Milonga and what I'm hearing

Another workshop with guest teachers (I do get around a bit at the moment). This was a workshop into milonga and I really enjoyed several of the anecdotes that one of the teachers told us. One of them was about milonga style and I meant to write a small piece on it last week and attribute it to the teacher. I’m not so sure now (see below).

The anecdote according to Golondrina

The advice she gave was that milonga was less pure than tango and therefore, you could be less precise about the moves. You needed to combine the elegance of tango with a bit of ‘dirt’ (or impurities) and so for example, use a bit more hip as an accent perhaps. She was quick to explain that milonga is not salsa or merengue and that you mustn’t go overboard and start furiously adding hip shakes. She then said how someone once answered her by saying that that was how they danced/felt the music. ‘Fine’, she had replied, ‘feel the music inside you but don’t feel it outside of your body as well!’

I really liked this piece of advice but the following week, I spoke to a tanguero who had also attended this workshop. We agreed the workshop had been very helpful and then he said. ‘Wasn’t it great what she [the teacher] said about feeling the music in milonga and how you can just really let it wash all around you and just get really dirty with the moves?’

What????!!!! Were we in the same workshop?

I’ve since seen this tanguero dance milonga and its chaotic and all over the place (in my opinion). It reminded me of a chapter in Jonah Lehrer’s book ‘The Decisive Moment’ which talks about an experiment where a news story was shown to fervent Democratic and Republican supporters. Afterward, they were asked to sum up the story and all of the supporters said the report was favourable about their own party. I think we just hear what we want to hear.

Presumably, my hips are relatively sedate during milonga!

Not giving an inch

I go to a regular class that is billed as ‘Advanced’. To be honest, the class attendees probably cover a broader term than that but that’s the way it has panned out. This week the usual teachers were away and so a visiting teacher came in to cover. Now understandably, it’s always hard for visiting teachers to pitch a class level right and if you get asked to cover an Advanced class you need to make sure you have some advanced steps available in case the class expect a lot. Anyway, he watched us all dance a tanda and then began his class which was quite hard, with lots of extra intricacies worked into the steps and lots of pointers about technique.

Now when a class is pitched a bit too high, the followers can get by if their leader is good. If they don’t follow it all, the leader can ‘help’ them with a stronger than usual lead. Unfortunately, it’s a one way track and if the class is too advanced, it is often the leaders who struggle and generally even their basic leading starts to go downhill. When the leaders are struggling, followers have to make a decision. Do they:

a) Dance the step from memory?

b) Guess/anticipate what move the leader is trying to lead?

c) Follow what is being led only?

I’m quite a good follower now. I shut my eyes, retreat to my happy place (LOL) and go with the flow (ie: the marks from my leader) and so I fell firmly into Camp C (Follow what is being led only). As the class progressed however, I noticed that each dance was a bit of an effort and partners who I usually dance happily with were looking relieved when the teacher told us to change partners.

About 3/4s of the way into the class, I was partnered with one of the better leaders. Usually when I’ve danced with him in class, he practices the step a few times and then dances it amongst other steps. He began this method as usual, or so I thought. He led me into what felt like the start of a cross and then he suddenly pivoted me. I went straight into the pivot and did a small boleo in front. ‘Grrrrr’, he growled, ‘now is not the time to mess around!’ I looked at him in confusion, aghast at his frustrated tone. Understanding then seemed to hit him and he asked me if he had led a cross? I mutely shook my head ‘No’. ‘Let’s do it again’ he said and this time led me into a perfect cross and the rest of the step. The rest of the dance was fine and at the end he thanked me but laughingly said, ‘You don’t give an inch, do you?’

The American Invasion

The May Day bank holiday (2 weeks ago already!) created a bit of an exodus for us London tangueros as two prominent American couples were visiting our shores. In Cambridge, we had Homer and Cristina Ladas who taught briefly in London before hot footing it over to Cambridge for the tango festival (including the all nighter milonga which went on until 5am); and down south, we had Ney Melo and Jennifer Bratt in Brighton doing a long weekend of workshops.

What a choice for us Londoners? Where to go and what to do with whom?!

Those dedicated few attempted both, rushing from one location to another; doing a class here and then attending a milonga somewhere else. I was pleased to be able to do classes with both sets although I did it in more manageable chunks, attending Homer and Cristina’s class in London and then going to Brighton at the weekend.

It’s quite fun to have American teachers over here. They tend to teach in a different style from Argentinian or European teachers, which is what we predominantly have in London, often using games and humour as a selling point. I don’t mean this in a disparaging way just that for many American teachers, part of their teaching style is their lively personalities which they use to relax people and make tango fun.

Some people I know don’t like that. They feel it should be about the teaching and the end result. They want tango to have mystique and a certain aloofness. They feel that personality can get in the way too much. ‘It’s tango,’ they say, ‘not stand up’.

All I can say is that for me, I found both couples approachable and lively but I also got a sense of their respect for tango and how it should be danced. I also think that its hard to make judgements over single taster classes/days. Learning tango is an evolving process and what works for you one day might not work for you in six months. Your feelings about tango are likely to change throughout your tango life and so who knows what advice/opinions will reverberate back to you in the future.

Here to inspire you (and remind me) is a video of each. By far, Ney and Jennifer are the more traditional pair and I love their style of dancing and general old world elegance:

Homer and Cristina are great fun and I always enjoy their classes although their style is certainly more alternative and Nuevo than I dance generally. I couldn't find anything suitable from their Cambridge jaunt so here is a video from January of this year when they were dancing at the Houston Tango Festival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGBf-SFRD3s

An aspiring leader

If you are a follower then learning to lead brings up some interesting issues. When I first started following, I would anticipate moves too quickly, I didn’t wait for ‘la marca’, I just guessed – incredibly frustrating for the leaders I was with! When I was trying to solve this problem, I decided that it might be good to learn to lead, my logic being that if I understood how frustrating it was to have a happy-go-lucky kind of follower, I might improve myself.

