Light and dark and Christmas

I struggle a bit with Christmas. Not in any serious way. I mean as an unreservedly good idea. That doesn’t include Santa of course. For all my distaste of the supernatural I am a great believer in Santa.

Of course Christmas is a great time to come together with friends, family, other people and giving. It’s the dark side of Christmas I worry about. I know people who admit to struggling with it. When the focus is on one day there are a lot of people who feel the pressure of that day and the lead up to it. The emphasis on that one day that pushes people into mindless, meaningless consumerism, stress and antagonism; the people who are alone, or not with family, or who are with family but find it difficult, the people who really feel the financial pinch, the people who’ve lost people, the divorce rate that soars in January. 

Suddenly it's over. There's a party for Hogmanay and then...January and February. This is my second reason. What if Christmas were if not replaced, then diminished, but extended to general winter festivities from December to February. No more months of drear, dreich weather with no vanishing to the sun because you've already blown the budget. No more dread of the end of October when, if you live in the Scottish countryside, most places seem to shut up for five months. Instead, there might be local ice-skating all winter instead of just for a few days. Perhaps new traditions would arise more suited to our time than chopping down trees & sending paper cards, more emphasis on pleasure to see us right through the winter, pleasure centered on each other and not things; on light and stories like Diwali and more emphasis on the unmediated care of each other and neither of these for just one day.

Third is the religious element. I love the old carols but they feel a bit like beautiful bits of flotsam, washed up on the shore of modern life. I love them in the same way that I love hymns and the architecture and peace of churches. My children’s generation don’t seem to learn the old carols at school and the only time I sing them now is with my dad when we’re washing up on Christmas day. Church attendance in the UK stands at 6% of the population yet religious observance as far as I can gather is still mandatory in Scottish schools so I listen to these little prayers at the school church service and to the children being indoctrinated in song, at five, that Jesus loves them. Stories have shaped my life, and I think the Christmas story is a lovely one - as a story, possibly even a real story, but not one I think credulous children should be forced to imbibe with lashings of superstition in the same way that they accept Santa. They will of necessity grow out of Santa. The same is not true of regular doses of religion.

In our house, Santa will come, no contradiction there because belief in Santa is belief justified; there will be presents, a meal. My children insisted on a real tree, which they decorated. They have written and drawn so many cards and pictures that I now understand the relationship between jet engines, Santa and red tinsel in ways you may not. One child snuggled blissfully on my knee at the Bolshoi's Nutcracker at the cinema & the other wriggled as we jigged along to the songs at the panto. They've sung me the Frozen soundtrack so often that I risk knowing it. I already have more than I could possibly want. We've read Carol Ann Duffy's Wenceslas

Then Wenceslas sat the poor man down,

poured Winter's Wine,

and carved him a sumptuous slice 

of the Chrismas pie...

as prayers hope You would, and I.

We are lucky.

I look for life and hope in winter, not just in December, especially in our dark, northern countries. For me, that's family and friends, light and music and dance; but any warm, social connection with other human beings.  That is why I love ceilidhs and milongas. Anyone can go, of any age, any social condition and most people, especially in the milonga, don't care about your marital status, your history or what you do for a living. They care about music and dance and the rest might come later. In the UK at least you see women dancing with women and sometimes at the milongas, guys dancing with guys too. It's inclusive.  

When I am old, don't take me to a day centre, don't leave me alone at Christmas, bring me to a milonga with my friends and foes and if I can let me dance and gossip shockingly and be old and bold in company.

"Why we are often confused about what it means to be “social”" - a different view.

This interesting post offers a solution to the confusion that can occur in the social environment of the milonga.  The solution is not uncontroversial. It requires you to accept the values of the writer. This person is no ordinary social dancer.  She is a performer and works in the business of selling tango dance classes.  In the article, the emphasis shifts between the observations of a social dancer and the observations of a person with the priorities of a businesswoman:

We all know what a skillful dancer looks like...and in a milonga we always immediately identify the “good” ones.

