Heuristics: In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules, hard-coded by evolutionary processes or learned, which have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems, typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information. These rules work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases lead to systematic errors or biases.
Here are my ‘heuristics’ regarding dancing milonga:
*Never let your first dance with a stranger be a milonga.
*It is better to not dance a milonga which you love than to dance one with someone whose style you can’t connect with.
*Never make your first tanda on a night out, a milonga tanda (but see below).
*If the dance floor is already at 70% capacity before a milonga tanda, skip the milonga tanda.
*Avoid dancing milonga when you know the DJ has a tendency to ‘up the pitch’ on a milonga in an attempt to make the night a bit more fun (!) (appalling story I heard from someone who had been dancing in Athens).
*When dancing milonga, it’s great to add adornos etc that accent the beat but not EVERY single beat (and half beat) and especially not with a ‘golpe’. [This is not Stomp].
These tend to be my ‘rule of thumb’ thoughts but might occasionally cause me to miss out (since writing these I have in fact danced my first tanda as a milonga when at a social dance. It was fun because we’ve danced a lot together and dance milonga in the same way. I would however say that was an exception).
