Simple yardsticks
With more and more people coming into contact with Tango, occasionally I get asked by beginners about “how to spot a good leader”?
Without going into a debate into which style is better which is a largely personal choice, or open vs closed embrace**, I think there is a few simple items a beginning follower can look out for.
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Re-learning to walk
In March 2007, we organised a series of workshops by Hsueh-tze Lee. After hearing so much about her, finally got some first-hand experiences!
Here are some snippets of thoughts after the lessons, which (the writing, that is…) have stayed in incubation for the better part of a year. 
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Music and flow
Not so long ago, someone on a Tango DJ mailing list commented that bad music and bad arrangement of music could lead to chaos on the floor.
My initial reaction to this was: surely any chaos on the dance floor was more to do with the collective technical abilities of the daners? However, things started to make more sense as I started to recall a few instances where the inability to connect with the music meant things just “weren’t right” for the whole night. By way of an illustration, I attended a milonga a couple of months ago where no tandas** were used. Granted that there was a “legitimate” explanation for this particular community to dispense with tandas, I discovered that it was very difficult to relax and dance into a comfortable rhythm. Another example, perhaps less extreme, has already been described in vortex of hell before.
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Tone of the milonga
Over at Tango Chamuyo, Janis reflects on her stay in Buenos Aires upon the tenth anniversary since her arrival.
While most are subjective opinions and perhaps more particular to Buenos Aires, there is one thing I can personally relate to, when she said:
“The organizer sets the tone of each milonga.”
Over the years, apart from Singapore, I have been fortunate to be able to dance a little in Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Tokyo, Montreal and Melbourne (note that Berlin is absent from this list since I was too fresh to be able to make good observations ). While the quality of music is important for me, I think the enthusiasm as well as the level of hospitality (or indifference) displayed by the milonga organiser can often compensate for deficiencies in other areas (such as small venues, lack of dancers, etc.) and set the mood for the milonga. In fact, I was reminded of this again when a friend related her experiences at a recent milonga where people stuck to their small groups and reluctant to start dancing until the wee hours, while the organiser was totally oblivious nor cared, but that is another story for future…
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