Milonga etiquettes

Practica

Practica is to try out new steps you haven’t mastered and ask for advice and guidance to improve your tango skills.

Personal hygiene

Personal hygiene is essential for a pleasant dancing experience. Be sensitive to the dancer. Please avoid excessive cologne and keep yourself odor free. If you have a cold/ flue please stay away. Use anti - perspirants and mints. Please make sure there is no bad mouth odour.

Milonga

A social dance party for Argentine tango dancers where you dress and dance socially. Please refrain from teaching any step.

Women to avoid high embellishment on crowded floors to avoid hurting others. Milonga is more than dancing, it is about camaraderie and fellowship with members of tango community. Everyone is there to have a good time.

Dressing

For dressing up appropriately yet comfortably, wear shoes with heels that tilt your weight to the back of your feet for better pivoting. If you are wearing glasses or accessories, please make sure they do not interrupt your partner. You respect yourself.and your partner, your partners’ level of dancing, culture and heritage of tango.

Tandas

Tango music is placed in sets called tandas. The DJ plays 3 - 4 songs by the same ochestra in a tanda. Accepting an invitation to dance binds the dancer to dance that tanda and ends when cortina is played. In Buenos Aires and other places around the world, music is played in tanda of tango, vals and milonga.

Cortinas

They mean curtains as in curtains on stage, usually a short piece of non - tango music which is generally non - danceble. Cortina indicates tanda has come to a close and renders a cue to the table or the floor.

Cabaceo

Generally in Buenos Aires or in certain big cities, the men ask for a dance. The accepted way to invite a person to dance is to catch someones eye, smile, nod and with an inquiring expression towards the dance floor. The invitation if accepted is responded with a smile back and the man escorts the lady to the dance floor. Purpose of the cabaceo is to make dance less stressful and the possibly to make decline more discrete.

Embrace

A woman may get to a embrace that is convenient and comfortable to her . Apilado may change to a salon on the partner and music connect or vice verse or into other forms and individual preferences.

A tango embrace is a privilege and not an opportunity. Please be sensitive to your partners’ comfort level and provide space.

Floor craft

It is our responsibility to keep floor safe. The floor is constantly moving forward. Please make moves which are appropriate to the conditions of the dance floor. When two couples bump into each other on the dance floor, it is polite to apologize regardless what has happened. It is ideal to maintain line of dancing and moving anti clockwise.

Interrupting

Not to interrupt while dancing and not to interrupt your own dance to say hello. Your dance partner requires your undivided attention. Generally not to talk while dancing. You are encouraged to talk in cortinas. Sometimes people introduce themselves or exchange pleasantries, while cortinas are played. When you are talking, do not block cabacio.