So I want you to squeeze your inner thighs together like you're holding an orange between them and you're trying to make orange juice. If you just focus on your partner's chest and making orange juice, your ochoes are going to feel much smoother... but probably don't focus too much on the orange juice, or it's going to get kind of messy out here.
- One of my more profound moments of teaching this Saturday
As the diabolical facebook event description may have tipped some of you off, I had the honor of dj-ing and cohosting the Tango Experience milonga on Saturday evening.This was my first gig dj-ing in a fairly long time, which I guess I hadn't realized. At least I wasn't aware that I had never used Media Monkey to dj before. I'd previously used iTunes, but broke up with it angrily after another ubiquitous update ate up half of my music collection. It is good to be free, let me tell you.
In case anyone is wondering, Media Monkey is pretty decent for djing but it has a default setting that cuts out "pauses and silences." This means that once one song ends, the next immediately begins. Not great for tango and a cause of great frustration for the first part of the evening as I tried desperately to fix it and had all but resigned myself to living at the computer and manually stopping the songs so people could get their dramatic end posing on.
At least I didn't put on the cross-fade feature, although it was kind of tempting. Luckily, after some phone internet browsing, Andrew figured out how to uncheck the default setting and restore the natural pauses most tracks come with. If anyone is ever planning to dj with Media Monkey, you'll have to ask him how he did it. I imagine that I could figure it out if I had it open.
As always, I managed to change up my theoretical playlist so many times that half of the new music I just HAD to buy for this playlist didn't make it onto the final product. I had two and a half hours to fill, but our class went long (unsurprisingly), so I was forced to make some edits for time's sake. Then somebody requested a Biagi vals set, which required more edits. The typical set structure for a milonga has very specific structural components between tandas (sets of 3-4 songs of a similar sound, orchestra, artist, singer, etc.) of tangos, valses and milongas, so changing one thing usually means changing everything. Sometimes I think it would be much easier to just wing it entirely instead of trying to set up a list in advance, but I get a certain satisfaction about lingering on music as I try to listen through to find the best possible combinations of sets and sounds.
This time around, I played fewer valses and milongas in the first hour and a half, due to the fact that a fair majority of dancers were new and didn't know what valses and milongas were. I also exchanged some of my nuevo sets that would be more challenging to dance to for traditional sets, as again there were more new people and traditionalists than I'd anticipated. This is pretty par for the course, but it does mean I have these beautiful unplayed sets:
Volver - Luis Rizzo
As always, I managed to change up my theoretical playlist so many times that half of the new music I just HAD to buy for this playlist didn't make it onto the final product. I had two and a half hours to fill, but our class went long (unsurprisingly), so I was forced to make some edits for time's sake. Then somebody requested a Biagi vals set, which required more edits. The typical set structure for a milonga has very specific structural components between tandas (sets of 3-4 songs of a similar sound, orchestra, artist, singer, etc.) of tangos, valses and milongas, so changing one thing usually means changing everything. Sometimes I think it would be much easier to just wing it entirely instead of trying to set up a list in advance, but I get a certain satisfaction about lingering on music as I try to listen through to find the best possible combinations of sets and sounds.
This time around, I played fewer valses and milongas in the first hour and a half, due to the fact that a fair majority of dancers were new and didn't know what valses and milongas were. I also exchanged some of my nuevo sets that would be more challenging to dance to for traditional sets, as again there were more new people and traditionalists than I'd anticipated. This is pretty par for the course, but it does mean I have these beautiful unplayed sets:
Volver - Luis Rizzo
QuintetoAntes del Alba - LRQ
Simple - LRQ
And
El Amanacer - Pablo Aslan
And
El Amanacer - Pablo Aslan
El Flete - Pablo Aslan
La Ultima Cita- Pablo Aslan
And my favorite Esteban Morgado set of milongas got cut as well.
And my favorite Esteban Morgado set of milongas got cut as well.
But I did get to include a great set from Medialuna Tango Project:
Una Flor y Dos Corazons
Una Rara Semblanza
Volver a Inicio
And because I couldn't help myself, I included my Xavier Cugat Samba de Cumparsita at the very end. I did include your run of the mill D'Arienzo cumparsita for a "last tango" for all the purists out there, but I'm thrilled to pieces that my tango-crush Jeff and his partner insisted on dancing to the Cugat cumparsita as well.
Anyways. The moral - as always - is that I have way too much music and dj far too infrequently.
Oh and squeezing is good, but peeing on the dancefloor is less good.
And because I couldn't help myself, I included my Xavier Cugat Samba de Cumparsita at the very end. I did include your run of the mill D'Arienzo cumparsita for a "last tango" for all the purists out there, but I'm thrilled to pieces that my tango-crush Jeff and his partner insisted on dancing to the Cugat cumparsita as well.
Anyways. The moral - as always - is that I have way too much music and dj far too infrequently.
Oh and squeezing is good, but peeing on the dancefloor is less good.
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