Group process of an Encuentro

During the first day of the encuentro I was upset - no feeling of enjoyment, not even feeling of dancing! A question, if this is the best way to spend a weekend, went through my mind.

I mentioned it to my German friend who is a more experienced visitor of these dance events and his response was to calm me down. The group has not found itself yet! People are coming from different tango cultures, different individuals need to find each others and it takes time to melt all this together.

It was also true that not even I myself was concentrating on the music, partner and dance but the location, scanning the participators, get the rules work for me and that took quite a lot of my mental capacity usually engaged in the dance.

The first night one of my usual partners complained too about how the visitors were just dancing with their friends without giving an eye to the local dancers. And Yes I was doing the same - I danced with the persons I already knew and just following the visitors with my eyes during pauses.

The second day it changed and the visitors started to dance with us.

On the third day the dance was beautiful and the lines were visibly and mostly nicely formed. The group had found the way to be together in Stockholm and new friendships were started and growing with hope to meet again somewhere else!