Tangocamp Roma 2009 Recap

This was my first Tangocamp experience and my first time dancing in Europe. I'd wanted to attend Tangocamp since 2007 and put off due to various reasons. Although I am not a big fan of tango festival, I took the trip as a vacation of visiting Rome and my friends in Umbria with tango as a side trip.

I had a very good time at the Tangocamp Roma, met some old friends (it is truly a small world) and got to know some new friends. It was more of a social event for me.

Class

I was a little disappointed that our group (advanced 3-5 yrs) did not include any Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne class. I had to take a drop in with them. I skipped three of my group classes and instead took one advanced extra with Damian Esell & Nancy Louzan and a intermediate/advanced with Javier Rodriguez and Stella Misse. Together with the class of Pable Inza and Eugenia Parilla, I had learned more ganchos and volcada in three days than in the last three years.

I know I am biased, but the classes with Javier and Stella were more beneficial for me. He started all the classes with half an hour walking back and forth, explained and corrected. In the advanced class, he introduced the idea of embellishment by instructing us to walk and lapiz on the free leg. In the intermediate/advanced class, we learned the exercise of giro and sacada, which I thought was helping me a lot.

Milonga

I thought the New York tango scene was pretty bad till I witnessed the festival scene. The piso was messy. Granted, it was a large milonga and had probably over three hundred people on the floor at the same time. But it was a large floor and I did see a lot of space in between couples. But it was those Gustavo/Chicho/whatever names wanna be who danced with no regards to the others. There were a lot of them.

I danced in the beginning and after 2:30am when the floor was cleared a bit. Still whenever I was on the floor, I felt the my dancing space was threaten. I got bumped into twice by the same guy from behind in one song. One guy made the effort of passing me around outside the floor and back... A lot of guys danced with their head dropped and tilt down. They led women doing all kinds of high boleos, or the women just did it by themselves. I almost laughed when I saw the seriousness of the hilarious moves.

That being said, I still enjoyed most of dances except one or two tandas. I made a rule to myself that I would not approach woman and ask for dance. If a woman doesn't understand the rule of cabaceo, she is probably not the type that I would enjoy dancing with anyway. Friday night, I had great tandas all night. Sat night the energy dip a bit, but Sunday I danced till five o'clock in the morning and went to my room packing then to the airport.

DJ

Since I am also DJing, I was paying attention to the music that was played. Although music played in all three nights was good, I found that the energy was not well controlled. And the music selections were plain, mainly on six major orchestras. For example, all three night I heard the same tandas of Tanturi con Campos: una emocion, oigo tu voz, with two more by three different DJs. And I hated mixed orchestras and four songs in a milonga tanda. But it was probably just me. :-)

All in all, I had a very good time at the festival. I was told by a woman from Rome that the level of dancing didn't reflect the actual quality of dance level in Rome. A expat friend of mine who lives in Italy told me that the level of dancing was much higher in other festivals in Italy that she had attended this year, such as the ones in Firenze and Torino. You can probably tell by the lineup of teachers at those festivals.

Now I had the experience, although very limited, of dancing in Europe. I would still come to Europe, the history and the root of tango is much longer there than in the states, but more for being tourist with tango as a bonus. For serious tango trips, I wouldn't be anywhere else but Buenos Aires.