation these days ... talk about grade inflation!).

But in the second half, the floor got more crowded, and there was 
definitely a threshold effect where at a certain point good navigation 
became essential to ensuring that people weren't bothering each other, 
and that transition happened very sharply as the floor got more crowded. 
Since that good navigation was largely absent, it started to get 
annoying with people backing into you and the like and it was just 
crowded enough that evasive action was not often possible without 
breaking your dance rhythm or connection. It felt like there were 
perhaps 50% more people at that point, so I would guess 75 couples.

I felt that this point was reached with a lower density of dancers than 
at other Milongas in Buenos Aires (where you might have a 30-50% higher 
density of people before the floor gets to this point), so to that 
extent one could say navigation was not as good, but I think it had more 
to do with the demographics of the crowd taking larger steps with more 
movement, and not being accustomed to needing to tighten up their 
dancing as it gets more crowded. Sure the "overtly nuevo" dancers 
previously described were certainly taking up more space than others, 
and hence contributing more to the phenomenon. There was no evidence 
that the line of dance (or swarm of dance) was divided with people in 
the middle doing their own thing, navigation-wise, while those on the 
outside swarmed around them.

PRACTICA OR MILONGA?: There's absolutely no doubt about it--it's a 
milonga in every sense of the word, notwithstanding the name, and 
notwithstanding the ultimately superficial differences to classic 
milongas (no cortinas, no cabeceo, no arranged seating). No one was 
practising--not in the middle of the floor, not off to one side and not 
in the hallways, and it would have seemed very odd for anyone to have 
been doing to. They were all clearly there to dance. But anyway, I 
cornered Pablo Inza (one of the organizers) towards the end and asked 
him, in an off-hand manner, "So why is it called a práctica rather than 
a milonga?" He shrugged like it was an irrelevant question and said, in 
an indifferent tone, "Well, it's always been called that. There's some 
practice after the class." End of (non-)explanation. Then he looked 
mildly irritated like he had heard that question once too often and 
didn't want any follow-up questions on the subject. :-)

By and large, I had a good time and I would go back, and probably more 
frequently than I have before, even though I'm not likely to become a 
regular.

IN SUMMARY:

What you get at Práctica X:
--------------------------
- A milonga
- Decent dancers from a larger number of different countries all under 
one roof than in probably any other milonga in the world.
- A young crowd
- Classic golden-age Tango music

What you don't get at Práctica X:
--------------------------------
- A práctica
- An Argentine experience (not from the participants anyway)
- A nuevo-fest (neither in the dancing nor in the music)
- Cabeceo
- Injured
- Particularly good navigation (but that's true at most milongas, and 
it's not a navigation nightmare either)

The next day I went to Viejo Correo ... about as far on the other 
extreme as one can get in Buenos Aires. More on that in a separate 
posting ...

Shahrukh

P.S. Happy New Year!