La Redonda milonga and Edinburgh

La Redonda, Edinburgh

On Thursday I went La Redonda the milonga in Edinburgh that’s been going for a few months. It was the only milonga I’d been to since getting back from Buenos Aires in mid-March. There is an imaginary parallelogram that describes the area with milongas in central Scotland. Its points reach between Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Forfar (Padanaram village has the dancing).  Besides these there is some dancing in Stirling, also at Stirling university in the village of Bridge of Allan and some dancing run by a couple who teach in the town of Dunfermline and the nearby village of Dalmeny. Within this area, La Redonda is the regular milonga most attractive to me just now.

It is an easy decision because in the first instance I go where I think I will find tandas that are not in the majority, broken. That is, tandas where one or more tracks are not what I find good for social dancing or are all good but seriously mismatched.  The place also needs a good floor and a host that is at least not off-putting. Since few hosts are that off-putting the first two criteria tend to be those more often in play. 

I went to La Redonda once before, in mid-February with a Spanish friend, a guy brand new to dancing tango. One of the nicest things for me was the warm welcome. Ricardo, who co-hosted with Jenny also came out to say goodbye when we were leaving. It was the best milonga I've been to locally since Ksenija's one-off milonga before Christmas. The atmosphere was nice, very relaxed and people seemed tolerant of me and my friend in our swapped roles. The atmosphere contributes in no small part to new dancers feeling at ease, even more so when it is a guy dancing in (traditionally) the woman’s role. The feeling last week among those I spoke to seemed also to be that those who go like this milonga not least for its atmosphere. 

Music

The DJ both times I went to La Redonda was Claudia Esslinger though she does not DJ every time. The music was great for me. I liked most of it. The first time there was even good Fresedo - as opposed to Fresedo that is too early or too late. I say even because so few people seem to play what I think of as wholly good Fresedo tandas. All the vals and milonga were good. I heard the kind of OTV I don’t like as I was changing my shoes with only one good track but by the time I entered the room the tanda had changed and it was all good. I apologised to my partner and we sat down once during I think a Tanturi-Castillo for possibly the third track because it would have been worse to try to get through it than to not dance it. When I arrived the second time it was in the middle of a lovely Rodriguez tanda and I only wished I had got there earlier. It is no coincidence I think that not only is Claudia one of the most experienced DJs in Edinburgh, if not the most experienced, she is also very far from being a “me-jay”. I am sorry she is apparently not DJing at the Edinburgh Tango Festival. 

Floor

The floor I found good the first time. But last week I stepped on to it in flats with a friend and immediately felt my shoe gripping the floor. With a knee problem simmering away I could not risk pivoting. This was the main reason I did not dance again as the woman that night. Or rather I danced intercambio with a guy who said he would not pivot me. The floor is old though smooth. Someone said it had been mopped just prior to dancing so perhaps that explained how I found the difference. 

Ronda and dancing

I am delighted that La Redonda is class-free and indeed the milonga attracted a mix of people. In February there were about 40 including several from Glasgow. I think the idea is to attract a broader mix than had been the case at these hosts’ practica which had been on the same day as their main class night and had attracted mostly those doing the classes. On Thursday it was also busy, with a couple of solo experienced dancers who I find it a pleasure to see dancing. The picture was taken later on in evening of my first visit when numbers had thinned.

The first time I went I remember seeing a proper ronda with couple after couple as we paused between tracks. But a lot of the time it was a bit chaotic. This was partly from some experienced dancers who don’t recognise a ronda. Sadly, this then affects new dancers: there was a new guy who didn't move for ages, absorbed I think in a "tango moment" but oblivious to the pile-up behind him.  There was another new guy who overtook me and then came back towards me, passing me. It was like realising you have a car coming towards you in the wrong lane on a road.  Sometimes people do such amazing things in the ronda that it takes your breath away.  Two nights later in St Andrews a new dancer cut through an inner and outer ronda, drawing the diameter of the circle like some random meteorite crashing through earth's orbit.  

