Honesty vs. mere stylism

Charles Rennie Mackintosh's motto. Original words: J.D. Sedding (nineteenth century architect).

Colin

Buenos Aires, March 2016

When trying to decide what to do next, one solution is to consider what you would do if you only had one more chance, one last opportunity.   Here, I realised it would be the post that most often comes to mind. 

"One night I danced with my last Airbnb host in La Catedral in BA. A 29 year old Californian, my height, brand new to dance. We were there between about 2100 and 0230 and he started dancing as the girl. By the end of the night he danced two hot Di Sarli tracks so persuasively well and nicely as the guy that I began to seriously think he could actually dance beforehand and had been kidding me he couldn't until I realised how absurd that idea was. What was all the more surprising was that he didn't know the music, yet danced it sensitively, respecting the phrases. Not the QP [Quinteto Pirincho] tangos exceptionally, because I figure you really have to know those, but many others." 

- Correspondence, March, 2016

Colin was a lovely guy. He was young, gentle, quiet, friendly, reserved. He was vegetarian or maybe vegan. He loved animals. He went running in the city every day.  He was slim, fairly tall, about my height, mid-complexioned and had eyes of a striking colour, maybe green. In the street I might have taken him for a local.  In person he had a laid-back way about him which was familiar.  He was from California where I had worked on several occasions.  His voice was west-coast American with sometimes a faint foreign intonation or at least his words could have an unusual distinctness.  He was smart, well-read, spoke fluent Spanish, had travelled long and widely in South America.  He was softly-spoken and had opinions.  

Later, he quoted the novelist Julio Cortázar. I asked:  "So what are you? A tourist? An exile? A visitor? " He said:

"I think I ask myself all the time. I don't know I would define myself as a tourist, exile, or visitor." He said, wisely, "In general, I try not to define myself at all :)" He said he felt more at home in Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, had even a sense of loyalty, "but at the same time, the fact that I wasn't born/didn't grow up here frees me from some of the criticism/frustration/responsibility I could feel with society here [Argentina], or in Ecuador". Finally, he said, "Let's go with "privileged migrant."

He was refreshingly open and easy to talk to.  There was something independent about him and something if not defensive then slightly vulnerable.  I first met him when, a week or two before I came to stay, I went to see the apartment where I had already booked a room.  He was easy, casual, polite, almost business-like.  It was, after all, business.  The apartment was in Buenos Aires.  He was looking after it for a family friend.  I rented a simple, en-suite room there through Airbnb for my third week in the city. It was a large place, elegant in spite of the peeling high ceilings.  It felt like an apartment peculiar to that city. It had a sizeable patio where I looked out over the rooftops and soaked up the March sun into my cold British bones. Like all the places I stayed, it was in the city centre.  This apartment was on Moreno in the low 2000s, a street that had a bus route but was quiet.

Colin was interested in dancing tango. He had started to take private dance lessons not long before I arrived. From his perspective it seemed to have gone so-so. From mine, it sounded as though he was already 'thinking dance', as in thinking, not feeling.  Other problems with teaching this dance aside, paying someone to dance tango with you tends to take the real feeling out it.  Before leaving the city I introduced him to a slim, attractive female dancer from Europe.  She was about his age and worked in a tango guest house around the corner.  She wanted to be a performer but I thought it might be good if he knew someone nearby who danced and indeed whose job was to guide visitors towards their dancing experiences in the city.

Colin and I chatted every day in the small kitchen, often as we prepared our food.  Sometimes we talked at length, about politics or books or travel. Then we went about our own affairs. We had talked about dancing together or about going out dancing.  It was tricky - the guy initiates things in the milongas and there was the host/guest dynamic, yet I was older, more experienced in that dance.  For whatever reason, nothing happened.

My time in the city was short.  I went to the milongas often til 3AM. Colin met friends and went out with them.  We were not the same age.  Sometimes I went to afternoon dances and continued on to evening milongas elsewhere, usually with 'champagne'.  Towards the end of my stay I sometimes went to three milongas a day:  in the afternoon, in the evening and lastly from about midnight to 3AM.  I probably overdid things, feeling unwell and collapsing on one of the three legs of the plane journey home.  I came round, surprised at the feet of remarkably placid passengers, whereupon concerned staff administered oxygen.  During the day I explored the city some - not enough - and went on walking tours. I shopped in the neighbourhood for stationery, food and saw the local costurera.  Janis showed me around, as did Alejandro, my second host. I bumped into my first host Juan on the street and went for coffee, then I met his wife Josefina for coffee in one of the grand cafes. Thus, time passed. My departure date loomed. 

