Tango Friends

Have you ever felt anxious walking into an unfamiliar milonga or workshop? Here's a better question: have you ever NOT felt anxious under these conditions? No matter how experienced you are, walking into a room where no one knows you and hoping that someone there will dance with you, that is a scary situation. The relative openness of tango communities varies, but I have been to places where strangers are not warmly welcomed. University crowds can be particularly insular.

It's much more relaxed and comfortable to go to dance where people know you. Being greeted by friendly, welcoming faces is heartwarming. Having people there who enjoy your company and your dancing makes a big difference in the milonga experience.

Our tango communities afford us with the opportunity to build supportive, long-term relationships with like-minded connoisseurs of dance and music. I hope that you have developing and cultivating relationships like this in your own tango community. It's a blessing to have tango friends who welcome us back again and again into their space and their arms. Treasure those people, and appreciate them for the blessing of camaraderie and shared experience that they bring into your life.

It is important, however, to understand the limitations of such relationships. It is important to distinguish the convenient, context-related friendships of tango with the greater concept of friendship in real life. Our tango friends are warm and supportive and share with us an unspoken level of intimacy. Our dance connections can and will hold validity for years and years, even when we don't see people frequently, as when they live in a different city.

One might want to be mindful of certain level of dance hall distortion. Tango relationships rarely extend beyond the walls of the milonga. The segregation of real life and tango life can work in our favor in some cases, but it also has a downside.

The depth and quality of emotion that we experience on the dance floor gives the illusion of intimacy, of dedication, and abiding respect. But how deeply do those emotions run? Is the whole idea of dance connection a convenient mirage?

What would happen if you couldn't dance for some period of time? How would your tango friends react? You might not know if such separation has never occurred during your tango life. But that doesn't mean that it can't happen. Do you expect to interact with your tango friends if you are forced to step out of the tango world for a while? How long do you think that such an arrangement will last?


An Outsider's Perspective

Years ago, I found myself arguing this point with one of my non-tango friends. I had told her over dinner about my busy tango life. At the time, I was putting in a lot of tango hours each week, taking classes, going to milongas, practicing with dedicated partners, studying video, developing choreography, and working diligently on my own technique. I was dancing with hundreds of people every year, many of them people whom I had never met. I was making a lot of friends - or so I thought.

"They're not your friends," my friend said bluntly.

I was shocked. "What do you mean, they're not my friends? I see them all the time. We have a nice time together. They're good people; I know many of them quite well."

"They're not your friends," she repeated. "They act like your friends, because they get something from you," she argued. "The women get to dance with you, and the men hang out with you when they're out having fun."

"It's not like that," I explained.

"It is like that," she insisted. "You're not their friend. You're an enabler for their addiction."

"No! No! No!" I argued emphatically. "You're not part of the tango community. You don't understand how it really is."

My friend was unimpressed. We had to agree to disagree on this point.

Some years later, I scaled back my social dancing for a combination of personal and professional reasons. Guess what happened. I discovered that my friend's argument, the one that I tried to refute to her face, actually held merit. 

Once I stepped back from the tango scene, most of the "friendships" that I had developed over the years evaporated overnight. The only time I saw or heard from them was when I went out to an occasional dance. A handful of people did contact me in the early days of my social tango sabbatical, but most of the time, they were calling me to go out dancing. ("Are you coming to the milonga this weekend?" "Can you come out to watch me and my partner perform?" "Will you be my partner for this workshop?") Decline one or two of those invitations, and the phone stops ringing.

I had to face an uncomfortable truth. My tango friends were all nice people, but perhaps a bit less "friendly" than I had imagined. Where did they all go when my life faced challenges? 

Very few of them kept in touch to see how I was doing. They weren't around to cheer me up when I lost my job, for instance. They were blissfully unaware. I received no sympathy emails (or even texts) when I struggled with separate back, foot, and knee injuries. Everybody must have been out having fun at some milonga somewhere.

My non-tango friend was right, and I was wrong. I hate to be wrong.


Fluid Dynamics

Businessman and author Harvey Mackay once wrote: "Anyone who thinks he or she is indispensable should stick a finger in a bowl of water and notice the hole it leaves when the finger is pulled out."

The tango community has this kind of fluidity in its social dynamic. If you don't believe me, step away for a little while and watch what happens. Your friends will make new friends. Your favorite partners will hook up with new partners. (I had that happen to me once when I missed a single practica due to a bad cold.) 

That comfortable place where you feel appreciated and important, the whole scene that you know and love, it will move along quite nicely without you. No one there will spend more than the length of a song intro wondering what happened to you. If you aren't immediately available for next tanda, your friends are focusing on someone else.


Separation Anxiety

You don't have to take my word for it. At some point, life will probably force you to take a sabbatical from tango. You might need to deal with a health issue, a family matter, or a business or educational demand. Whatever it is, don't expect your tango friends to flock to your side. They have dancing to do.