Generally in La Redonda the ronda could be tricky, all in quite a tight space. The second time I thought it was much better. When I danced it was with tall newer dancers. I moved into the centre for more space and realised all the tall people had done the same. I was tired though (and didn’t dance much) and did not feel I contributed to good ronda dancing.  I realised I had hardly danced in the other role for a couple of months but my partner was kind. I did not feel the connection with others in the ronda that I find in places with many experienced dancers (and most more experienced than me) but as yet this milonga does not have that kind of dancer in the majority. I am just pleased that new dancers are coming out and dancing in for the most part a recognisable ronda. Since I rarely dance in Edinburgh now it was nice to see and chat to people I hadn’t seen in some cases since last year.

The first time I went to this milonga, mid-way through there was a "dance with a stranger" announcement which I have seen turn into a license for people to walk up and ask you to dance. Last time I dived for the kitchen so I was relieved there was no such announcement the next time I went. 

Venue, room, lighting, seating, snacks

There was a rack for coats outside. There was only one chair upstairs on a landing to change shoes outside the room. With regards to getting changed/made up etc you might want to arrive completely ready as there is only one ladies room of which I am aware.

The room was nice with an attractive barrel shaped ceiling.  It is often difficult to get good lighting in a hall in the evening. The first time I found the lighting just about OK. Jenny told me they had tested various lighting arrangements beforehand. The room had wall-based uplighters quite high. Jenny said they had a nice glow but when they tested them before launching the milonga they were blinding because too much bulb was showing. She said the overhead lights were nice and started off warm but got very bright.  They made therefore an ingenious solution which hasn't come out well in the photos but they are fairy lights: many many meters wrapped around a rectangular frame of metal and plastic. These they hung from the wooden roof supports with bungee cords but the effect from a distance was nice - of rectangles of twinkly light. They also had a string of fairy lights at one end. Last week although I think the lighting was the same it felt dark and someone commented to that effect. In practical terms I thought a woman opposite invited me and whether she did or not my friend sitting at an adjacent table thought the same. Because of the lighting behind her the inviter was more or less in silhouette. Since I have not been sure for a while whether she still likes to dance with me, after that confusion I did not look that way again.

The tables were great. Although they are light and easily knocked they are small and ideal for milongas. In this respect they are like the ones you find in many central milongas in Buenos Aires. I have seen them more and more at Edinburgh one-off events. Note also how smaller tables tend not to get cluttered as in the picture here, and in my view create less of a sense of barrier than larger tables. But in both cases at least there are tables. Apparently La Redonda had started with larger tables and changed. There was no solo seating per se but I think if there were strangers sitting at a table alone or with others I don't think that would have been a problem. There is however the usual UK problem of new arrivals taking a seat you may have been sitting in for a while.

Snacks were in the kitchen along with tea, coffee etc. The first time there was some very good cake, tangerines and some chocolate later on. Last week someone had made truffles, I think there were some pretzels and chocolate.

This is for me the best milonga in Edinburgh just now largely because of music (at least the days I went) and atmosphere. It is interesting that many of the habitués of Edinburgh’s other main milongas at the Counting House were not present. 

Edinburgh however will never be a weekend destination to dance tango for those from other places while it has no regular Friday night, Saturday night or Sunday afternoon milonga. The Edinburgh Tango Society has long had a vice-like grip on the milongas that are run in Edinburgh. This has intensified under its current custodians who hold pretty much the monopoly on all the regular weekly and monthly dances. Edinburgh isn’t alone in being a city with a similar tango cartel. This causes fear in others who are quite simply afraid to start something new because of opposition and alienation from those controlling this scene at present. This situation looks set to continue.

Advertising the DJ

Last year on the day the Edinburgh International Tango Festival started I asked who the cafe DJs were as they were not advertised.  Shortly afterwards they were advertised on the EITF site. This year with a month to go the festival DJs are still not advertised. The first time I wondered if it was an oversight, if a serious one. Now I'm inclined to think it's perhaps if not policy then simply that the organisers just don't think that the music is all that important. 

It says here from here only “Each evening will feature an international DJ and a dance performance from our world-class maestros”. This non-advertisement of the DJs is astonishing because the DJ line-up at any festival that attracts good social dancers is a prominent, probably the most prominent feature of a festival.  But then many good social dancers tend to avoid festivals where the home page features show dancers preferring events that seem to be more obviously about embrace and connection. E.g. Encuentro Porteño.  I heard over a month ago who the DJs will be at the EITF from a friend who enquired and was disappointed when local DJ Claudia Esslinger (who DJd here recently) was not one of them. But so far the message is: this festival is for people for whom the music isn’t really the main thing, for whom the music isn’t really important enough that you’d much care who the DJs are. No surprise though when it was only after public request (now hidden/deleted) last year to the Edinburgh Tango Society that the rotating DJs were at last advertised on their calendar.

