First Tango Stop - Columbus, OH

Carmen:




We arrived to teach a 6:00pm class at Emack & Bolio's, an ice cream shop near downtown Columbus. Patricia Greve and Gabriela Contreras traveled with us from Ann Arbor, Patricia to demonstrate with Avik in the classes and Gabriela to sing with us. Inside the ice cream shop, the tables and couches were pushed to the back and to the right of the door leaving a dance space on the left about 40 feet long and 15 feet wide that was lined with cafe chairs. We set up our equipment in front of the window.

There 10 people in the class that we taught. We used a mix of live music to discuss contrasts in tango music: marcatto in 2 vs. marcatto in 4, marcatto in 4 versus syncopa, choppy versus smooth, and how to fit walking, quick steps, the follower's cross, and ocho cortado with them.

There were many folks from out of town at the milonga. Robin Thomas was in town for a workshop weekend through the Columbus Argentina Tango Society (CATS) and taught a class after us. There were people from Cleveland and Ann Arbor who came down for the milonga.



The temperature was a high of 94 degrees that day in Columbus so it was nice that the shop keepers kept serving ice cream until the end of the milonga at 1:00am.