Colin taught Spanish.  He was interested in different ways to teach the language. We had talked about video interviews with native speakers about local topics specific to Latin American cultures. I said that many milongueros did not speak much English.  From a language learning point of view I thought it would be interesting and motivating to hear, in their own words, their thoughts about how they had learned to dance and what they knew or had heard about what milongas were like in the Golden Age of tango decades before.  Or indeed just to hear from them about dancing, the milongas, the codes, tango and Buenos Aires.  The Practimilonguero interviews do something similar but are not edited specifically for language learners. To pitch any such idea, first Colin would have to meet the milongueros and where else but in a milonga, sitting with the guys. Such became the plan. That day we danced a little in the apartment before going out. It was fine, a bit awkward, naturally. It wasn't going to be enough to dance together in a traditional milonga.  The main aim was for Colin to experience, while in Buenos Aires, what that was and to meet some of the men. 

We went to Salon Canning on my last Wednesday in the city, three days before I left.  This was where I first met Roberto. There were far fewer people attending than on the Sunday edition. Colin didn't seem to be doing much chatting.  He was the youngest person in the room, several decades younger than many there. I danced some and thought we should leave.  Colin said he wanted to go to La Catedral. I was surprised.  It was known to be touristic, for young people, definitely not for people who wanted the traditional milonga experience in Buenos Aires. But Colin was young and he had just had the traditional version.  Though he didn't say so and was unfailingly polite I had seen Colin had not had the experience we had hoped for at Canning. This now was what he wanted to do and it was only fair.

I was relieved when Colin took charge of the buses, which, with my inadequate Spanish I had only recently plucked up the courage to use and certainly could not have done so ad-hoc, but I was dreading going to this venue.  It had been on my 'Avoid' list. Before going to Buenos Aires I contacted Janis. She said: "You haven't told me how old you are. It makes a difference in where to dance." To give an idea of what I liked and didn't, my reply included that "I would find this degree of darkness depressing. I don't know how a milonga can work like that."  That is a video of Salon Catedral. Janis replied that it was an 'underground' milonga. It was clear she never went there.

It turned out that one of my most memorable dance experiences in Buenos Aires and ever was with one of the most unlikely people - my young, practically non-dancing Airbnb host -  in one of the most unlikely places. It was also nothing like the traditional Buenos Aires dance experience for which I had made the trip.  It was this very unlikeliness, its randomness together with its success that might lead me to consider the existence of a governing power whose traits would include an interest in the learning experience, an antipathy towards fixed mindsets and a well-developed sense of the absurd. 

We arrived early. The place was dark, cavernous, hippy, vegetarian, empty and none too clean.

There is a better photo here And in daylight. 

The music was barely audible. Nobody seemed to know how to turn up the volume. There was no-one to ask besides a shadowy figure in the cafe who didn't know, so we started dancing under the speakers. I was enthusiastic because if nothing else the music was good and the partner willing. In unpromising places, experience says: grab the good tracks before the music slides, so we danced, in swapped roles. The tracks were not necessarily in tandas, especially at the start.  There was initially a disproportionate number of tracks by Enrique Rodriguez but I like his orchestra and had found him under-represented in the traditional milongas.  The tracks were nearly all good and gave way to more good variety from other orchestras. We stayed a long time, ate, danced, watched an excruciating lesson led by a prancing, haranguing guy in a white string vest who I might have seen in  La Marshall, a well known gay tango club. We watched the disastrous social dance fallout that came from the class. We danced again, watched some musicians in a performance that had, refreshingly, nothing to do with tango and danced some more. 

The night was warm. We paused, cooled down and kept dancing. Occasionally we swapped to traditional roles then swapped back. During those hours I realised Colin's dancing was evolving. Perhaps that is why we continued so long.  And it was fun. 