One day, hopefully, you'll be able to return and enjoy some dancing again. The good news is that your old friends will still recognize you. They'll remember how nice it was to dance with you, and they'll enjoy having you back. That's the silver lining of the tango world: people never forget you as long as you're in the same room.

Your friends will almost certain ask you where you've been, but they'll do it in a very tango-centric way, as though you could not possibly have been doing something else. Here's the question that annoys me the most: "Where have you been dancing?"

"I haven't been dancing anywhere, you clueless nitwit! I have been taking care of myself, providing for my family, and tending of my responsibilities. I have been accomplishing things - important things - while you were wandering around in circles with strangers who pretend to actually care about you." - Yeah, I'd love to have the balls to say that one day.

Again, you don't have to take my word for it. But you might want to acknowledge that my semi-retirement from social dancing gives me a good vantage point on this issue. From where I'm standing, the tango scene does not seem as friendly as it did when I was a regular. If you have not yet spent some time outside of the elbow-to-elbow flux of weekly milongas, you have not yet seen the whole picture.

You may find that hard to believe - I would be surprised if you didn't - but I would encourage you to consider the possibility that what I am telling you is true. That way you won't be shocked one day when most of your tango friends vanish without a trace.

¡Buena suerte amigos, y muchas gracias!

Daniel

Copyright © 2017 The Exploring Tango Blog

www.exploringtango.com

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Sloppy Tango 1 - Stumbling

Lacking Stability

I see the same mistakes year after year at milongas and practicas. It's difficult to watch, because in many cases these are simple problems that could have been corrected with awareness and a small amount of effort. 

I realize that most tangueros are social dancers who dance for fun. That's wonderful! I want them to HAVE fun. I want them to ENJOY their time on the dance floor regardless of their level of experience. I want them to walk out of the building at the end of the evening feeling confident and energized. 

When are you more likely to feel confident and energized? When you're dancing well and your technique is flowing smoothly? Or after an evening of struggle, discomfort, and disappointment? 


Opportunities For Avoidance

There are three ways to deal with a challenge: Quit, Avoid, or Improve. 

Some people quit. They decide that tango isn't worth the effort anymore, so they more on to other activities. It's sad when people give up on something that once promised so much joy and fulfillment.

A more common way to deal with challenges is to avoid acknowledging them or to avoids taking responsibility for their resolution. We might be tempted to blame others for out difficulties. 

"There are no good dancers around here. I have to go to Milonga X to find good people to dance with."

"I'm not coming back to this milonga. The people are rude, and the music is horrible."

"I stopped taking their classes. The material wasn't advanced enough for me."

 I hear comments like this quite frequently, and I'll bet that you have, too. 

Avoiders are prone to change teachers frequently, jump prematurely to higher level classes, or abandon a neighborhood milonga. None of these choices are inherently bad. But until the person takes responsibility for addressing their own developmental needs, improvement will come slowly and be largely coincidental.

Here's a hint. The quality of your dancing begins with YOU. You'll never outrun your weaknesses. Never. They'll follow you to your last day on Earth unless you face them and take corrective action. Avoidance won't get you to where you want to do.



It Begins With Awareness

Awareness is the first step toward improvement. Maybe by writing about the widespread issues that I'm seeing, I can inspire some folks to strive to change.


Stumbling Blocks

Awareness Exercise Número Uno - This is the single most common technical problem that I see at milongas. I see lots of followers stumbling from step to step instead of moving gracefully with confidence and clarity. Foot placement is hesitant and unsure, as if the follower isn't clear as to when and where to take the step. Movements are tentative and lack smoothness and expression. 

Sadly, this is a widespread problem. I see it everywhere I go. But why is this happening? What is the root cause, and how can it be addressed effectively?

I'm certain that every lady at the milonga walked into the salon smoothly and confidently. And I'm certain that they'll walk beautifully when they leave at the end of the evening. Why is it that they can't walk smoothly and confidently when they're dancing in the embrace of a gentleman?

To be fair, the gentleman might be contributing to the problem. Leaders knock followers off balance with some frequency. The leader's embrace might be interfering with her posture at a critical moment. Or the man's lower body might be too far forward, causing the follower to trip over his feet. The timing of his steps might be inconsistent with the timing of his lead.

But we can't always blame the leader, because it's not always his fault. Sometimes the followers fail to take care of their own stability. They rely too heavily on the embrace for support.



A Simple Test

Ladies, sometime when you have a chance to practice with a leader who's willing to work with you patiently, ask him to lead a short sequence of tango steps in three different levels of embrace. 

First, run through the sequence in the full embrace. 

Now, try the sequence again, but this time let go of each other on the closed side of the embrace. This means that he is not holding you with his right arm, and you are not holding him with your left arm or hand.