On the other hand, the EITF is hosting the orchestra La Juan D’Arienzo, which is great news. So this mismatch between not advertising the DJs and this great orchestra feels like a right hand/left hand situation.

Lassitude

The photos on the right are of my elder son in 2011 when he decided it was just too far to walk across the field.  We were camping at the Seaview campsite in Benderloch near Oban on the west coast of Scotland.  At that time it was pretty basic in terms of facilities, but the owner was very nice, the field level, good, family friendly, quiet and there is a beautiful, peaceful beach a short walk down the side of the field. It seems camping and salad has this effect on them. I was pleased I had to hunt to find photos of my children this reluctant to get on with things but by my second week in Buenos Aires I was feeling the same way.

The first week was the only week in which I did anything touristic before being pulled definitively into the world of the milongas.  It was not that I didn’t want to see more of the city.  I did.  The whole city should be under some sort of UNESCO preservation order for its architecture alone. It is just that the milongas can get a hold of you.  I was in them each of the 22 nights I was there.  

I was often in the milongas until, 1, 2, 3 AM having started between 6 and 9pm, or earlier if I had been to an afternoon milonga.  One night I was in Club Gricel very late with a friend, who was new to dancing tango.  It was a Thursday.  We had been to Nuevo Chique in the afternoon and then El Beso, altogether three very different milongas.  By the time we got to Gricel it was gone midnight.  I seemed to find myself there at that time not infrequently.  By about 3AM the milonga was practically over but a few dancers were holding out.  “What are these people still doing here?” she said.  “The party’s over.  It’s time to go home.” She laughed.  “But they don’t want to go home.”  And these milongas are long: six, eight, even nine hours in the case of Milonga de Buenos Aires, Fridays in Obelisco. It's not as though they are mean with dance time as is often the case with the three hour milongas common here in the UK. Who knows why some stay so long? For me the milongas are fascinating places all round, even just to see the very point she made.  I have never outside of Buenos Aires seen the same thing, felt that same atmosphere at that time, certainly not in Britain not even in continental Europe.

If possible I would sleep til late morning or noon and the rest of the practicalities of life needed to be fitted into the afternoon before going out again.  The longer I stayed and most noticeably in my last, very relaxed week, the more I felt an alarming lassitude inhabiting me.  I don’t think I’m particularly organised or efficient but I still found this unnerving despite the mental reminder:  this is holiday.   It was so strong the smallest thing became a gargantuan effort.  The thought recurred:  “is such-and-such really a “necessity”?  The only real “yes”: “get cash”, wash clothes, find food.   I wished I was more like Millenium Dragon.

Did the heat caused such indolence? In the last week which was mid-March it reached easily 34 degrees whereas I prefer it, or at least find it pleasant and still feel I can get more done at at least ten degrees further down the scale.  I reflected that perhaps I was being overtaken by the culture.  I stayed in the area called Balvanera and everywhere saw people sitting in doorways, chatting or just doing nothing in particular, especially in the evenings.  One afternoon I walked past a building inside which reception area a concierge or caretaker was relaxing in his chair chatting to - presumably - his friend.  It symbolised for me what seemed to be the pace of life here, at least for some.  On the subway as I was going out and they were coming home I saw middle class people in suits and business attire who got off in Palermo. They seemed to live a different life to most I saw and met, one which I saw next to nothing of.  The disparity between shops for different markets was very clear. You could buy empanadas for 6 pesos, or for 26. There were shops with plate glass and chic displays and then there were the shops for everyone else. The area called Recoleta seemed to me to be nothing like the area called Once.

I wondered if this torpor was the night-life, though it didn't feel strenuous.  Or too many nights of champagne to which I became readily accustomed.  I realised the value of small shops on every block - because who would want to walk more than a block or two for food or to the farmacia or for any of life’s necessities?   I made for the last time my own food at the beginning of my last week - a salad of lentils, tomatoes, olives and ham which took all of three minutes to prepare.  One day Alexandra, a tango dancer who works at Maria’s tango house, took me to a parilla on Moreno/Pasco. I was staying on Moreno. She said I should have a bondiola sandwich con todo - pork with various sauces.  For the next two days I gave up on salad and fruit and got takeaway beef or chicken sandwich (but what a sandwich!) for whatever you call brunch eaten mid-afternoon.  It saw me through the rest of the day.  With no need to cook for the family, and the heat and the new environment reducing my appetite I simply stopped cooking and lost pounds effortlessly.

