Secrets of Floor Craft at Tucson Tango Festival
I Promise To Deliver You Good Floor Craft!!
The Plan
All too often I have seen the crowds grow beyond the capacity of a finite dance floor. Then the crowd blames the ensuing bump and grind on poor floor craft. Too tight dancing might be fun for a song or two, but after very a short while, too cramped is too cramped, PERIOD.
Floor craft is challenging it takes some time and experience to get good at crafting your dance around your dance mates. And since Argentine tango is always growing, there will always be people learning their floor craft as they go. Plus there is an obvious limit to how many can dance in a specific floor space, exceed the limit and it always leads to poor floor craft. I promise to always give you enough space, so all you have to do is dance mindful of the fact you are not alone.
Here is my plan and my reassurance to you that we will have ample room and consequently better floor craft at the Tucson (Argentine) Tango Festival:
We have conquered the first problem in floor craft with a very simple formula: Never have more guests than you have floor space! And I use the following formula to calculate my floor area: Total Registered Dancers DIVIDED by 2 MULTIPLIED BY 12 feet squared = proportionate floor area per couple based on maximum of 90% dancing at any given time … then I multiply that by 0.5 for my backup flooring. This last portion keeps me from being dependent on a poor guesstimate of guests.
I have ordered 2000 square feet of flooring for the main floor, this is enough to comfortably dance 334 people or 152 couples (so you can relate to size, Denver had 1700 sq ft this past May for close to 400 people on Saturday night) plus our 1000 backup provided by American Portable Dance Floors.
Now if by opening day our registration and drop ins exceed 300, I will have Frank make the floor bigger, this is easy since we selected a ballroom with ample space! In addition to this, if Saturday gets too packed, we simply pull an air wall and reveal another thousand square feet of floor as an over flow floor – for the record if we suddenly get an influx of drop ins we just pull another wall revealing another 1000 square feet of flooring.
We are providing only the best dance flooring for your milonga experience. As you know Joanne and I do a lot of festivals and we know what it is like to have a floor that isn’t good to your feet or one that has seams et cetera that might catch, distract or inhibit your dancing. When you are in the most famous embrace on the planet, you want to think of nothing but the music, your partner and your dance mates… you don’t want to think of the floor as well.
We are using: Frank’s floors at: American Portable Dance Floors because he is a dancer and he cares! We will always see to it that you have an ample floor to dance on. Now all you have to do is mind your manners 
Read further…
If you are attending the Tucson Tango Festival as you just read, you can expect sufficient floor space to dance well and safely. Here are a few simple guidelines for safe and fun floor craft:
- Line of dance: Counter clockwise… if you needed this information you may want to start taking some private lessons now to be prepared for the festival – Go here for all instructors in Tucson.
- Use a reasonable amount of dance space. Typically there is just enough room to dance along the tract of one section of flooring tiles (1 meter squared), so stay in your lane as demarcated by the floor seams.
- Stay aware of who is around you at all times. Look for erratic movements in your peripheral vision and keep a distance from those that might be unaware of how much space they are using.
- Do Not Tailgate! We all know the 8 step basic is taught with a back step. Leave that much space between you and the couple in front of you. Always look before stepping back – HINT: rounded back steps with good contra-body technique are much more milonga friendly.
- Keep boleos low and save any expansive or large moves for moments of clear and ample space. There is usually more room later in the night or the wee hours of the mornings. Save your bigger moves for then.
- For stalling and standing moves be sure you have ample space between you and the couple behind you – or – dance more in the center of the floor. The center of the floor is more conducive to larger more nuevo moves. Still at peak hours (9-Midnight) there will be a more dancers causing tighter amount of floor space, so keep your moves low and small.
- Entering the Dance Floor
- Make eye contact with on coming dancers as you enter the dance floor. This means that while you are dancing you are making eye contact with those trying to enter the floor.
- Use all ingress egress points equally, don’t stack up in the front of the room, stroll around to an entrance on the far side of the floor as well. This will keep the front lane from becoming a freeway on ramp. We will have a minimum of 7 points of entry.
- If there is a line to enter the floor, move to a new entrance or strike up a conversation with your partner and wait patiently while others get on the floor. There is no need to have the line of dance back up and clog as the tanda starts.
- Utilize the time during the cortina to walk to a far side of the floor away from the entrance points to help reduce stalling times.
Feel free to hit the comments link and leave replies or advice to this page.
Thank you for reading and we look forward to having you at the Tucson Tango Festival!!!
Love & Light,
Rusty