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28 October 2026-Five days under one roof: the Cyprus Tango Meeting, 2026
28 October 2026-Five days under one roof: the Cyprus Tango Meeting, 2026
The Cyprus Tango Meeting has a formula and it doesn’t mess with it: one hotel, the Grecian Park above Cape Greco, nine milongas, twenty-nine workshops, and the sea doing the lighting. You check in on Wednesday, you check out on Monday, and in between you never once look for your car keys. For a dancer that is the whole point. For a DJ it’s dangerous, because the pista is always forty to one hundred metres from your bed and the breakfast is always one floor down.
This year I came as a dancer first. One set, the Sunday afternoon, and the rest of the time on the floor with Svetlana, who had opinions about every DJ, including me.
The afternoon milongas. Evenings are for the big orchestras and the long rondas. Afternoons are where the Meeting shows its character — sunlight on the floor, people dancing in whatever they came down to lunch in, a tanda of Rodríguez landing better than it has any right to. Mine is written up below Not Just Halloumi & Tango - My Tango-ventures, Aperol and all.
The workshops.: “I took none, on principle. Five days of milongas is the workshop."
The DJs. Godoy, Samaha, Michalis, Olga, Danilo , Andrew Skiba, Chris and Giannis as Michalis (Pantelides) said copy paste of 2025,why change something which works!
The breakfast. Already documented. Fried eggs, boiled halloumi, Cyprus sausage with feta. I am aware that halloumi is a running theme on this blog. It is in the name.
The photos. Marcelo di Rienzo was everywhere with his camera, and I dedicated a vals tanda to him on Sunday. [If any of his photos appear here, they’re his and used with his permission.] and videographer Agustina Barrientos, who has an eye to catch the most intricate movements of tango.
If I have a complaint, it’s that the Meeting is very good at making five days feel like two. The last milonga on Sunday night ended the way they always do there: nobody wanted to be the first to leave, so nobody was.
Michalis Pantelides and Tota Maragou pulled this off in a year that didn’t make it easy, and I was honoured to be one of their mood makers. Congratulations to the whole team, the maestros, my fellow DJs and every dancer who made the weekend what it was. Same hotel, same formula, next October. I’ll be the one at breakfast with the halloumi, and if they’ll have me, at the console on Sunday afternoon again although next October I may be on the other side of the world, playing in Hanoi, which is a good problem to have and still a problem.
If so, somebody please order the halloumi on my behalf, dance the Sunday afternoon for me, and send Marcelo’s photos and photshop me in. I’ll be back on the Grecian Park terrace the year after, and I’ll have missed it.
Ajit
26.10.2026 Four songs, two orchestras, a few Aperol -Spritz and a milonga that didn’t stop at 17:30
26.10.2026 Four songs, two orchestras, a few Aperol -Spritz and a milonga that didn’t stop at 17:30
In my breakfast post I promised Canaro, D’Arienzo, Biagi, Troilo and maybe Pugliese. Half of that was a lie. The pista changed my mind, as it usually does.
The afternoon told the history of tango in order. It opened with Canaro, instrumental only: Pampa, La melodía de nuestro adiós, Retintín, Lorenzo. Carabelli followed, then Tanturi, Donato, Rodríguez, Fresedo, D’Arienzo, Calo, Federico, Di Sarli and Biagi. There was no Troilo and no Pugliese. The pista did not demand, I did not play!.
The four exotic valses. In the middle of the afternoon I played four valses that are not tango at all: Rodrigo Leão’s Tardes de Bolonha, Hyperion Ensemble’s Gramofon, Solino Waltz and Les Patineurs. I dedicated the tanda to Marcelo di Rienzo, who is the photographer at the Cyprus Tango Meeting every year. Marcelo once told me that my valses are like stories. I took that seriously, so this tanda was four short stories, told in three-quarter time.
The tanda I couldn’t solve. It started with Poema and Buscándote, and I spent a long time looking for the other two. Verdemar was too heavy. Caló was out because of the piano. Una Emoción didn’t fit in either version I knew. The answer was to stop looking in the golden age. Two modern orchestras play in exactly the same romantic style: Poema and Buscándote from Orquesta Social Tango, and Todo Es Amor and Bomboncito from Romántica Milonguera.
Poema opens with weight and drama, so the floor settles. Buscándote carries the energy forward. The orchestra changes after the second song, which gives a clean seam in the middle. Bomboncito closes on a lighter note.
Svetlana is my toughest critic and she doesn’t dance to everything I play. She approved of this tanda, and her approval counts for more than most.
I played it near the end, as the place where the story arrives in the present. Then I went back to the beginning with Orquesta Típica Victor’s Dios Momo, Viento norte and Carillón de la Merced, and Canaro’s Rayero. A guardia vieja finish after the modern sounds felt like closing a circle.
The cortinas were Bette Davis Eyes, Walk Like an Egyptian, Born to Be Alive, Roxanne and a Punjabi bhangra track between Di Sarli and Biagi. The room reset in seconds.
Ajit
25.10.2026 Breakfast at the Grecian Park, then a milonga at 13:30
25.10.2026 Breakfast at the Grecian Park, then a milonga at 13:30
Some mornings the Cyprus Tango Meeting starts with a plate. Mine this morning: fried eggs, boiled halloumi, and Cyprus sausage with feta. Yes, halloumi on a tango blog. It’s in the name!
I will make a bold claim: this is the best breakfast to dance on. Eggs for the long afternoon, halloumi for the squeak you hear when the pista is happy, and sausage with feta to remind me where I am. Cyprus, an island of salt and smoke, plays well with tango.
Here is my theory: a good breakfast is an afternoon milonga. It is slow and warm, nobody is in a hurry, and you stay longer than you planned.
That’s the energy I want today. The afternoon milonga is not the evening one. The light is different, the mood is different, and the floor breathes differently. I play what you ask, not with words but with your emotions. Be on time. And don’t expect me to stop at 17:30. You dance, I play.
Canaro, D'Arienzo, Biagi, Troilo, Pugliese (maybe) are you ready?
Fuel up. See you at 13:30.
Ajit
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