One afternoon one of my previous hosts, Juan, hailed me on Belgrano.  It was lovely to see him. We went for coffee at La Ochava on Alsina/Combate.  

Or perhaps it was when my last host and I visited Juan and Josefina in my last week.  In any case, I told him the problem.  He laughed.  “Soon you’ll be having a nap” he said “and that’s fatal!”

On the other hand I walked blocks and blocks to, from and between the milongas, energy amazingly restored.  They have that draw.

Right and wrong

I met and danced in swapped roles with a guy, a beginner.  I shared a story about the contradiction in terms of teaching an embrace (third paragraph) in an “open hold”. He told me in reply that indeed, he had seen in milongas men "driving" women as though driving a tractor. He illustrated what I have seen so many times, in class and in the milonga, by class dancers. 

In the photo above there are no embraces.  You could pretty much drive a tractor through the huge gaps between the guys and the girls.  So what are they doing if not embracing?  Steps.  They are practising steps learnt in class.  People who do this move like zombies.  Typically, they take one step, together, pause, then they take another.  Then he tilts his chest.  She obediently pivots.  Lead (pause) Follow.  Their dance mimics the roles they have accepted.  Obviously, the music - if there is any - is irrelevant.  Speedy zombie version here.   You could argue that music like that doesn't help at all.

It could be so easy.  If only they would embrace, listen, not think.  Not listen hard, not try to walk on a beat, not even listen - just allow themselves to hear the phrasing.

In fact this practica (in photo above) was more like what we in Britain would call a class. There (ART. 13) I saw only one couple embracing. You can see similar things by browsing the photos of milongas near you or that you are thinking of going to on e.g. Facebook and comparing whether what the dancers are doing looks more like the photo above, or more like the embraces here at the Encuentro Porteño in Amsterdam.  Of course the EP dancers are more experienced, but it isn't that. What they are doing is in essence a different dance.

The instruction model based on right and wrong ways of moving means you get class types who (if you were to let them get that close) would "drive" you the way my friend described. Meanwhile, such dancers insist or imply you're “doing it wrong” or that you're not really good enough for them. Inexplicably they still want to get their hands on you. No surprise then when they inherit from class this perspective of “right” and “wrong” steps. This “rightness” and “wrongness” is a strange idea.  The dance is improvised and social, we do it for pleasure. It is not sequenced, choreographed or for performance where “rightness” and “wrongness” of steps or technique might be more relevant. 

But class dancers are quick to criticise “wrong” movements - even on the floor and to lecture you in how to fix them.  At that point you might as well give up.  Many do - the healthy ones. Or they go to the milonga instead.

But many, sadly, do not. They assume the problem really is with them, that they are impaired in some way, that they are wrong and this is what gets to me. Women do this more than men in my experience or maybe more of them tell me. They feel terrible, inadequate.  "I feel so rubbish, so hopeless" they say, over and over.  "I can't do any of what they want me to do in class. The steps and technique are so hard.  It doesn't make any sense to me."  They doubt themselves in just the same way as when the teacher says "Just a few bad habits developing - keep up the classes and you'll be fine".  They don't realise that most people have - sensibly - dropped out because they all felt like that.  In fact they have been wounded.  With many women I meet it's as though they have been wounded in their backs but they don't know where. They just know that they're hurt but they don't even really know why or how or if they've been wounded because none of it adds up.    

The man they dance with who might tell them they're "doing it wrong" - or (more often) the teacher says "Well if you trust me, come back next week and make sure you do the whole course I can fix everything.  And there are always private lessons you know..." Even children know that anyone who says "Trust me" or "Honest!" is as trustworthy as this.

Enough said?

Someone told me once that the dance is made of feelings.  I think what happens in the dance is some kind of indescribable, nuanced thing that is to do with the couple and the music.   But at the same time I often feel that the tanda is self contained - a clear beginning and an end  - to everything. Nothing needs to be said because things are said, wordlessly and understood in the dance.  

