You know when you've been Tangoed!

I spent both nights of the weekend at the International Tango Festival with people from Couchsurfing.

All for free there were dance classes, performances, and an open floor for those who know how!
We attempted both nights to get to the classes but as you can imagine they filled up extraordinarily fast and even an hour's advance wasn't enough to get a place.

Saturday

Saturday's performance by Otros Aires, an (apparently) very well known group, was fantastic. They're style mixes traditional Tango rhythms with more modern styles and electronic sounds to great effect. As you can imagine, the pista was filled with dancers of varying ages and styles. The golden oldies twirling away in perfect time, the father teaching his daughter, and of course the young couple throwing in a modern twist. It was fantastic to watch! Following this, we headed out for pizza and a few drinks with free entertainment from an eccentric waiter. ;)

Sunday

Sunday's antics proved to be no less exciting. Again with people from Couchsurfing with one substitution. The performance this time was very traditional - Tango gold that any accomplished Tango fan will definitely know by heart. The place was packed! This was followed by performances from the Tango world champions dating back to 2006! With 2012's champions yet to be selected it's an exciting time of year for Tango fans.


Andrea and I decided to attempt to get our Tango on and hit the floor. With so many people around it's hard to avoid bumping into people and when you can just about pull off one paso about 1 in 3 times... it's inevitable. But it was a lot of fun and who's going to care anyway? Haha. Shortly after this, I discovered that our Brazilian friend (who had been in the classes) was a dance tutor back in Brazil and had come to Buenos Aires specifically for the festival! Missed that somehow! We started up our our private dance lesson in the middle of the hall, between the pista and the rows of chairs set out for the performances. We were joined by a few other curious tourists who joined in enthusiastically! It was really hard to follow and most of the instructions were given in Portuñol, that's to say somewhat of a mixture but readily understood with just a little code-breaking; definitely a lot of fun even if we only managed to get the vague gist of one more step!

Around 9.30, hunger strikes. I headed out to get food with Andrea - we ended up at an all you can eat vegetarian/chinese buffet place which was definitely a bit overpriced, but what can you do. A lot of the food was pretty obscure so we had a lot of fun probing the meal and trying to determine what it was we were eating!! They started packing up and we were pretty stuffed anyway so we headed of to a Tango bar to pick up where we left off.
The place was packed and had a great Tango vibe! Unfortunately the other couples on the floor were too good, and even after half a bottle of wine we couldn't bring ourselves to try and dance!
Some of the most impressive dancing was from two male-male couples; their flare was unmatched by any of the traditional couples which led us to consider whether same sex dancers were allowed to compete in the competitions - definitely something to find out!

We've resolved to go to at least one class per week and at least enough to be able to get up and dance with confidence. Looking forward to it!