I suggested comparing the kind of dancing that goes on in class with what happens in a real milonga and I want to give an example of the difference and power of the latter.
March, 2016: I was in Salon Canning, Buenos Aires on the afternoon of my penultimate day of dancing. Perhaps because it was not busy I noticed a man in the inner ronda. He danced musically, quietly, very discreetly. His focus was peculiarly inward to the dance, to the couple. Unlike some Argentine guys who check out the girls while they're dancing, it was as though he wasn't really aware of anything but his dance with that girl, but he glanced up occasionally, aware of the available space. I don't usually look specifically to dance with smaller guys I don't know unless something happens. Maybe before an invitation he makes me laugh from a distance or establishes some kind of persuasive rapport, preferably still at that distance. None of that applied here. I watched to see where he was sitting but he went behind me. I looked to the other side instead. I couldn't help it. He went to sit in a very quiet spot near the back. The next tanda began. I was a bit surprised when he invited me as soon as I looked his way.
I can't really describe this dance and I'm not sure I really want to. I don't think a dance has ever felt more private. Later, I said in confusion to my non-dancing friend who had come to watch - “What did it look like?” and was surprised and relieved when the answer seemed to be mostly just “quiet”. The reason I am writing about it is because I wish more guys had this approach. I didn't realise until then quite how very different dancing in the milonga could be - not just compared to what goes on in tango dance class, but even in relation to other couples in a traditional milonga. I often think dance is like life and to see people who have that approach in life too would be wonderful. I mention it also because it was two years before I had a dance that was anything like this in England and not until 18 months later on my first visit to Argentina that I had a dance which reminded me of it. I have occasionally had not dissimilar dances with guys - once in Tango West last year, a couple of times with a visitor to Glasgow - but they are rare. I wish that they were not and that is why I want to mention these dances. I realised this man must make women feel the way he made me feel every time he dances yet I encounter this kind of dancer almost never. I told a new guy dancer, a young man I danced with a lot one night in both roles at La Catedral, a guy I found to be a very good and talented dancer, that the best suggestion I could give him was to find this man who he had seen in Canning and see if he would dance with him, with my friend in the woman's role. I didn't know if this would work because I can't imagine a presumably straight guy making another possibly straight guy feel that way. But I thought it was worth trying. At least the conversation would be interesting.
I want to make clear that these great dances have nothing to do with extravagance or any kind of movements beyond the simplest and most common. Other kinds of wonderful dances which may or may not have moves can be thrilling, fun, dynamic, all sorts of things. This was not these exactly and yet it was marvellous.
It was exactly how it had looked - only more so. After perhaps the first track the man mentioned Gavito and about what happens in the dance between the steps. There is a good, experienced dancer in Edinburgh who I remember saying the same thing. I don't quite know why the Argentine said it because when dancing with him that was so clear.
Another time he mentioned the silences in the dance. We had been dancing the music but I knew what he meant. I read later that apparently Gavito talked about that too. I also read that Gavito was master of the "less is more" school. The dances I am describing or perhaps not describing well were all along those lines. I had not paid much attention to Gavito previously being put off by some of his show dancing online.
I had been at Canning I think less than a couple of hours but I wanted to leave after that dance. I didn't feel like any more dances but decided that was absurd. I remembered a conversation which made me think that the cortina should act, among other things, as a palate cleanser. I decided to dance with a different guy. I looked, he invited. He did dance the music and without "moves" yet I have seldom felt more incidental, less necessary, relevant to or part of a dance. He might as well have danced with a mechanical doll. I did leave after that. The intuition that I should have stopped dancing after the quiet guy was right. I am glad though that I did not, so that I understood the contrast of how differently two men could see the dance, the woman and the couple.
The next night, my last, a Thursday, I went to a couple of clubs but did not enjoy them so took a cab to club Gricel around midnight and relaxed.
Across the floor from where I was sitting set back in semi darkness I was surprised to see the guy from Canning. He invited me. We danced three tandas across the rest of that evening. He invited so discreetly, I was sometimes not quite sure. I realised that he thought the same about my acceptance. There was a tanda of lovely Rodriguez songs, a kind of well known, lush Di Sarli I usually avoid but enjoyed with him and something absolutely awful: DJ Carlos Moreira, usually fairly reliable for me, but now in one of his most extravagant moments. I'm still ashamed and puzzled why I looked to the guy during such awful music. Perhaps because I'd missed the sweet, rhythmic OTV and the lovely calm D'Agostino. Somehow I still enjoyed the dancing, if not that music. I can't imagine how that works because for me good music and good dancing are inextricable. Perhaps my partner liked the music, certainly he danced it so maybe that's how it worked. It was my last tanda in Buenos Aires. I did not tell him I was leaving. I felt frustrated when after the drama tanda there was great rhythmic Di Sarli but by then I'd already gone to change my shoes.
He reminded me of another dancer. I asked him if he was a teacher. He looked at me surprised and said no. I was not surprised because I have never seen that much discretion in a teacher. I asked him how he came to dance the way he does. He looked surprised again and said he'd just been coming to the milonga for fourteen years.
That same last night in Gricel I accepted a slim, young guy I'd seen dance but when we danced was still taken by how similar he was in style to the guy from Canning. I don't expect to find this in such young guys where style and ego often dominate. But this guy was lovely. No drama, no stunts, just dancing the music with all sensitivity to the woman and the feeling between the couple. How does it happen that it takes two years to discover dancing like that at all, then to have similar dances once or twice a year and then suddenly to find two guys like that in the same room at the end of the same night? Do guys spot something in girls when they have dances like that? Or is it just coincidence?
With these men and with others who dance similarly, we didn't talk much between tracks. There didn't seem to be a need. But between one of our dances I stuttered out to the guy from Canning the realisation I had come to from dancing with him - or remembered from two years previously but with revelatory strength. The insight was simply: that a dance to the same music, even on an Argentinian floor, even between different couples all dancing in a more or less traditional way could be so utterly different as to defy coherent expression. And I wondered to myself that such a dance, so quiet and understated could have such power. I didn’t say all of this but I knew he understood. He smiled and said "Yes, many different perspectives...."
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