Many of us differ in what we think a skilful and attractive dancer looks like. Not everyone who likes this is going to like this.  They are hardly the same dance. I don’t think they are the same. My seven year old son whose experience of tango dancing is socially, said, when he saw the first clip,  “That's not tango.  That's....that's....a kind of tango dance....with feet".  The music also suggests that the dances are quite different.

Youtube is full of them

...and there is a lot of rubbish on Youtube.

complaining to the organisers while they are working: all this is a disruptive behaviour that negatively affects the atmosphere.

Complaining to the organiser can be very useful - when for example there is a crowd huddled at the back of the room to get away from the painfully loud noise of the speakers at the front.  I’m fairly sure organisers would prefer to fix the situation than have people leave and spread the word.  I know I would. This happened earlier this year at a large venue and the volume came down to bearable as a result.

if a community wants to cultivate a higher level of dancing, advanced dancers should be free to dance with whomever they want to without being judged or otherwise pressured, so that they can inspire others to progress.

I agree with the idea that people should be free to accept or reject invitations to dance and that all dances that accepted should be through a real desire to dance and not through imposition/guilt at refusal.

As to “advanced” and a “higher level of dancing”, again not everyone sees these in the same way. If, say, you aspire to perform or even just do elaborate figures or fancy things with your feet, that’s one thing.  If you enjoy the pleasure of embrace and connection within the social dance, that’s a different thing. It also depends whether you see tango dancing as intrinsically about ambition and progress and technique exercises or whether that stems from something else.  Even within social dancing, there are experienced dancers with completely different styles, emphases and priorities so quite what "advanced" means starts to look a lot less clear cut.

As for inspiration, that takes many forms in a milonga as in life, and far from all of it is down to that problematic term “a higher level of dancing”.

Being too generous has a downside. It is often this “being just out of reach” of a certain desirable dancer that pushes us to grow.

Really?  Alternatively, there is the idea that understanding, empathy, encouragement and patience is at least a more pleasant environment in which to develop.

If you want generosity, first go and give it. The simplest way is to find a dancer you would normally reject and dance with him or her WITH A GENUINE DESIRE to be generous.

Except you wouldn’t dance with someone out of generosity. You would do that only if you were going to be patronising. You dance with people because you want to.

"Notoriously unfriendly?"

Recently, the tango scene where I most regularly dance did a survey which revealed a feeling that there could be unfriendliness in the local milongas towards beginners, new people and visitors. I know from talking to them that sometimes people do find it unfriendly and sometimes they find it one of the friendliest milongas.

Here in the UK, you often hear the accusation of snobbery, or elitism or unfriendliness levelled at some tango dancers, or certain milongas. You may be able to testify to this if you have danced away from your local scene, alone, in a place where you are unknown.  At one dance away several women whispered warnings to me, “this is a notoriously unfriendly milonga” and “It can take years here!”. I don't think the organiser intends at all for it to be an élitist place. One man described it simply as a "candy store for the guys" which implies at least a lot of choice for the guys and competition among the women. It is all perspective.

Talk to social dancers generally and you soon hear that tango dancers have a reputation for elitism and unfriendliness in the wider dance world. It was recently put to me by a tango dancer that dancing tango is essentially an egotistical activity, full of people seeking that high, and sometimes being quite ruthless about it.  Is that true? Ambitious dancers are not unknown, people keen to be seen or people anxious not to spoil their reputation by dancing with those who might show them to poor advantage. People dance with each other for all sorts of reasons, some obvious, some unguessable but it is often heard that some dancers will not dance with people who want to dance with them, or simply that they have a reputation for being very choosy. Tango dancing, like love, can be an unrequited affair.

This can be reflected in the way people sit - the experienced group, the beginners, the somewhere-in-the-middle and the consciously unaffiliated. Or you see it in milongas: that’s the milonga for the experienced dancers, that’s the one where they don’t take it as seriously, the level at that one is very accessible. I’ve even heard of towns in the UK where the milongas for beginners and experienced dancers are segregated. Why is tango dancing more stratified, socially?