The tanda ends and despite that we may have been deep inside the music and the embrace, moving as one, it is easy to walk away.  Metaphorically, I mean, even if sometimes I feel a bit rocked from, well, I’m not sure what from, the whole thing.  At the end of a tanda with a great guy dancer my occasional silent disorientation must be evident because guys usually seem to understand and unsurprisingly are pleased.  At least I take it that’s why I see them grinning as they take me back to my seat.   Besides, they seem to know it’s not just good manners, but that I need the escort ‘til I come to.

Grotesqueries

Historic orchard (name unknown) Carse of Gowrie

The Carse of Gowrie is a low lying area of land that stretches along the north side of the river Tay between the Scottish towns of Perth and Dundee. It is famous for its soft fruit particularly raspberries and strawberries and is home to a number of historic orchards. Some of these orchards are no longer maintained as previously but, like the one above and others at Megginch (private) estate and Elcho castle they are the focus of revival by the excellent Tay Landscape Partnership.

Espaliered and fan trailed fruit trees at Megginch estate

Apple picking, Elcho castle, Perth, September 2015

I went to some of these orchards last summer, in one case to look at diseases and problems in fruit trees and to see how some of these could be prevented. It was surprising to see how damaged some of the trees were often early in their growth and by what variety: disease, such as bulbous cankers, parasites, accident, storm damage or where domestic livestock or deer had eaten away the bark or rubbed against the trunk. In some cases an older tree had continued to grow but twisted and deformed.

Damage and distortion to fruit trees

A propos the idea of teaching of teaching how to embrace I received an email recently from an (I think) dancer-led tango dance group. The source is nameless because with any luck I’ll continue to receive these emails.  They are one of my favourite mines of grotesqueries: distortions of what I think dancing tango is like.  To my own mind it is not unlike the damage done and often avoidable to those trees.  

A recent crop from the latest email is mild but I saw the “teach you how to embrace” idea rephrased recently:

“The course will cover posture, connection [my italics] and the 'tango walk'”  

I’d  love to see that described in print:  How to "connect”....Perhaps there could be a follow-up:  “How not to disconnect - your guide to avoiding divorce.”  

How would you describe "how to connect" in words, exactly?  I mean in a way that doesn't sound ludicrous and does feels like the kind of embrace you want to stay in for dance?

I can't remember how it happened in my lessons, except being told repeatedly, class after class "Embrace him" and being pushed into the guy or my arm pulled more around the guy. Patently, there was no desire to embrace whoever that particular guy was. It was probably because being a beginner, he couldn't dance and why would any girl want to embrace a guy in the guy's role who can't dance? Besides, I just didn't want to embrace those guys. And that's mostly why I stopped going to class - because in the milonga you choose and are chosen.

Other gems from this edition were:

“the key elements of tango that together make up the ‘tango toolkit’.”

You’re going to need such a toolkit because in places like that dancing tango is work, you’re  going to build your dance and when, like this wall, it inevitably breaks down...

Darn Walk, Dunblane to Bridge of Allan

....you’re  going to need to repair it.

“Each class will build on the previous week’s lesson, so ideally participants will attend all sessions.”

I’ve become a bit better at reading between the lines.  On the surface, it’s straightforward:  miss a session and you’ll make things harder for yourself (because - apparently - you build a dance….).  But what I hear is the controlling tendency:  this is our way and you have to do as you’re told.  It is supplier-focused - the product or service is oriented around what is easiest for them and around class management.  It is not about the person for whom the service is intended, because that would mean people who can dance dancing one to one with people who are new to dance.  

The other problem is that the didactic habit is catching among people who do classes generally.   Since in this sort of “tango”, men “lead” and women “follow” - the women have to do as the men say.  If then something goes “wrong” then it becomes invariably the more powerless, more vulnerable one, the mere “follower”, who is apparently at fault: “you didn’t follow what I led”.  Unsurprisingly,  I didn’t last long in class when I started “having my own ideas”.

But this week this is my favourite:

You can come with or without a partner.  We swap partners regularly so you get to know your class mates as well as have the chance to dance with a wide range of people – one of the joys of tango.  

I suppose that’s laying out their way.  But it will put off couples who like to stick together, people who are unsure, people who don’t necessarily want to dance with lots of people, people who would just rather watch for a while, as you can when you go to the milonga.  Not everyone thinks dancing tango is about dancing as much as you can with as many people as you can.  The message here is clear: these people think that it is and those who don’t agree to fully participate in the spirit of swapping  need not (really) apply.  I think that’s a shame, but, well at least it’s clear.