There came a point, late in the night when I realised that dancing in traditional roles with Colin had become a pleasure.  But how could a beginner guy be pleasant to dance with?  I knew I was choosy and hard-to-please.  I realised Colin was following the music yet he didn't know the music.  I asked him if he was sure he didn't know it, perhaps from living in the city where you hear tango in all sorts of places. He said no.  Besides, it couldn't be true for so many tracks.  Yet he was indisputably dancing the phrases with musical attentiveness.

I had seen this once before in a child. I had taken my son and his friend to a tea-dance the previous winter.  They were about eight at the time.  I had danced in 'train' fashion with the little girl behind me for only perhaps a track. When we swapped and she led our 'train' I noticed immediately that although she had never heard the music, although she 'only' walked, and although nothing had been said she was intuitively dancing the music: moving and pausing, as she had seen me do, at the end of the phrase.  If only more beginner men were as attentive.

Colin had come so far, so fast my mind couldn't keep up with what the body felt.  The mind had no experience with which to make sense of the situation.  It warped, tried hard, bizarrely, as it will, to make sense of things.  Perhaps this was some elaborate trick.  Colin could always dance. He was just seeing what I would do if he pretended he couldn't.  More rationally I thought back to the awkward start in the apartment and realised either Colin was a virtuoso actor or that something else must be the case.

To explain the musical understanding that Colin, as a beginner, seemed to have, some people would say he had 'natural talent'. That may be true but I suspect this experience is within the reach of many . I think like the little girl in the tea dance, he picked up the cadence from me - just an experienced dancer who knew the music. This, the entire focus on the partner, the music, the sensations, and none of the harmful distractions of thought or dance 'moves' meant that he naturally absorbed the music into his body and transmitted it to me. And he was young, which helps. 

I said to Colin: "You are nice to dance with.  Why not invite that girl to dance?" She was closer to his age.  He seemed stuck between desire and reluctance. Perhaps he was a little shy and who could blame him.   It was all so new.  He found a girl himself, then, "No", he said.  She had a boyfriend.  I watched on tenterhooks as girl after girl passed by and Colin looked, seemed interested but didn't invite. I understood, but I was leaving soon and thought he should dance with others before then.

Perhaps I was now thinking of the evening as the start for Colin's milonga life.  He danced so well I assumed he would continue.  Now I think I need not have been so ambitious for him.  Perhaps I should have just enjoyed the present time we were sharing.  But I felt something like a guide at the time and a guide who was about to leave.  If he was to go on to dance  - and I don't know if he did - I think what happened next was ultimately to the good because dancing tango with another man is probably the most useful thing a guy can do.  It gives such insight and these guys always make better dancers.

There was a dreadful dancer who had been in the class that had now finished. But he was hanging around, dancing as much as he could. "Look", I said, "Ask him. He's got no-one to dance with, he wants to dance. It will be good for you."  Beware, though, people who know what is good for you.  "Tell him you both need the practice."  So he did and the guy agreed. It was, as I had expected, grim. Colin took the woman's part.  The guy was rough. Horribly rough. Colin came away, reeling. Through my guilt, I said,  "But you learned something about what guys can be like, no?"  I think he was too shocked to say.  Perhaps he also learned it can, for the woman, feel worse than it looks.

It seems obvious now that if you share a good experience with someone there is perhaps no need to point them in the direction of a bad one. They are bound to find out the best way:  for themselves.  But I still hoped he would dance with another woman.  If he was going to have a bad experience I wanted to be there for the first one to help make sense of it and so that the beginner does not, as is so common, blame themselves unnecessarily.  I had seen in myself and many times in others how hard it could be to make sense of bad experiences alone.

The night spun on. Finally, I set up a dance with an Italian woman, not a beginner, though no-one in that place danced well.  I asked her if she would give my new-dancing friend the chance to dance with someone else. She agreed. It was difficult for Colin.  I knew it probably would be. He danced well with me because we had understood and adapted to one another over the time we had been dancing.  But there wasn't much time and this was his chance to dance with another woman while he had some support.  He didn't know anyone in the milongas, or anyone to go with.  As when I took my children to Carmen, recently, I felt at the time the point was not necessarily to enjoy every moment, it was to have the whole experience.  At the opera it was the experience of that music, of being in a concert hall with others, of conducting with your finger, jouncing up and down in your seat to the March of the Toreadors, of ice cream at the interval, of, in a good example of conflicted parenting, being stuffed quietly in the darkness with pacifying sweets, of running around madly with your friends afterwards on the ensuing sugar-rush.  In Colin's case, the experience included seeing how different people can be. I tried to get video but it was too dark.

