In every environment there are rules, and in the Milonga environment there are rules too. However, in our environment there aren’t really rules, but firm suggestions that we’d like you to consider:
1.) First and foremost, bring a smile, and your best outfit for the day, and a nice pair of tango shoes.
2.) Bring a positive attitude to the Milonga environment. No one wants to dance with a grump.
3.) While you can wear whatever makes you comfortable, we do ask that street shoes be kept off the dance floor. Factually it makes it that much easier to clean up later on. That and you may hurt your knees in street shoes trying to do certain pieces of Tango vocabulary.
4.) Try to dance with everyone at least once. Trust us when we say that when the whole room is dancing, young, old, short, tall, etc the whole room’s energy just explodes.
5.) When you bump into someone, even if it’s not your fault, we ask that you acknowledge the accident, at the very least, and move on.
6.) Please try NOT to walk across the dance floor to get to your partner. Please walk around the dance floor to get to your dance partner after a cabeceo or mirada has been accepted.
7.) If you have accepted a cabeceo, please try to stay in your seat until your intended partner gets to you. This will save you a bit of embarrassment in more ways than one.
8.) Please try to keep your conversations quiet. No one wants to hear your conversation while they’re dancing.
9.) Do keep the ronda moving. Which is to say, no flashy dancing, please. A little showiness is fine now and again, but let’s not make a habit of it.
10.) Try to keep your dancing small, compact, and not take up too much space with your vocabulary choices and responses.
11.) This one is Follower specific > Try to keep a boleo on the floor, please.
12.) This one is Lead specific > Try to angle a boleo if you must lead it, away from the couple ahead of you, but rather towards the tables and chairs in the outer track.
13.) Please try to organize into a second or third lane of dance and keep the center of the room clear.
14.) If you’ve just learned a step/pattern/figure please try not to try it out on an unsuspecting dancer. We suggest, strongly, that you try to workshop that idea for several months before you take it out of your tango lab and put it on the dance floor.
15.) Please try not to ‘Mouth-Lead’, meaning that if your partner doesn’t know X, Y, or Z, then NOW, during the Milonga while you are dancing with them, is NOT the time to have a discussion of technique with them on a social dance floor.
16.) Please try not to engage in what is sometimes referred to as a ‘Stalkaceo’. This is when someone has clearly not accepted your Cabeceo or Mirada, and you then stalk them around the room. If someone doesn’t want to dance with you, our suggestion is to move on, and not to continually try to engage them. They’re not interested. Move on. No one wants to feel unsafe or like they can’t go where they want to go without you following them around the room everywhere.
17.) We do ask that you engage in proper Cabeceo and Mirada etiquette. Please see the entries on these topics.
18.) We really shouldn’t have to spell this one out but it bears mentioning > No Teaching At The Milonga EVEN IF YOU ARE A TEACHER!!!!