They do say…

If any class participants prefer not to swap partners this is fine...

but add:

although we can guarantee by the end of the course you will be swapping along with everyone else!

...no matter what you actually had in mind. You can see there’s only really “one way” here.  I find again that implication of control off-putting.  It tends to lead to that kind of dance.

The sad thing is that a dancer-led group which might so easily rather focus on the music, the dancing, the milonga instead of endlessly pushing these classes and workshops - presumably in an effort to expand numbers.  Fortunately another group in that town has done just that - they run a weekly milonga in a bar, that’s all.  If they send out emails I don’t get them.  I haven’t been because it’s far from me midweek, but I’ve met some of the organisers, nice, relaxed people, nice dancers and I like their approach.  I think any group is more likely to expand when non-dancers see and hear about people there having a good, relaxing time in a bar with dancing.  What would you rather do - pay to go to class and work at dance, with other beginners, or go to a milonga and learn to dance by dancing with people who can?

Standardisation and individuality

Social dancers, taken by multi-talented Adam Szczepański, based in Aberdeen.

On my bedroom wall a “handbag" hangs on a hook.  It is made from two pieces of paper stapled together to which is attached a paper strap. On the front my my elder son has drawn a picture of a bridge, a river, fish jumping, ladders up trees and a flying fox over the river. On the front it says "To Mama".  In this I keep all the the little notes full of love (and bedtime procrastination) that they have brought me.  They are probably the most treasured items I have.

When I think about what is precious in life, it is the time I have spent with family and friends. It is also in things I see or hear that have been created and are original, particular, individual, personal. 

 I see it also in nature, or in the games we play. Both of these use something like templates but each time the game is played it is different, each time the seed grows into a plant, it is similar to others of its species but different in its variety.

I see asimilar quality in museums and historic properties and in the performance of drama or music:

I believe it is in the gardens people create, in how we decorate our homes. in the learning we choose to do and in the food we make.

In material things, I find it in the architecture unique in its design or setting. It is in art, in sculpture, installations, in photography, graffiti, design. 

It is in the cards and presents and costumes we make. I see it even in face-painting, tailored to the child.

I feel it part of the milongas and dances we go to and the parties we throw...

I see it in both simple things made by people I know and love or in rustic things made by others... 

 ...as well as in elegant or sophisticated things made by strangers:

They all seem to me individual in some way.

I do not find this in chain store shops or in chain-type attractions.  Whatever was originally created in these mass produced material goods has lost its charm somehow. I find it in things that are not part of a general trend towards process, control, mould-made and standardisation.

What is dancing tango? So many class advertisements today scoff now at teaching moves or steps, let alone patterns or sequences. That I think is a good thing.  So now they focus on "the basics".  If anything though this can be worse since it usually seems to include teaching "How to embrace" or the slightly more subtle versions: "How to connect" or just "Connection".  Sometimes it comes under the conveniently vague term:  "Technique".  However it is phrased I see it as an attempt to standardise and interfere with something unique between two people.  How could anyone have the sheer face to industrialise something special that happens each time a couple chooses one another and embraces?  How could anyone in class hope to achieve such a thing through partner rotation where indeed there is no such choice at all?  How could people in class even have any inkling of what that kind of improvised, individual dancing is really like given the conditions in a tango dance class?

I think some things can be imparted, shared, implicitly learned better than they can be explicitly taught and I think this is true of dancing tango. Otherwise, tango dance class is like trying to industrialise, to fabricate something where the value is in its handmade quality. It can be no coincidence that “fabricate” has two meanings - to make, especially to make something inauthentic, but also to lie. 

Personal?

I often find I like the people I like dancing with - the men and the women.  I mean I like their character, what I see or feel of it in or before the dance, depending I suppose on when you think the whole thing starts.  People sometimes say: What do you care if you like them or not? You see them for ten minutes or so and then maybe never again. It's a dance, it's not an emotional relationship.  That's all true I suppose, at least the way they say it but, well, I just do sometimes seem to care. 