Are you still able to execute the steps? Is it more difficult to dance without the full support of the embrace? Do you find that your balance is challenged at one or more points within the sequence?

For the third try, separate a bit further. Now, your only contact point will be your right hand in the leader's left. Don't worry - you won't have to dance like this in a milonga - this is only an exercise. But in order to do the exercise successfully, you'll need to manage your own balance. Your legs will need to support you completely.

Can you do it?

Try the whole three-stage exercise again with a different step sequence. Start in the full embrace. Try it again without connection in the closed-side arms. Then, try it a third time with contact only in the open-side hands.

Ideally, a follower should be able to execute most tango sequences without relying on the leader's frame for balance. There are exceptions, of course, which cannot be done without support from the partner (volcadas, colgadas, lifts). But you should be able to do most steps smoothly and confidently while supported by your own balance.

Please remember that this is only an exercise. Dancing like this in a milonga is not recommended. The embrace is important, and we should use it to its fullest benefit while we're dancing.

But followers shouldn't depend on the embrace for stability. Stability begins with our own legs and hips even when we are dancing very close to our partner. In order to step confidently in response to the lead, the follower needs to feel stable within the structure of her own body.

¡Buena suerte amigos, y muchas gracias!

Daniel

Copyright © 2015 The Exploring Tango Blog

www.exploringtango.com

All Rights Reserved

   

   

The Magical Tanda

Discovering Natural Partnerships

Ask a surfer, and he or she will tell you about the first time that they "stood up," that is, the first time that they successfully rode a surf board in an upright position. 

Don't be surprised if your surfer friend beams with excitement as they recount that special moment. This experience is so meaningful to surfers that they often remember not only the location but also the date when it occurred.

Argentine tango dancers have a similar moment but, lucky for us, it doesn't happen just once. 

When we dance with a new person in a social setting, it's typically an enjoyable but marginally awkward experience. Our style, embrace, and way of moving will be unfamiliar to a person with whom we have never danced, so a bit of awkwardness is expected. 

As I've stated before, Argentine tango isn't about perfection. It's about exploration and discovery and connection. If you're looking for perfection, study ballet.


Wow!

But occasionally, that first dance with a stranger is not awkward at all. From the moment that the person enters our embrace, we feel a non-verbal connection and a sense of confidence. We move together as though we have been partners for years, effortlessly, fluidly, joyfully. We feel as though anything is possible when this person is with us.

It's interesting to note that this moment is not dependent on the partner's level of experience. Not at all! It's not as though you happened to dance with the most experienced or accomplished person in the room and that's why everything went so smoothly. The moment is magical, not predictable. 

You have discovered a natural partner, someone who moves the way that you do, who interprets music the way that you do, whose step size and pace and embrace are similar to your own. Treat that person well, because you're going to want to dance with them again. And again. And hopefully, they'll feel the same way about dancing with you.


If This Has Not Yet Happened To You

If you are new to the Argentine tango, you might not have had the experience yet. My guess is that it will happen somewhere between six and twenty-four months into your tango experience. Don't worry about when The Magical Tanda will happen - it will! - Just have fun and expect a brief visit from destiny one day.

My hope is that everyone who is new to tango will keep dancing long enough to let this magical experience occur. We can take classes and workshops and go to milongas for years, but until this moment happens, we don't truly understand what the tango is. This moment is literally what the dance is all about.

That's a bold statement, but believe me, when the Magical Tanda happens, you'll know immediately why I urged you to continue.

Please keep dancing. Go to practicas and milongas when you can. Take classes if you can manage it. If you need to take a break, please do what you have to do and then return to tango when you get the chance. Your breakthrough partner is waiting for you. Don't disappoint them, and they won't disappoint you!


If you have not yet tried this wonderful, mysterious, amazing dance, please consider it if you are physically able to do so. When you get past the first awkward months and the dance starts to become more fluid, it can be a life changing experience. 

Just ask a surfer. :-)

Tango Terminology

* A milonga is an Argentine tango social dance. The milonga might feature dinner or a performance, but these are optional. Improvised (not choreographed) tango dancing by the attendees is the primary focus of the evening.

* A practica is a place where tango dancers can practice new ideas and new techniques. A practica is less formal than a milonga. At a practica, you can discuss techniques with a partner and try things again and again as you learn to do them. This type of discussion and experimentation is unacceptable in the more formal milonga setting.

* A tanda is a series of songs or pieces of music (typically three or four) played consecutively at a milonga or a practica. These pieces will share a similar musical or instrumental style and may even have all been recorded by the same orchestra. A leader and a follower will dance the entire tanda together unless one person is called away (i.e. to meet an old friend who just entered the milonga) or unless the partnership is not working comfortably for both partners.

¡Buena suerte amigos, y muchas gracias!

Daniel

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www.exploringtango.com

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