If people naturally grouped themselves socially, by experience or ability, you would expect to see it in all social dances, in ceilidhs, Scottish Country Dances, swing, old time - all dances with a long social tradition and yet go along and I will surprised if you don’t often find people welcoming and helpful. Stratification is a function of classes and of ambition, status and things of that sort , but by no means is it a necessary consequence of experience. Socially, people usually sit and talk to people, they, well, like to sit and talk to. Which people choose depends to some extent on where their emphasis lies.

One thing that makes dancing tango different from other dances in which you find a class/pedagogic and a social element is that it begins with an embrace and is about moving together. Neither of these things are completely true of all other social, partner dances. Dancing tango is a close encounter.  Not everyone wants to embrace everyone else or move as one with them. 

Among tango dancers I was surprised to find, not a majority, but still, a sizeable number of experienced dancers who believe that everyone has to make their own way through “the levels”, the way they did. This is the “it will be as hard for you as it was for me” school of thought. People who believe this will hang on to this view with surprising tenacity, even if they acknowledge that today's new dancers will become tomorrows experienced dancers and may not thank them for their early lack of support. The notion is that everyone will either drop out and if they do it’s no loss, or they will join the experienced club, and adopt the same tough line. It is an idea compatible with the related thought that learning is what you do in class and practica, and that dancing is what you do in the milonga. In this mindset, that there is as much or more to learn through dancing and watching and chatting in the milonga is a foreign notion.

I met a couple from abroad visiting the UK who mentioned the poor quality of dancing in their town yet refused to dance with new dancers there, presumably preferring to dance away instead. This attitude isn’t the case for everybody, of course, but where it is true, it isn’t therefore surprising that you do find groups of experienced people, sharing the same view, who won’t dance with new people, who sit together which then taints the milongas with a reputation for unfriendliness. This is a behavioural attitude and one that is against social learning. It isn’t a fact about tango dancing.

For many others, dancing the dances you want to dance and at the same time including in that new people and visitors, where there is a mutual desire to dance, are not incompatible ideas. It is not at all the same as saying dance out of duty, dance a dance you'd actually rather not through ideas of kindness, helpfulness, being welcoming (or god forbid, “generosity”). That seems contradictory and misplaced because if you forced yourself to dance merely from these ideas, a partner might pick up on this and the whole situation could become rather strained as the truth dawned on them that the dance stemmed from charity rather than a desire to dance with them.

Dance because you want to. Good dancing is about enjoyment, shared pleasure. What it comes down to is where and how you find pleasure.

Photo credit: Jeremy Richardson, https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaded/13250584/in/photolist- via Creative Commons.

Constraint

At the beginning of December I went camping for a couple of nights with my friend and our children, four under-8s. We stayed in a Swedish Kata, more or less a tarpaulin over sticks with a wood-burning stove inside and a chimney

.

Our focus shrank to the lamplight. What we could do was circumscribed by when darkness fell, light, how cold it was. For us, used to central heating in Scotland in December, it was very cold. -4 at 8AM and a lot colder before that.

During the first night our stove went out and we had insufficient layers to keep warm. We quickly tripled our layers, and learned how to keep our stove going for longer through the night, stacking it full of logs.

But late on the second night, just as my friend and I were falling asleep, we realised we were breathing more smoke than air.  

"Do you think it's safe to sleep with this much smoke," I whispered to her, looking at our four sleeping children and wondering if this was a silent killer or whether if the smoke became too much it would wake us.

"I was just wondering the same", she replied.

I opened the kata door for air. "Oh, come and see the valley", I said. "It's full of mist".

"Are you sure that's mist she said?" pointing to the "mist" emanating from our own chimney.

We left the stove door open trying to burn up the heavily stoked logs in the stove in an attempt to reduce the smoke in the tent. I remember neither of us slept much for the rest of the night.

The experience overall meant we were forced to adapt & become creative with food, heat, time and light.  The simplicity of our most useful and necessary things surprised me:  light, water, fuel, a gas stove, basic cooking and eating utensils. A wooden stool or bench was useful. Hot water bottles! There was nothing simple about our stew but then we had a lot of time to cut up the vegetables!

Entertainment was easy, involving exploratory walks and a rope swing.  After the early dark the children rolled around on the sleeping platform or played games.

