Milonga Paranormale

We came across this intriguing announcement in the local Tango resource on Sunday afternoon:

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Outdoor Milonga-all of September There is an outdoor Milonga at the Aurora Town Park Bandshell every Sunday evening from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm (or later), until the end of September. The Milonga is free of charge and everyone is welcome. The floor is concrete and easy to dance on. The Town Park is 2 blocks east of Yonge St. and 1 block south of Wellington St. in Aurora, Ontario. The bandshell provides shelter in a light rain only, and the Milonga will be cancelled if there's heavy rain or thunderstorms. Time: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Address: Aurora Park Bandshell Wells St. ,Aurora Email: auroramilonga@bell.net

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An outdoor milonga in the 905 area! Well, it sounds like an adventure and something we should check out - especially since it seems to be organized by "anonymous" and we were just dying to know who that could be!

We break out the handy GPS and headed out for the heart of Aurora, that leafy suburb of the suburb of the suburbs (now being gradually taken over by McMansions, big box retailers and gigantic Wal-Mart Superstores).

On the highway, we noticed that the sun was setting pretty darn fast - by 7:15 p.m. this far north of the equator on this clear cool day, it was already getting dark out. "That's kind of funny," said Man Yung. "Who would want to hold an outdoor milonga in the dark?"

After some hair-raising twists and turns down Wellington Street (those brand new street signs are hard to see!) and down some side streets, we finally reach "Aurora Town Park" at 7:45 p.m.

It's not a big park. Standing on one edge of the park, you can see the other edge. But boy, was it dark. Lucky the weather was too cold for the bats to be swooping around - although we did see one or two shadowy people taking their shadowy dogs out for a walk.

Yummy...."Spectral light" issuing forth from the trees at Aurora Town Park

"I don't hear any music," said Man Yung. And indeed, neither did I. We did hear some muffled cackling and guffawing from the innards of the secretive houses crouching at the edges of the park. But no music.

Groping our way through the dark, we arrived at last to the Bandshell... only to find it apparently completely deserted, and so dark you could hardly see your hand in front of your face. Where were the milonga revelers?

"Come out, come out, wherever you are...."
a.k.a "It's sure going to be difficult doing the cabeceo here"

"It's only 7:45! I thought the milonga was supposed to be from 7:00 to 9:00!" exclaimed Man Yung.

We decided to walk around the park - perhaps the milonga wasn't in this bandshell but in another "bandshell" somewhere else on the property? Well, we only came across a kiddie park (deserted), a baseball diamond (deserted), a glowing locked building that probably housed the toilets (or perhaps even the gates of HELL), and an empty ancient armory, rumoured to be the site of sadistic torture in the Golden Age of Tango - for dancers who dared to violate the line of dance (just kidding).

Toilet? Or the GATES OF HELL?

"Fine then," said Man Yung as we returned back to the deserted bandshell. "We can have our own milonga." We set up our mp3 player and gingerly put it on a ledge in a spot that didn't have any gum (or was it ectoplasm!!?) on it. And we danced the entirety of one (1) tango. The shiny concrete floor was not too bad for pivoting even in our street shoes.

It was only marginally fun. "Let's get out of here," I said. Maybe it's just me, but there's something about going to a pre-announced outdoor milonga and finding that not even the organizer has turned up that kind of puts a damper on the mood for dancing.

"If someone is going to organize a milonga, they should really make a commitment to be there from the start to the end - just in case some people show up," said Man Yung.

I remember this kind of thing happened to us once before when we went to the St. Lawrence Market outdoor milonga (the organizer thought no-one would show because of the drizzle and went shopping in the market). That time we spent the entire afternoon stuck in Toronto waiting for one of the evening milongas to start. This time we had to drive for more than an hour to get back downtown. And we never found out who was the organizer.

Or perhaps we were mistaken? We took these two photos of the empty bandshell within seconds of each other. We didn't notice anything odd until we got home and took a look at the photos. If you look closely, it looks like something.... was moving.... right there on the stage.....

Now you see it...

...Now you DON'T!!!!

We should just quit with our bellyaching - maybe the milonga was going on ........ and we just couldn't see it!

SPOOKY!