I am a tango traveler. I travel the world looking for tango in every new place, constantly chasing the high of the next amazing dance. This blog is where I write about my experiences. But first we should set some context.

This is my subjective experience. When I write about a milonga and give it ratings, I am rating my experience at that particular point in time. I am not trying to paint the event with a broad brush. Your experience were you to go there could be quite different. There are many factors that contribute to whether you have a good time. Things like how outgoing you are, whether you use cabeceo, how you are dressed, how you smell, your skill level, your style of dancing, whether the people there felt like dancing with someone new, and on and on.

If I went to a milonga and had a bad time, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad milonga or that you would have a bad time if you went. It just means that with those people on that night I didn’t have a great time. Maybe you would have had the best night of your life. I can’t possibly say.

If my experience means so little, then why do I write about it? First of all, I like to write. I also think that there is a huge amount of information you might want to know about a milonga that tango directories and milonga lists don’t tell you. Things like how many people go there, how they dress, how friendly they are to newcomers, what their skill level is, their preferred style of dancing, what the floor is like, how crowded it gets…you get the picture. When you’re in a new place it’s often impossible to get this information unless you happen to know somebody there. Maybe my experiences, while not worth much, will be able to help others find the kinds of dancing they are looking for.

Notes on Ratings

Friendliness
This is a combination of how pleasant people are and how easy it is to get a dance. A milonga could be filled with all the top dancers in the world, but if nobody dances with you, then you’re probably not going to have a good time.

Skill
With this category, I’m trying to assess in a fairly objective way how skilled / experienced people are. This includes things like balance, precision of movement, stepping on the beat, adequate vocabulary of steps, floorcraft, etc.

Embrace

This is all about how good people feel. It is a separate category from skill because it’s very possible for someone to score high in my above objective skill criteria but dancing with them does not feel good. It’s also possible for someone to feel great, but not know many steps yet. Sometimes the two categories are related. For example, if they have poor balance and are using your arm to hold themselves up, then dancing with them probably won’t feel good.

This is almost entirely subjective. It’s all about whether they felt good to me. But I do think that in general if someone feels good to one person, they’re likely to feel good to other people as well.