When I got back from Buenos Aires last month I read something that Gavito apparently said.  I am not sure about the truth of it:

When you dance with a partner you are close and the dance is very suggestive, but it is not personal…“Close is what the music inspire you to become. The embrace looks personal, but what we are actually embracing is the music.”

I don’t know exactly what Gavito means by “personal”.

Of course in a way, it’s personal.  Sometimes you do become friends with the guys - or girls - you have great dances with, but often you don't see them much or indeed ever again, yet despite that the encounter is still personal - in all ways I think, else, what would be the point?

So much pleasure of so much variety with so many people.  It’s just not lasting in any way.  Perhaps that’s what he meant. But all things, life, love, pleasure and connection are transient and ephemeral - to different degrees - yet no less precious for that, perhaps all the more so.   It reminds me a bit of what they call ethical polyamoury:  the committed partners who honestly and freely go out to take pleasure with others where they find it - and then come home.

How class dancers dance

Perth museum

I was looking for a visual idea of harmony to contrast with what some of this post is about.  I took this photo today because I like the space which I once thought about using for a dance.  We were in Perth Museum (picture), one of the oldest museums in the UK.  We went to see the new Cradle of Scotland exhibition about a breathtakingly large pallisaded enclosure - one of the largest in prehistoric Europe -  near here, the iron age hillforts which developed nearby and the Pictish royal residence of the ninth century.  This is the arresting image used to advertise the exhibition.  What a difference colour makes.  The exhibition is co-directed by Steve, who dances tango and so does his wife, Kate.  He is an archaeologist and Kate a Celtic specialist. We always have interesting conversations. Plus they keep me right during wine tasting when I get distracted by just such good conversation.    

Actually the harmony I want to refer to is perhaps less well illustrated architecturally because it is more of the human kind. I see it best in my boys, in togetherness, in movement, in a sort of shared being.  Yes, of course they fight too!

This was yesterday on our way across our gorgeous if currently rather sodden park, the “North Inch” to the other museum here which is about the infantry regiment called The Black Watch and since 2006 a battalion in the Royal Regiment of Scotland. 

My elder son dances tango. The "little" one still likes to be picked up for dance which these days doesn't happen often.  When we walk arms around one another the elder falls in step with me, and I shorten my stride He moves to tango music, two as one so naturally, with a sense of shared axis despite our difference in height. I guess he gets, they get, that sense from practice through being so often attached (literally) to one another.   

It isn’t true that beginners are always rough to dance with.  Beginner girls, even beginner guys can be lovely when they don’t get - inevitably - ruined by going to class.  It is true though that class dancers make great partners for other class dancers.  I don’t mean beginners, I mean that subset of beginners who dance in classes.  But that separation keeps them away from social dancers. That would be useful - particularly so they don’t screw up the ronda, as class dancers more than any other invariably will.  It would be useful if it were not also such a shame, such a waste, such a lost opportunity for new dancers who want to learn to dance tango and for the existing dancers who want to dance with them.  

It is also true that I find class dancers stiff in dance; worried about all the things they aren’t doing “right” as if “right” was the standard currency in this improvised social dance.  It is - but only between other class dancers, but then they don’t do much true improvising. Such dancers hardly embrace - look at the photographs taken in most British milongas - of couples, one awkwardly “driving” the other, usually at a distance, the other awkwardly tolerating it.  They don’t dance the way other dancers, class-free dancers do.

No surprise that when class types encounter the resistance they feel in social dancers who they try to force into “moves” they find them a bit stiff too.  But to me class dancers  can feel robotic, contrived, insecure.  They feel stressed so they try to push through that by pushing you into the moves they’ve learned. While they are dancing they are simultaneously trying to remember their classes on Technique, Grounding,  Posture,  “How to Embrace” (!), Connection - as if they have a hope of connecting with all that going on in their heads.  They feel and look worried as the contradiction between the dancing they want to do and the thinking in which they have been instructed finds expression in that obvious tension.  They think about dance instead of listening to the music and responding to the individuality in the partner they are with their own.  You only need to give the other person your attention, to listen, to dance with them, not at them not by doing moves done to them.  We can do  it untutored, naturally if we only turn off the jabber of the class teacher who wants us to do it their way.

I had a message this evening from someone I don’t know yet.  It finished  “I'm very much of the learn by dancing "school", and learning by experimentation.”  It’s just lovely to hear things like that.

The boys, by the way, walk, run, stand move like this all the time. It's natural.