Life is Pain

Life is Pain
but they say it can't rain all the time

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Sunday ; last day.

Today is the last day of the DC Tango Marathon. Here's my POV and scoop of experiences.

There's a ton of extra women and lack of dancing is causing even good follows to start thinking that they must suck and that they're not good dancers because they're not getting asked for hours - and this time most of the extra women are not women with "extra" or women "without". They're good looking good dancers.. so go figure.

As suspected, the click/clique crowd is alive and well and flourishing. Fortunately they do not have a central hangout place like the do in Portland, but it is clear they only dance with each others and not with others. Since I don't register on the clique radar I found myself sitting, also, for a hour or so in the middle of the milonga - although I have to say I could have been dancing but wasn't feeling like dancing.

The venue. Main ball at the Trinity College in a questionable area of NE D.C. Music is piped through two large sized speakers at an volume that surely damage your hearing if sitting too close to them. The floor mysteriously seems to go from slick to sticky to slick from milonga to milonga and day to day.

Music. Thorstein; so-so music.. didn't obey energy of the floor but also his milonga was deserted. Robin; splendid, as always, love this man. Laura; does not know at all how to boost or control energy.. kept playing weak stuff right when you need to build it up.. Shorey; very nice job, but too much of the same stuff, although she was the first to play Fresedo with Ricardo Ruiz - viva!! Upcoming: Yulia and Fredi.

Floorcraft. Abominable. It'd be easier to go find the abominable snowman than to find a working line of dance at this festival. People in the "middle" or "inner lane" absolutely had no respect for the outermost lane and kept pushing in or dancing into the tiniest holes possible. Small and few gaps in the tables cause people to plop up on the dancefloor right in front of you if you were not paying attention like a hawk. The """A-dancers"""... those with any national infamy were absolutely the worst and the donkeys asses. They kept dancing in a slow moving circle assuming an aura of space because constant steps and moves back toward line of dance. Width-wise they were taking two lanes. If they weren't, they were zig-zagging and taking any little space possible.. even those spaces that one would assume caused someone else to run into them, of course thus making the person whose space was stolen look like the criminal. Floorcraft is worse than in Portland during the height of the festivals - at least so I think.. I might think quite the opposite next time in Portland... fleeting thoughts, maybe.

Maybe people will pull their heads from their asses today and matters improve.. we will see.

Ta

2 comments:

AlexTangoFuego said...

Sounds kinda funky...crappy floorcraft alone can ruin it for me...

NYC Tango Pilgrim said...

What's the point to travel far away and dance with the same group of people you know and dance at your local Monday night milonga?

Poor floor craft, "creme of crops" attendance and so-so music... sound like common problems at the tango festivals.