Venue

Guiding Questions

• Do you have a floor plan?
• Do you have photos of the venue and surroundings?
• What is the size of your dance floor?
• What is the quality of the floor?
• Where will people sit? relax? eat?
• Where do you think most people will be asking others to dance?
• Is there clear line of sight for cabeceo?
• How will people enter the floor? Are there bottlenecks?
• Will there be food and drinks? Where?
• Where are energy outlets?
• Where are the toilets?
• What about the neighbours?
• What about air conditioning/heating/windows
• What if it rains outside?
• Where do people smoke?

What makes a good venue?

• Enough space for a dance floor, seating arrangements around the dance floor, other seating
• Wooden floor, or a dance-able floor.
• Infrastructure to accommodate your choice of snacks/drinks/food (see also Food and Drinks)
  • Bar
  • Storage for food: cold room, fridges, …
  • Kitchen
  • Equipment

What makes a bad venue?

• Too many columns
• Bad ventilation

How much space do you need?

The best way is to calculate minimum space demand by the number of dancing couples at the same time (!), i.e. the minimum size of the floor, and then add floor area for sitting, socializing, eating, bar, etc.

Size of the dance floor

Depending on the dance style of your main participants, you can use the following formula for the size of the dance floor.

Table 1: Minimum recommended area for dancing

Type of dancers	sqm per person 1)	sqm per couple	comment
Milongueros	0.5	1.0	2)
Closed embrace	1.0	2.0	3)
Open embrace	1.5	3.0

Additional Space

You will typically require space around the dance floor for chairs and maybe small tables. This can sum up quickly to another 0.5-1.0 x the size of the dance floor.

Designing the Ronda

Ideally, you will want to have a dance floor geometry that allows for a perfect Ronda. This essentially means that the lanes are visibly clear and undisturbed. The picture below shows the Ronda at Entre Amigos (facebook), where you can clearly see two full lanes in a perfect ronda, supported by the geometry and patterns on the floor.

Geometry

Rectangular dance floors where one side is longer than the other side (a.k.a. as non-square) work better than squares.

Round dance floors, and corners that are not clearly usable or have "fuzzy" lines create confusion and usually impact the ronda negatively.

Markings

Certain shapes on the floor support the visual distinction between the lanes: these could be features of the floor, or markings added via gaffer tape, or similar.

Other good practices

• Make certain parts of the dance floor as "natural" entrances, so people only enter from there
• Have multiple entrances
• Encourage dancers to use the whole floor when starting a tanda, not just the little corner where they enter the floor
• Clear lines encourage better ronda discipline:
  • tables or chair positioning is essential

Sitting for shared meals

If you want to have everyone share meals at the same time, you need one seat for each participant.

There is also a way to have people eat in shifts, which is practiced in the winter edition of La Cita de los Amigos

Footnotes

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¹⁾ minimum recommended space

²⁾ Assuming you have a dance floor geometry with clear dance lines, and no wasted space in the middle

³⁾ Mostly close embrace, but not pure milonguero