A blog about adventures in tango, travel and storytelling
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If you read my newsletter, or follow me on Twitter, you might remember me mentioning Kate Swindlehurst’s “The Tango Effect: Parkinson’s and the healing power of dance”, when it was still crowdfunding on Unbound. I received my copy back in March, just before lockdown started and it’s been a while now that I have wanted to share my thoughts about it. The book is part personal memoir, as the author...
I was in Warsaw for three nights and I went out dancing for two of them. At least, I tried to....
Just like many of the best things, I discovered Polish tango music by accident. It was shortly after I had been to a concert of Tango Diagonales, a quintet of young Argentinian musicians from La Plata. It was the first time that I had heard the flute played in a tango ensemble. Although the flute was one of the original instruments used to play tango you don’t hear it that...
There’s something about dancing outside. When I go to an indoor milonga, I often feel as if I am stepping into another world. Outdoors it’s there, beside everyday life, often surrounded by non-dancers who watch or are simply going about their daily life. In an open square, in a park, or as I experienced when I was in Nice, under an arcade and outside a museum. Maybe I think it’s...
It was the first evening of my holidays and it was raining. The venue was supposed to be a ten minute walk from where I was staying. So when I hadn’t arrived after twenty, I knew I must have gone wrong. There was a shop still open and I went in to ask for directions. Sure enough, I had been walking along the right street, but in completely the opposite...
Amsterdam has been high on my list of places to check out the tango scene for some time, as it’s just over 3 hours from Brussels. So when I was there for a weekend at the end of August to meet some friends, I decided to go the evening before and go dancing....
I bought my first pair of tango shoes in Buenos Aires, black and silver with the smallest heels they had at Flabella on Suipacha street. I danced my first tango in my new shoes on my last night at Maldita Milonga in the dimly lit Buenos Ayres Club on Peru street. Earlier that day, I had seen El Afronte playing at the San Telmo Market and when I bought their...
While many will argue that the tango was born in Buenos Aires, there is a quite a bit to suggest that its roots can also be traced back to the other side of the Rio de la Plata, in Montevideo. The world’s most famous tango, La Cumparsita, was composed by a Uruguayan. There is a week long festival in Montevideo every year to commemorate it and next year will be...
I am posting this MUCH later than expected but it is also the longest post I’ve written here so far. It is difficult to do justice in words and pictures to the many wonderful moments I experienced during ten intense days and nights of dancing tango in Berlin but I will try by sharing some of them with you below …...
Berlin is often referred to as the European Capital of Tango and with several milongas every night of the week all around the city, it can be difficult to know where to start as a visitor. In this post I share my top five Berlin tango trip tips…...