Charles Long

YIKES!

I just looked at the Calendar, and realised that ‘Septonathon’ is only 7 weeks away.

Ok, no need to panic, but perhaps it’s time to get the DJ squad sorted out and announced? Don’t worry; it’s nearly in place and the final piece of the jigsaw looks like it’s falling into place nicely.  We’ll have a mix of regular favourites, new faces, and an international element too, with a bit of luck.

I’m sure it’ll all be fine, but until then we’ll do our level best to keep everything under control.

Lately there’s been some changes to a number of regular Milongas around.

The long-running weekly Milonga ‘Negracha’ in London has been forced to leave their venue and still hasn’t found a replacement venue. Calesita closed last year, and a monthly Milonga in Guildford is now closing because the organisers are moving away. Recently another long-running milonga in the South – Menuda – closed also.

At the same time, it’s years since a successful regular milonga was started in the South East. The milonga calendar locally looks pretty much the same as it did 5 years ago.

So, what’s going on?  Why aren’t there new Milongas being established and thriving?  Why are the choices for dancers getting fewer?

This week has been a busy one for private lessons; we’ve been teaching most days, and we’ve been getting great results.

In fact, we’ve found lately that private lessons are much more successful than group lessons ever were.  We get better results, faster, and have more fun along the way!  That’s because the lesson is totally focussed on just one student (or one couple) and so we can give them exactly what they need. We can judge the pace of the lesson to suit the individuals, and tailor the content to suit their needs and priorities.  The lessons plan is less generalised, and much more personal.

People seem to like the private lessons too; currently we’re booked up for 3 months in advance.

Sometimes we get just a bit exasperated because of the way that Facebook operates.

In the Argentine Tango world, Facebook is the main way for events to be organised and promoted, and for dancers to swap notes and hear about Milongas coming up. Popular Tango events can include several hundred dancers with Facebook accounts, so we naturally want to send Facebook invitations to hundreds of dancers.

And that’s where Facebook tries to interfere, because when they see us inviting lots of people they’d prefer for us to pay to advertise the event, and so they limit the number of people that we can invite. They say that they’re preventing spam, but Facebook is a business that makes money from selling advertising, right?

Unfortunately, we only want to promote events to Tango dancers, from a wide area.  So there’s no point in Facebook encouraging us to ‘Boost’ an event by paying for advertising instead; paying Facebook to advertise milongas locally is pointless.

That much is already frustrating, but then Facebook also randomly change their algorithms, so that we can sometimes invite nobody, sometimes only 50, and sometimes as many as 500 people. Which makes it very tricky when you’re running several Milongas every month.

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Then again, it’s still a lot less hassle than printing and distributing flyers.  Remember those?

Easter is nearly here. For most people that means a break from work, and lots of chocolate.  For us there’s still lots of Chocolate, but it’s certainly not a break; it’s the time of one of our big Tango events, ‘Eastonathon’.  3 days, 5 milongas.

Luckily, we’ve managed to get a great team for this year’s event; I’m really pleased with the DJ squad that’s coming. Justyna is a great DJ and fabulous dancer.  Diego is great fun and really knows his stuff, and local dancers can trust him too. Anthony coming from ireland to make a welcome return to our Milongas. And Fabienne is a great friend and was a great success last time she DJd for us.

Behind the scenes, there’s Susan keeping all the food and drink organised all weekend, which is a huge job! And Sarah’s mum is looking after our son all weekend so we are free to run the event.

Sarah has been busy for a few days now, preparing the food for the whole weekend. There’ll be hot cross buns, and the usual huge range of tasty cakes and snacks. It’s a huge task, and she’ll be leaving the milongas early each evening in order to prepare for the next day.

Which just leaves me, swanning around trying to look like I’m in charge, but secretly just keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll all go OK.

Yes, ‘Septonathon’ is back! – our Tango weekend event in September.

We’ve juggled dates and pulled some strings, and have the Old Windsor Memorial Hall all to ourselves for the weekend of 8th & 9th September.  So there’ll be the usual milongas in the afternoons and evenings, attracting lots of dancers from far away as well as our local friends (well, hopefully).

Plus, amazingly, I’ve also started to get the DJ team together, with just one more to confirm they can come.

And also I’ve checked out the prices of rooms that weekend at the Travelodge. Currently the price is £101 for 3 nights, which is an amazing bargain.

This is all going too well; should I be nervous?

Now that 2017 is over, we’re looking back and taking stock of a momentous year for our Tango.

Early in 2017 we were told that we must stop using the venue in Eton that had become the ‘home’ of our lessons and events for over a decade.   It was shattering news, and extremely shocking for hundreds of dancers.

Hundreds of phone calls followed, and days spent visiting venues and agonising over the future.  Then we heard that a brand new floor was going to be laid at Old Windsor and suddenly everything fell into place. We had a great venue, close to Eton, with good facilities

The change of venue to Old Windsor caused few problems. In fact, we’ve had a lots of people come and tell us that they prefer the new venue; the floor is gorgeous, it is a more airy space, it’s easy to reach, and has loads of free car parking.

So now we’re looking forward to 2018!