The tango tourist will do very well to stay at the Central or Congresso area of Buenos Aires. Like me, who lives just right next to Congresso Nacional, I am within ten minutes walking distance to at least four famous and popular milongas. El Beso, Porteno y Bailarin, El Arranque and the milonga that I will talk about today. La Nacional.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Best Place to Go: La Nacional, located at Adolfo Alsina 1465, looks like an old opera or play house; it has an elevated stage at the end of the dancefloor. Dim lights and beautiful murals line the wall, the last time I went, they filled the walls with beautiful neonlights. It is certainly a charming place to dance.
It is not as big as Salon Caning or Nino Bien, but not as small as El Beso or Porteno y Bailarin. The width of the dance floor is about the size of a full basketball court, the legth, one and a half.
The seats are nicely placed alongside the dancefloor. What I like about the place is there are only two rows of seats along the dancefloor; the second row of seats are close enough to the dancefloor and easy enough to get a 'cabeceo' (eye invitation).
The dancefloor is made of wood and very smooth.
Dancers: Good level of dancing. Once again you see Dany, Tete and other well respected milongueros. One realises that the dancing level cannot be too bad if you see these famous milongueros hanging out.
But while there are many local good dancers who frequent the place, it is still difficult to get a good dance unless you know them or have danced with them before. Otherwise, you need to try your luck with the foreigner dancers. My experience is that there are not many good foreign dancers who goes there. Most of them prefer to go El Beso on a wednesday night.
Floorcraft: Good, due to the fact that it has a big dance floor and it is not overcrowded with people. There is enough space for everyone.
Music: Very good music. The deejay plays very well known songs. Very good choice of music espeically more dramatic orchestras like Pugliese.
What I Like Least: Sometimes there can be very little new faces in La Nacional, hence limited choices of whom to dance with. Also El Beso on a wednesday is very good. Therefore there is a constant struggle of going to either El Beso or La Nacional.
Memories: There was one night when Gustavo Naveira performed. All the big names of tango nuevo was there. Pablo Veron, Chicho Frumboli, Cecilia Gonzalez etc. I was blown away by looking at Chicho dance nuevo. It was so creative and connected to the music; plus with the space La Nacional afforded him, it was as good as any performance I had seen.
Other Nice Places: La Marshall, the gay friendly milonga, located at Maipu 444. The music is superb; the deejay is the same as on saturday nights at Maipu 444. It is also a great experience to see men dancing with men; a great place to have fun and let loose.
If not there is always El Beso.
Hi Isaac,
I only had one experience with La Nacional on Wednesday (back in the beginning of March), and while the music was decent and the floor good, the level of dancing was pretty appalling. It was full of tourists and young Argentinians trying to show off with the latest nuevo moves with high ganchos. A lot of women were wearing lots of very tacky, reveal-all tango fashions and sky high Comme Il Fauts. A lot of men were fairly arrogant and would push other couples aside to get more space. And there were even couples trying to show off by dancing in the cortina! The dance energy of the entire milonga was really brash, uneven and rough instead of calm and even, flowing with the music.
Yes, El Flaco Dany was there with Silvina Valz, and there were great performances by Osvaldo and Coca and Marta and Manolo (to coincide with the Camicando festival - no, the festival participants were not the culprits of the general bad behavior) but there was also a young couple that performed performance/nuevo tango choreography really badly. I was cringing when they did their stilted version of milonga.
The DJ seemed really nice, it was too bad about the level of dancing that I saw though. Hope it was a anomally and not the usual situation there.
Cheers,
Irene