The night before we left became the highlight of our visit, at least for me. Thanks to our Buenos Aires friend Montserrat, who did the housesit the week before we did, we were introduced to a lovely lady called Alicia, who in turn introduced us to her tango community. As it turned out, a group of them have a weekly practica, which is, as you can probably guess, a kind of practice session. It’s actually very similar to a milonga, but less formal. They invited us, and Alicia was kind enough to pick us up and bring us home.

The practica took place in the home of one of the group members, a great tango dancer nicknamed Cabeza, and the space was excellent. I think there were about twenty people there. They all know each other and are super friendly. Everyone danced with everyone else, which was lovely. We took wine and nibbles and that was part of the social aspect of it.

As Venetia doesn’t dance tango, she assumed the role of videographer. The photo at the beginning of the video is, left to right, Alicia, me, a wonderful dancer called Pablo, and his wife, Evelyn, who is also an amazing tango dancer. As you can tell, the lighting was quite dim, but Venetia did a great job to just give an idea of what it was like. I loved it so much I’m thinking about how I might do something similar in my apartment. Stay tuned!