Chicago Tango Week

Thu 30 Jun to Mon 4 Jul. Westin O'Hare, 6100 North River Road, Rosemont, 60618. ArTangoCenter Chicago, 312-823-4859, info@chicagotangoweek.org. ARTango Center - [chicagotangoweek][events]

Tango Festival with classes and milongas with visiting instructors from Argentina.

We are delighted to announce Chicago Tango Week 2011!

As always, your support is invaluable to us and we are happy to inform you first about our 2011 plans and also talk about some of the feedback that we have received.

Chicago Tango Week 2011 will be held from Thursday, 30 June through Monday, 4 July 2011 at the Westin O’Hare. Here are the instructors we have confirmed so far:

Corina de la Rosa and Julio Balmaceda

Claudia Codega and Esteban Moreno

Cecilia Berra and Horacio Godoy

Alejandra Hobert and Adrian Veredice

We will provide details in the coming months and as we have done so in the past, we will open registration in late December and offer an attractive price to those who are ready to register early.

Recently we asked for your feedback from this year’s event and we received many emails about ways to make the festival better. Here are the ones we believe we can improve upon:

- Food availability: Some participants mentioned that it would have been nice to have easy access to low-priced restaurants during the day.

We picked the hotel for its space and quality and its location. The last two years, we have had many requests to use a hotel that has easy access to downtown and the airport and was also affordable. The Westin fits that profile but we wish there were many more options for low-priced food. Having said that, there are a few diner-like restaurants within a 10-15 minute walk from the hotel. Also, some of these restaurants deliver food (i.e. pizza) up until 2-3 AM. Next year, we will explore all options for food in the area and prominently display the information for our participants.

Suggestions have been made to arrange breakfast for the group. We have brought it up with hotel management in our discussions and hope to work out an arrangement.

The last request regarding food has been availability during milongas. The hotel did sell food on Friday night early on but they sold very little and understandably so. It will be prohibitively expensive for us to bring in food because we have to pay the hotel catering and service fees. Therefore, we suggest you bring snacks and drinks to the milonga. Our only request is that you don’t bring alcohol on Saturday night as we will have a full bar.

- Parking and nearby hotels: All hotels in the area charge for parking and you can only get free parking if you go further away from the airport. We don’t want to do that because we lose the easy access to the train station. This year we negotiated a low parking rate and these prices will hold next year. If you stay at a cheaper hotel further out, you have to pay for parking at the Westin, so it may not be cost effective. We request all our participants stay at the Westin because of the value and the convenience. By staying at the Westin, you also support us because we have to fulfill a room reservation commitment to the hotel. We will open hotel reservation along with festival registration in December and you can take advantage of the early bird room rate.

- Schedule and workshop level: We are exploring ideas on how to offer workshops at different levels and the varieties of topics that will suit most participants, if not everyone’s needs. We also have to do a better job persuading registrants to take workshops at their level.

- Registration site: Some of you had problems with the registration site. We will use Regonline next year as we have done so in the past.

- Partner rotation: We always request our instructors to rotate partners and sometimes it does not happen often enough for some dancers. We will stress it next year because we understand this is important to our participants who come to the event by themselves.

- Future announcements: We make announcements on Tango-A and Facebook and sometimes send the announcements to our mailing list from Regonline. Please check our Facebook group page for up to date information. The website will be updated later this year.

Please stay in touch and contact us with any inquiries any time. If you have ideas to make the festival even better and more enjoyable, we are good listeners. Hope to see y’all next year.

Cheers,
Shafqat and Maria