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I’ve been having a tango break for the last 10 days due to illness (the nightmare obviously marked the onset of a miserable cold) and a visit from my non tango friend and her baby daughter. I went back to my usual class on Wed and was a bit apprehensive beforehand, convinced that I’d find that I had lost all memories of having ever done a class but fortunately, after a few exercises I was back into the swing of it. Fired up again (maybe it was good taking a break?) I went to more classes on Thursday and Friday, all of which were quite useful. I was therefore quite keen to go out to a milonga on Saturday but was a bit scared I would OD again. In the end, I persuaded myself and had a wonderful evening culminating in a tanda with ‘The Brilliant Leader’ who turned up for the last hour.
Now a bit of background to this momentous event; as of January when I started my new classes, I’ve only danced with ‘The Brilliant Leader’ once, at my first ever lesson. Although it wasn’t disasterous then, I wouldn’t exactly expect it to into the history books as an example of how to tango. I got lost, stepped on his toe and missed several ‘obvious’ marks. So, since then although I would have been pleased if he had asked me I was secretly relieved he hadn’t as I felt I would still find it too intimidating and scary. Anyway, we danced and by no means was it brilliant but at the end he said I had definitely improved since last time, and with dedication he thought I could make myself very good! Just a simple compliment and yet I felt so happy that he had noticed that I practically floated through the next few tandas!
My only complaint from Saturday (and this is more to do with me than my respective partners I guess) – but why, oh why does EVERYONE want to lead me into either a boleo or a volcada every other minute??!! As someone who has never learnt either, I always try to let my partner know in advance that I am not comfortable with either of these moves, nor do I want to start practicing them in the middle of the dance floor at a milonga! Please, please help me at the practica but not out there where I am liable to kick some poor dancer’s vulnerable ankles! I know that if I was a brilliant follower and had a brilliant leader, then we could dance and naturally ‘boleo’ ourselves happily to the moon and back but neither of those two factors is likely to happen soon! However, as it seems to be that these moves are pretty much every man’s ultimate party piece, I’ve decided to look out for a workshop in one of these to try and at least get the principles of what I am supposed to be doing.
I was back out again the other night and for the second time running, managed to dance to pretty much every song with the exception of about three. Now I wouldn’t flatter myself that I was the best dancer there by any means – in fact I was distinctly average but I think it might have partly been my decision to ask and dance with everyone –including a couple of beginners who had just tried their first class. Now I agree this is less pleasant for me and can be a bit of a challenge but I was trying to follow the advice of S – one of my school’s advanced leaders. He had danced with me the previous week and told me that I wasn’t feeling the energy from my partner when I danced. He said that I needed to ‘locate’ this energy and then channel it into my moves. So far so good, but then he said it was all too easy to do this with a good leader but that if I really wanted to improve I should try and locate this energy in all my leaders, even the bad ones (!)
So this is what I tried to do the other night but I must confess that sometimes it was very, very hard and quite often I felt like we were both just doing our own thing while holding hands. Unfortunately, being on the dance floor meant that it was too tempting to ‘fill in’ the moves or ‘help out’ when my leader started floundering (both for their sake and mine); and now I’m wondering if I might have actually hindered my learning by dancing this way? At the end of the night however, a couple of the beginners leaders came up to me and said how much they had enjoyed dancing with me and ‘thanked’ me for dancing with them, making me wonder how many other dances they had managed?
So how should you behave at a milonga? Should I put up with poor dancers in the hope that I will be learning something from them or should I start to be more stringent and go for quality rather than quantity? Isn’t that a bit harsh on the newbies? And after all everyone is a beginner at some stage aren’t they?
Best,
Drina x
PS: On a side note, you never know which beginner will become an excellent leader so surely my good manners now might bode me well for the future!
As my dancing has improved, I’ve wanted to go to out to more milongas and as a consequence I’ve seen a lot more good dancing as well as bad. Now as a beginner (and one who looks quite young), I find myself inevitably in a tricky situation – that of being asked to dance by what I would call a ‘semi-experienced’ dancer (ie: someone with more experience in terms of months than me at tango) who decides to ‘teach’ me on the dance floor a complicated move that he learnt a few weeks prior. Or perhaps I should say, someone who uses me as a guinea pig for them to try out moves on. Whenever I hear the words, ‘I’m just going to lead you into something we tried a few weeks ago, it might surprise you’ my heart sinks. What these leaders forget is that if they were leading me well, I’d not need this little warning and presumably I’d be able to follow their signals. Instead, they start teaching me a step which they didn’t master very well the first time and ignore my comments that ‘perhaps it can’t go that way round as I seem to be off balance’ as they crash me into the couple behind us. Now I may be coming across as a bit harsh but in my mind, a milonga is a social dance place. It is where you go to dance as best as you can. Of course, I want to learn new steps but for me that is what a practicá is for. I was pleased that the last milonga I went to had its own separate room where people were able to practise and this was great. I managed to practise for about an hour and then dance in the milonga for another hour – happy in the knowledge that I could now focus on connecting with my partner and the music. And you know what? – sometimes it is only after one of these magical dances, that I realise how complicated my footing was and how effortlessly I had been led into them! That seems to me a sign of a good leader.