I realised we were lucky we were only playing at living like this. We had those basic things and good medical aid within an hour if we needed it. It was a good lesson that way.

In the ronda you are also forced to adapt to the limitations - principally of space.  Your focus shrinks to what is immediately around you - the couples in front, behind, and to the side of you and the people sitting. This has two effects.  You are rapidly forced to improvise and become creative in what you can do within the available constraints.  Both of you need to keep movement small.  And you become very aware of other people - not to use their space or collide with them, or cut them up in the dancing traffic. If you are passing the floor you become aware  of priorities - that the dancers have it.

Limitation makes us more aware of possibilities, because there is less choice, less freedom. We become both less and more aware, differently aware and more creative within the constraints.

Freedom

When we are disappointed or unhappy in life, to what extent is lack of freedom, lack of choice, lack of options or alternative or the appearance of these being the case, at the heart of the dissatisfaction?   All imply powerlessness or limited ability to change things.

The reason I most love the milonga over practicas, classes, workshops and all the ways of dancing tango is the freedom and the choice.  I am free to dance with whom I want, when I want.  I am free to dance to the music I want and only that music.  The rest of the time I am also free - to relax, chat, listen, watch and learn.  I am free to arrive when I wish and leave when I want to.  

I love to see my friends in the milonga, or similar, loose social gatherings - when we are all free to come and go as we please without imposition on the others, when people might be there, or they might not, but if they are not, then others will be.  And if friends that we particularly like to see and dance with do happen to be at the milonga, then it is an extra pleasure.

Window to the soul

I saw Mr Turner, by Mike Leigh last week. I had been thinking for a while that this film felt connected to my tango life, and yet I could not see how. Then I read in TangoTherapist’s blog how Sybille realises when she dances with someone that she touches their soul. I think it is that. In this film you see fine souls, driven souls, good souls and broken souls. It’s the same when you dance tango. You can’t hide when you dance. If a person is creative, you feel it, if they are irreverent, ambitious, vain, or patient, strutting, pedagogic, kind, controlling, loud, listening, light-hearted, nervous, overbearing, or if they have a sense of humour, you feel all of these things. Except it is never just that straightforward. People are incongruous mixtures.

In this film, Turner is a coarse brute. But it is the moments in contrast to this that you remember: the luminosity of his art, the light seeming to come from within, how it stands against that of his contemporaries, how he does entirely his own thing. Then there’s the sloppy, grunting Turner who at home cares for his father, loves him and is loved by him.

One of the pivotal moments is when Turner and his partner-to-be in later life, recognise the attractions of the other’s soul. She is an ordinary woman, kind, bustling, optimistic, making the best of things. He sees beauty in her. She, apparently unaware that he is a celebrated artist, suggests he is made of finer feelings than he lets on; she means his soul. The film peaks for me when a successful industrialist comes to see Turner. His paintings are displayed, propped up really, in a leaky room, in need of rescue. The industrialist offers Turner £100,000 for all his paintings. Humbled, Turner considers the offer, yet you know even as he considers it, that he will turn it down, and somehow, perhaps because of that finer feeling, you know why. He thanks the industrialist but says he must refuse the offer, because he wants the British people to have his work, collected, all in one place where it can be seen together, gratis.

The most wretched scene is the final one. I don’t know how much is true and it doesn’t really matter. Turner’s housekeeper in his Harley Street house, loved him but Turner was human and flawed. He used her, treated her casually though he must have been aware of her feelings for him, and did not tell her when he picked up with his new partner. Never attractive, she becomes badly disfigured through disease.  When he was dying in his other lodging with the "other woman", she tried to see him, without success. After his death, as his last partner cleans her windows and lives with her happy memories, the housekeeper, the crone, shuffles round the dark Harley Street house, mumbling pitiably. Seldom was the futility, loss, loneliness and tragedy in the most ordinary of lives so briefly or so memorably described. Leigh ended this way deliberately. These are the broken souls. These people we rarely see in public.

Photo credit http://www.william-turner.org/Rain,-Steam-and-Speed-The-Great-Western-Railway--1844.html, Creative Commonce license 3.0.