Tango in Utrecht - Taboe Camp

These series of camps are unique. It is not just a tango experience, it is a life experience. To describe it I have thought of it falling into 3 parts.



1.The Camp.
It is a proper camp (no luxuries) but a well designed building for its purpose. Centrally there was a large hexagonal room with two short sides, which were patio doors to the outside. From each of the other four sides were rooms with kitchen facilities and on each of those sleeping quarters. Most rooms had 8 bunks but were used for only 4 people so there was space to spread out. I shared with Sharon and Jim.

It is communal living with a professional chef (who provided good wholesome food) but the dishing up and setting out and washing up was all done by us. We have to do chores, but, of course, they don’t feel like chores as we have such a laugh. We need to volunteer for 2 activities in the week to keep everything running smoothly. There are a number of key figures to help Paul and Paras with the housekeeping arrangements.

I imagine this part would be the same whatever activity was featured.

We started the day with yoga, tai chi or tae-bo.



2. The Tango.
In a separate building there was a tango café with music of many styles from 12 ish until about 4pm when workshops would begin. So this provided relaxed and informal dancing. The standard of teaching in the workshops was excellent. I would not hesitate to attend workshops anywhere that were offered by these teachers. All of them allowed videoing of their demonstration dances at the end of the workshops.

Every evening there was a milonga with teachers or guests as DJs, hence a variety of tango styles but not much Nuevo. There was a red, a white and a bad taste milonga. My only complaint of the whole week was that the floorcraft was not good. We did do an exercise in which we danced around in lanes. Then several couples were designated to be awkward and bump into people. It was still easier to dance then, than in the milongas, when nobody was trying to be awkward but were taking up more than their share of space and almost oblivious of other dancers!



3. The Gathering.
At 12 each day we gathered in the building used for milongas and this is where this Camp became different from anything else. This is when its special spirit was generated and when the closeness of tango, the sharing of personal space that happens in tango, was examined, explored and developed. Sometimes we meditated, sometimes we played games. Also there was a “kick-off” for each evening’s milonga and again, this provided opportunities to examine ourselves.
Many people were so moved emotionally by this experience that they were in tears.

So the Taboe camp provided this rich experience, deeply emotionally challenging.



See http://www.tangoatelier.com/camp.html
for details of future camps and brief biographies of the teachers.