I mentioned this to my teacher and quite rightly (I now believe) she said she thought it was too early for me to try and learn the other part; that it would confuse me and make me less coherent. By this stage, I had only been dancing about 8 months (!) and now looking back on it, I think what a ridiculous idea! My teacher was very kind and told me that originally in BA, men used to learn to follow for about 2-3 years before being allowed to start to lead and that perhaps I should think in terms of that time period. My outlook has changed a bit now (I’m a much better follower) but I still think it is important to learn to lead but I understand now realistically that still might be some way off.

The other night however, I was asked to lead in a class where there were too many women. It didn’t go well and afterwards, I tried to think about why I led so badly and what makes a good leader. I realised that my problem was that I couldn’t convey my meaning across to the other person and that makes me feel very one sided. I can understand the language (ie: following) but I can’t speak it myself (ie: leading). However, when I say ‘understand’ I don’t mean that I can explain why I know what a particular signal means, I mean that somehow I just ‘know’ what to do. This means it is very hard when I’m dancing with a leader and they ask me why a move went wrong. ‘What would make you do X or Y?’ they ask and I can’t give them a sensible answer.

When I explained this to a friend (a leader), he said that he experienced it the same way but as a leader. He obviously could say ‘I do X and Y and she moves Z’ but this was only how it worked for him in a class situation. Once he was out on the dance floor and caught up in the tango, he just responded to the music. Moves came out of his lead without him consciously planning them and sometimes something magical would happen. Everything would flow from one to the other and then suddenly he’d realise the music was drawing to an end, and he had been dancing seamlessly and unconsciously for the last 2/3 minutes.

Something to aim for!

Just like on the Discovery Channel ...

There are some leaders that I truly love to chat to. They think the same tango way that I do and always have interesting conversation. Most of these leaders that I chat to, I enjoy dancing with (it must be that because we think and talk about tango in the same way, then we both often dance tango the same way); but if we are sitting and having a conversation, I don’t assume that they are going to ask me to dance. What I mean is I’m not making conversation so they will ask me to dance and I am pretty confident that they feel the same way. At that moment, we are two people talking about what we love.

Which means I become quite bemused when a particular leader turns all macho and suddenly blocks out another leader. This has happened a few times recently. I’ve been sitting, having a nice conversation with someone when I will realise that a tanguero has approached our vicinity and is hovering just on the edge of our periphery. Now I might be fully enjoying the conversation, so deliberately don’t make eye contact with this new leader but suddenly I’ll notice that it’s as if the hairs are up on my friend. Suddenly, he seems to lose the plot in our conversation and the next moment, he is on his feet, back firmly to the new tanguero and crying out ‘lets dance’.

It amuses and bemuses me, because I am sure that if we were at an empty-ish milonga and just chatting, the leader would not have asked me to dance at that particular moment but suddenly, it’s as if there is a subconscious mini showdown going around me.

It also brings to mind, those Discovery Channel programmes which show you a pack of lions with one male and how they react when a new male enters the area. Their pose changes and even if they are far away from each other, you can still see them squaring off. Its amusing how tango brings out these animal instincts in even the most mild mannered of tangueros.

If only it was always like this

I was in a special workshop run by a visiting teacher. My partner and I stumbling through the step, the teacher demonstrated again for us all, we changed partners and again we were stumbling. I kept getting the signal to ocho back and pivot but always fell off balance. The teacher came over to us, watched and then said to my partner ‘Watch again’. We embraced, he led the step and it was perfect.

I thought ‘Wow – with a leader like that, how could you ever go wrong?’

Silent tango

The other day, I was watching a tango video from a blog. I can’t remember which one it was or who was dancing but one of the comments said something about watching the dance without the music as it was easier to see the connection between the dancers. This had never occurred to me before but I’ve tried it a few times and found it quite interesting, especially as it sometimes shows you when the follower is back leading or responding to the music without her leader. I’m sure all followers have been guilty of it at one time or another, in fact, I’ve realised that some of my better dances have been not to my favourite music but tangos I don’t know too well. It stops me waiting for a particular ‘twiddly bit’ that I know is coming and doing a particularly appropriate embellishment. It may fit well but I’m not hearing the music anew - I’m hearing it in my memory and responding to that.

Which leads nicely onto musicality which is suddenly a big hot tango topic. Earlier this week, I did a class where we focused on one song for an hour. We dissected it and then tried to separate out all the different parts and instruments. Then we took it in turns dancing to certain aspects – a really awkward exercise and quite chaotic. At one stage I looked around and all I could see were ‘unconnected’ couples everywhere – people listening so hard for particular bits that they had completely lost any connection with their partner. It was a really challenging class but useful.

Afterwards, I thought about how you could try that exercise but in reverse – maybe get couples to dance without any music at all; or to dance completely at odds with the melody/rhythm. It would certainly make each partner connect to the other and would highlight where the lead is going wrong and stop women anticipating the ‘twiddly bit’ and going straight into a giro because ‘8.5/10 leaders are going to do a giro to that part’. I’m not starting a silent revolution or anything but I think an exercise like that might help to shake people up a bit. I wonder who would want to try it with me?

[Aside: I told a friend about my idea later and she scoffed. ‘That sounds like dancing with a bad leader’, she said, ‘I get enough of those at a milonga!’ Maybe its not such a good idea.]