Last Saturday, it was our Student Night Out. As always, it was wonderful to have many of our students join us for a great night at the Light Milonga in Shoreditch.
Our Nights Out are an opportunity for students of all levels to get together outside of class, mingle, dance and generally soak up the atmosphere of some of the best milongas London has to offer.
We always love spending time with our students who over the months and years become our friends. But something about last Saturday night in particular stood out for me. Something a little different from the norm.
Our Nights Out always attract a big group from our Improvers, Intermediate and Advanced classes but – although we encourage our Beginners to come – there is usually only a very small number. The majority understandably feel hesitant about coming and often choose to wait until they have a few more months of tango experience under their belt.
However, last Saturday was quite a different story. A sizeable group from our Beginners and Confident Beginners classes turned up. Watching intently from the sidelines, many of them got up and danced. There’s no need for a “tango licence” to dance in a milonga and – following our advice from class – they kept it simple, kept to the line of dance and tried to avoid collisions. We felt very proud and excited for them. Just as nice was to see them together as a group, supporting each other in their first experience at the milonga, already forming friendships.
At the end of the evening, students who had only been learning tango for a matter of weeks came up to me with bright eyes and glowing faces, saying how excited they were to have come to the milonga and to have actually danced!
One guy, who had only come because some classmates had pleaded with him to join them earlier that day, wrote me this email:
“Thanks for inviting us to the event last Saturday! It was a great tango evening! What I found amazing was that after just four classes of the crash course, I was actually able to do more than enough moves for a whole dance and have the confidence to invite ladies for a dance! Thanks for that! (It took me about a year to gain that kind of confidence for salsa and kizomba).”
2016 is definitely shaping up to be a great year for new starters. Here’s to the new generation of London tango dancers!
