I have been long remiss in posting anything new on Coffee and Tango, as the past year and a half I have been working on my new business, Crackerjack Scribe, a company that helps businesses connect to customers on the Web.
But here’s a quick roundup of some events taking place this weekend, as well as of the various new milongas that have cropped in Southern California up (due to various reasons) in the past year. All these events can be found on the Tango Calendar on this site. At the end of this blog, I include a couple of videos of some performers mentioned in this blog post.
First, this weekend Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne from Argentina will be teaching a three-day seminar in Santa Barbara and performing at the Blue Moon Milonga on Saturday, Oct. 26. Here’s a glowing article on the couple in BlogCritics.
Meanwhile, Ivan Terrazas & Sara Grdan will be performing tonight in Caltech (sorry for such late notice, but anyone who wants to know what’s happening in tango will find out one way or another), and giving a series of workshops in the Los Angeles area through Nov. 7.
Now, for milongas: Off the top of my head there is Sergei Tumas’ Pasion Milonga at an old location in Studio City. Pasion used to be a small restaurant with a tiny floor, but it was classy. Now, from the pictures I’ve seen, it’s a low-lit nightclub, with a large floor, called Rain. The first couple of events were free, but now every Tuesday there will be a $10 entrance.
Milonga Loca, hosted by Naomi Hotta and Lily Panayotti, opened earlier this year. It takes place once a month on the last Monday of each month. It will be closed November and December, however. This milonga takes place at the Ushuaia Argentine Steakhouse in Santa Monica. It’s a wonderfully nice atmosphere, with dark wood floors, and fine dining offered. The couple of times I went, it was full, and the music was great. Various DJs from Vincent Wong, Varo Biagi to Jerry Perez Gallego have played the best of tango there.
And because we just don’t have enough milongas–Sunday, Oct. 27, the grand opening of Milonga “Revolución” in Van Nuys hosted by Sergei Tumas & Nataliya is opening. Singer Martin Leon will be performing, and Sergei, according to information posted, will dance with Russian model Anna Petrova. The following photo isn’t a dance pose, but that’s who will be sliding around the floor with Sergei–I’m sure the guys will love it:
Milonga LAX changed it’s location a little south of where it used to be to the Elks Lodge, 8025 West Manchester Blvd, Playa Del Rey. This takes place the first Sunday every month.
I also saw that there is another Beverly Hills milonga hosted by Marco Questas and Ruta Maria. It will take place the first Saturday of each month at an Arthur Murray dance studio.
With all the regular weekly milongas, and the monthly ones, there is on average eight milongas a week. These are just the ones in the Los Angeles area. Add Orange County, Santa Barbara and other outlying areas, and we probably have about a dozen each week. When I started dancing tango 10 years ago, there were only two per week–El Encuentro and Monica’s Milonga at the Argentinean Association. I believe Sergei Tumas started his Burbank one soon after, and ever since tango has grown tremendously in Los Angeles. It’s a wonderful thing that this has happened, even with all the rivalries between some of the organizers. I hosted a few milongas myself with my ex-dance partner. It’s a hard job, and under-appreciated. I applaud all the tango organizers who do it.
Have fun dancing!
This video of Ivan and Sara is not very good quality, but their dancing is wonderful. One of the better videos I could find out there in YouTube land.