Colin did blame himself soon after but I had been there too and could say something about it.  Shortly afterwards, by email:

C: I gave that Italian woman a horrible dance as we waited

F: Actually, no. It's true the guy feels the responsibility to give the chica a good time. I think that's the natural way of the world. But it's a two-way thing. I set the dance up, [she agreed] and if she didn't really want to dance with you, which is to say embrace and connect with you for any of the many unguessable reasons that people don't want to dance with each other - then it would never have worked no matter what you'd done. The fact is, in the right circumstances, with the right person, you can dance and really nicely. It's still valuable to dance with all sorts of people - guys and girls in either role. It's worth it for the ones who are great to dance with and the less fun ones are still good - for the insight.

Surprisingly, La Catedral, that environment I had been so keen to avoid was a large part of why I think Colin was able to learn to dance that evening. It was dim, spacious, there wasn't there the same sense of observation you feel in the traditional milongas. You could feel anonymous, almost invisible. I have danced with enough people, in enough places and enough ways to not be particularly self-conscious in either role which is necessary to be able to help someone else let go of that sense.  Maybe these things are why Colin could let things go in the way that you need to to be able to dance. That is why I enjoyed dancing with him in both roles after just a few hours. 

Two and a half years on Colin remains the best example I know of a guy who has learned to dance well, in a very short space of time. I have danced with many other beginner guys but never for so long, never with the commitment I had to Colin and never so successfully.  That came about because of the unusual circumstances of that evening.  The fact that we went out spontaneously together for the evening had something to do with it.  He wasn't just some random beginner I came across in the milonga.  Then there was the environment of La Catedral, the music, that he put his trust in me and that because he was light, young, embraceable, a nice guy and the desire to dance together a lot was mutual. That isn't usually the case. Beginner men  - actually a lot of men - are often middle-aged, heavy, lumbering, controlling, forceful, with varying degrees of deafness to the music and the partner or some combination thereof.  They have also usually been in class before you meet them.  I can only remember one other beginner guy who had Colin's unimpeded sense of the music and the partner. He was also young - years younger than Colin -  practically a boy.  He was tall, embraceable and, now I think of it, had a similar sense of independence and vulnerability. But I could never help but think of his mother - who sounded great - when I danced with him.

There was one other guy whose dancing transformed in an evening, in practically one dance, who was not young, but more of him perhaps another time.

So that is why that evening was special - because of Colin himself, because it was all so unexpected, and because I have not since found a beginner guy in the right environment, with the right conditions where it has been so clearly demonstrated that a man can learn in an evening to be musical and lovely to dance with. 

Colin did a wonderful thing which made all the difference to the dynamics that evening. I am not sure that I am generally the trusting type, not least in not wanting to expose my execrable milonga Spanish to people I need not.  I am happy to ask for necessaries, even chat as best I can to polite, half-comprehending, non-English speaking locals, which is, after all, the best way to learn a language.  But compared to reading and listening I am a hesitant speaker.  I have always found it odd when I have encountered people with the same native language speaking together in a different one and have shied away from foreign language conversation clubs between native English speakers.

Perhaps Colin sensed these things because, over drinks and food in La Catedral, somehow, with remarkable patience, he coaxed me into trying out my conversational Spanish.  It started awkwardly, like the dancing, but now his sureness and quiet encouragement led me on.  But I blindly led myself into the unknown past tense.  He didn't send me back to stick with the more familiar present tense because life isn't like that and he wasn't a conventional teacher.  Without so saying he encouraged me not to give up and helped me through.  Like the best teachers, he let me cast about myself first, looking for different ways to say what I meant, only intervening, subtly, unobtrusively when he judged I really needed help, never giving too much, just a word here, a phrase there so I could use them myself.  It is a very light touch that is needed to help someone find their way.  A guiding touch, a deftness.  Colin had that.

There was a genuine desire to help on his part and on mine to learn.  Yet as I agonised unnecessarily, helplessly over my mistakes, my beginnerishness, I had a sense of things being not just about learning Spanish.  Even if I couldn't have quite articulated it, I knew then it was as much about showing and learning and trusting, swapping roles. As guide, as learner, he did it with grace.