Garage Night at the Konex

The Teatro Konex (a recycled old warehouse on Sarmiento in Abasto) is a great venue! Maybe not exactly for tango but we enjoyed seeing it and a few friends who also attended this Garage Tango event of the Tango Festival. Summer nights they show movies here in the courtyard!

I've got to hand it to the government this year for creating a very interesting Festival, with something to appeal to everyone. If it were me, and I were here on vacation with plenty of time, I would have liked to attend the lectures, music workshops (I play the piano) and the tango films--good or bad, I'd like to have seen them all.

But as it was, we went to events when we could--the final one is the Finals of Tango Escenario in the Mundial de Baile this Monday at Luna Park.

While in a sense the Campeonato Metropolitano kind of fell through the cracks this year, and is now called the Campeonato de Baile instead of tango (there's no tourist money to be made from locals competing against locals), the powers that be coughed up quite a lot of plata for the elaborate bilingual program books on quality paper, and the renting of venues all around town for the events which were all free! Congratulations to all of the organizers who did a great job!

It must be said that the events were designed to bring in foreigners. The milongueros who dance here every week just continued dancing at their favorite milongas and didn't pay any attention to the Festival. They just want to dance--as they always have.

But the government saw the Festival as an opportunity for good PR, and on that score, I think succeeded very well.







What fun to run into Catrin Strong and share a bottle of champagne!






Here's Ruben dancing with the beautiful Hsueh-tze Lee.






This Festival event's calling card was a performance by Milena Plebs y Ezequiel Farfaro, which was real mas o menos, whether because of the floor (concrete) and many columns or lack of ganas, who knows. But they could have phoned it in.


























The rest of Thursday night's program, which started with a short beginning tango class, was a performance by a trio, Guardia Hereje, two singers ("ringside tanguero"), and the Orquesta Tipica Misteriosa. Then there was a milonga. But we were gone by then.