Utopia Encuentro Milonguero: Charleston Edition

Tango Utopia invites you to step back in time, surround yourself with historical beauty and join us for an exquisite event in Charleston, South Carolina. Cobblestone streets, quaint single houses and charming alleys and gardens will set the stage where dreamy music from the Golden Age of tango, an elegant venue and lovely milongueros and milongueras will perfectly combine to alleviate some Buenos Aires yearnings. Come and experience an encuentro with southern hospitality a la Utopia style!

Utopia Encuentro Milonguero Charleston Edition 2017 DJs!

UEMCE (Utopia Encuentro Milonguero: Charleston Edition) presents DJ Jae Grisham from Raleigh, NC!

Jae is the founder of Tango Utopia in the greater Raleigh/Durham area. She is recognized as one of the premier teachers, dancers and DJ’s as well as the organizer of the monthly Milonga Utopia and the weekly practicas.

As a DJ, Jae loves the challenge of keeping dancers on the floor to the very last tanda. Her sensitivity to the energy of a milonga influences her music selection. Her music library is focused on the traditional masters and this is also reflected in her musical choices. She has been invited to DJ at festivals, milongas, marathons and encuentro milongueros in Chicago, Atlanta, Augusta, Newport News, Charlotte, Columbia, Charleston, Knoxville and Santa Fe, and recently made her first international debut at the Ohibo Milonga in Milan, Italy.

UEMCE presents DJ Eduardo Lazarowski from Durham, NC!

Eduardo Lazarowski is an active member of the tango community of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill (NC) since 2002. He debuted as a DJ at the El Día del Tango milonga-marathon of Tangophilia in 2005. Since then, he has become a regular DJ in the Triangle area, and has been invited to musicalize at various tango events in the US and Canada, including the Candlelight and Maleva milongas in Charlotte and the Haw River Marathon (NC), Charleston Tango Society (SC), Milonga La Porteña (Atlanta GA), Toronto Tango Experience Festival (Canada), Encuentro Milongueros of Santa Fe (NM), Berkeley (CA), and Salida (CO), and the CAT Cincinnati Tango Marathon (OH).

UEMCE presents DJ Paul Akmajian from Tucson, Arizona!

Paul Akmajian (Tucson-Albuquerque) has been dancing tango for close to 20 years and DJing for the last 15. In addition to being a regular DJ in Tucson, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Paul has DJ’d at numerous major US festivals, marathons, and encuentros, including Portland, Denver, Albuquerque, Seattle, Chicago, Baltimore and many places in between.

As a DJ, Paul strives to keep everyone energized and dancing long into the night by playing the best, most familiar, time-tested and dancer-approved music from the Golden Age of Tango.

UEMCE presents DJ Michel Auzat from Montreal, Canada!

Born in 1955, Michel first began to dance tango in 1993 and DJing in 1998. He has been DJing at least once a week since then. This passion to DJ led him to collect more than 1,800 tango CDs – about 31,000 tracks.

In 2003, he started to develop the art of re-mastering old tango recordings and now only plays pieces that he re-mastered to ensure good sound quality for the dancers. Michel finds that he enjoys tangos from the period between 1935 and 1945 – he considers them the most “tangable” pieces.

UEMCE presents DJ Vincent Lam from Vancouver, Canada

DJ Vincent “The Llama” Lam has been dancing tango for ten years and spinning tunes in the Pacific Northwest for the past five. He was a well kept northwestern secret, but good things cannot be hidden and once organizers heard his music, he began trekking east and has been found DJing at various festivals, encuentros and marathons in Chicago, Newport News, Chapel Hill and Santa Fe!

Vincent favors traditional tangos mixing his tunes with a sense of fun and romance. He enjoys photography and travel, but of course, all revolving around tango!

Milongas

El Encuentro

After the last time
I held your scent in the tiny
hairs of my nostrils.
I fell asleep breathing you
dreaming of our embrace—
the gruff of stubble
heart soft on chest
warm exhale on ear
cheek lifted into smile
my hand………. your hand
time…………………space
compressed into nothing.

Photo credit by Adrianne

La Casa Rosa

You told me fate would bring us here again
to this tiny cobblestoned street
hand-in-hand in front of this pink house.
I wanted to believe you
but as our time apart stretched on
doubt grew its long shadow
to surround my heart in darkness.

And when you held me again
on this tiny cobblestoned street
in front of this pink house, the sky broke
into a downpour and pelted my skin
with salty warm raindrops
or was that the thousands of tears
I’ve held back since our last parting?

by Pamela Taylor

Milonga Casa Rosa, Friday, November 10, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m.

For more information about Charleston’s Pink House folllow the link: http://pinkhousegallery.tripod.com/id13.html

 

Roble Angelical (Angel Oak)

Remember when we found the initials
we carved into a tree? How many times
had we stood here before, fingers intertwined
like the roots of the angel oak?

Remember when we touched its bark,
how the tree stretched its broad leafy arms over us
like a canopy and we took shelter from the million
pinpricks of light watching from distant galaxies?

Only then did I feel bold enough to kiss you, to capture
your breath in mine, to feel our knees sink
into the soil while the tangled roots
of the angel oak supported the weight of our love.

By Pamela Taylor

Milonga Roble Angelical, Saturday, November 11, 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.

For more information about the Angel Oak, please follow the link:
http://www.angeloaktree.com

Te Volveré a Ver (I Will See You Again)

You will
return to me
like the swallows
of Capistrano
to build
your nests
under the eaves
of my mission walls.
But first you must
turn south
open your wings
let the current
carry you
forward.
How long
how far
you go
is not for me
to say. I only
know our fate﹘

Lodging

Charleston is a very popular place and it is our understanding that a big convention will be happening at the same time as our event. As such, we need to nail down lodging.

Where to stay depends on budget and preference. Downtown historic Charleston is pricey, however, you do not need a car as there is a shuttle from the airport and it is a very “walkable” city. For those of you that have a car and don’t mind driving, you may find that lodging is more economical 20 minutes away from the venue, such as North Charleston. In regards to parking, there are several parking lots/garages very close to the venue that charge $2 to $3 per hour. We recommend you download the ParkMe application (https://www.parkme.com/charleston-sc-parking

Attached you will find a file with hotels that are very close to the venue. We requested block rates, but due to the convention, most hotels did not offer a better price than what you could get via hotels.com.

 As each of you finds “deals”, please share