Plaza Dorrego

'Woke up early this morning thinking: I am eye. Eye am I. Reality exists in the eye, in the I of the beholder. What happened yesterday? Rather depends on which eye / I is looking. The glad eye / I, the miserable eye / I , the angry eye / I ... Oh, aye.

I went to Plaza Dorrego to meet up with a friend and the demon dancer for an open air Sunday evening milonga, which kicks off around 7.00 pm, once all the market traders have cleared the square of their wares and stalls. I had to negotiate my way through a samba batteria, over a cobbled street, to get to the square on time for my rendez-vous. By the time the procession reached the square, the milonga was in full swing and for some fifteen minutes, there was the feverish pounding of drums over the howl of the bandoneon, all rather surreal under the full moon.

There was the delight of live music for part of the evening and yesterday, at any rate , there was an exuberant performance of Peruvian folkloric dance, all a la gorra (with a hat for donations) and a speech, which I was not able to follow entirely, but was a political protest against the corruption of the government. There was a steady stream of heckling from one old borracho (boozer), to the delight of some and the annoyance of others. Eye / I.

They put down some kind of lino floor to dance on, at one end of the square, so it is possible to wear your Comme il faut's, if you can be bothered, though there is a grave risk of catching your stiletto on the edges, when you get crowded off the floor. I wore mine to start off with, then put my trainers back on to keep my feet warm. We had coffee to warm up our insides, but sitting around was not a viable option as it was bitterly cold. I danced with my trainers, coat and cap on, for some of the time, but found that the trainers made me clumsy, the coat made my body less sensitive to the lead and the cap poked my partners in the eye. Fortunately, there was a dome tent set up at one end of the milonga for dancers' bags and coats.

Dancing with my friend is normally a huge pleasure, but his heart didn't seem to be in it, yesterday and he sauntered off after a few dances and appeared in the distance, from time to time, like Banquo's ghost, a forbidding presence, I felt, best left to his own devices. Eye / I.

The demon dancer appeared an hour later than he'd said, but neither of us mentioned this. If we had, it would have become a reality and we would have had to deal with it. He claimed me for a savage tanda and once again, I luxuriated in being swung around the floor in his vivacious embrace, played like a saxophone, a double base, an electric guitar. Lili's teacher, a woman in her sixties, does not think the demon dances well, that his embrace is too intense, but surely the test of quality is how he makes the woman feel? Eye / I.

I enjoyed watching two little girls, the children of tourists, dancing their idea of tango in the midst of the milonga and an elderly gentleman leading his grand daughter around the floor, a most accomplished couple. I danced with another few dancers, including an American from the dance school, an Argentino from last night's milonga and a very charming man, whose Croatian girlfriend I met, who recommended the Cochabamba milonga on Thursday nights.

I considered going on to another venue, but thought better of it, so as to be in a fit state to do a good day's dancing on Monday at the dance school.