Yo soy el tango

I spoke to Geraldo the following week about an article on the Córdoban piropeador Don Jardín Florido. Then weeks passed, maybe months before I returned to that milonga and only because I was in the city that day. I seldom go to dance now, though I still like to listen and watch.  In any case there was almost no-one there.  The music was superb - classic track after classic track. It is often the way early on, before DJs start to get ideas.  I looked up the lyrics as the tracks turned over. Tango after tango mentioned ansia, or las ansias or related ideas - yearning, longing, craving, anxiety. 

Seeing my new habit, a friend remarked on some parallel between life and what often happens in tango lyrics: tritely summarised as 'guy cannot get girl' or 'guy has lost girl'. It is mostly about what he does, not she.  The friend elaborated "....and so [because of whatever happened] he wants to kill her".  

"Only," I said "It is often not like that. Isn't the protagonist often stuck in some stasis, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner trapped in some "life in death" or rather "death in life"?  So many tangos are about ansia, desengaño, rabia, or loss and death or a sort of living death as the (inevitably male) protagonist cannot reach the woman of their dreams or of their past. They speak to the woman as through a glass, darkly. Often he sees her but she does not see or even hear him. 

Sometimes, as in Enrique Rodriguez' La Gayola, he does come to her, in this case apparently literally, in his rags, after prison and the soup queue not to pledge his undying love because how could he be worthy of her love his present condition.  But of course that is all past.  What he still has is his pride and his anger at how he was treated.  How can he transform himself from sap into someone with power?  By forgiving her! 

solamente vine a verte 

pa' dejarte mi perdón. 

And of course it wasn't his fault that he killed someone, it was hers!  "Pero me jugaste sucio" (you played me dirty) - the betrayal which drove him to murder.

As I sat listening in the milonga, reading the lyrics on El Recodo there, suddenly, it was, in a tango that was all about tango - the genre personified in song: Yo soy el tango'.  We know it best from the 1941 Troilo / Fiorentino version although I think I heard it in the Caló version, recorded in the same year with the inestimable Alberto Podestá. Where better to find out the essence of tango?

The compás drives on the track, as is typical of so many tracks with the Troilo / Fiorentitno combination and even more so in the in strumentals.  And there it all there, right down to the dagger, the murky suburbs, the recurring motifs of pride and betrayal. In this song, here are the tropes so common they have become cliches. I shivered to read, in this song all Geraldo had described: 

Hoy,

que tengo que callar,

que sufro el desengaño,

la moda y los años.

Voy, costumbre de gotán,

mordiendo en mis adentros

la rabia que siento.

I could see him again, pulling that downward fist turned towards him, the set of his jaw that no Brit could pull off, as he described the pride and suppressed anger, suffering and desire from long ago.

And then those last lines:

Pa' qué creer,

pa' qué mentir

que estoy muriendo,

si yo jamás moriré.

Why believe, why lie that I am dying if I will never die? 

And that is as hopeful as many tangos get...

Translation of Yo soy el tango.

Translation of La gayola by Tango Decoder.

Machismo

Italian immigrants: Archivo General de la Nación Argentina, via Wikimedia Commons

In the milonga I chatted to a guy from another Latin American country; we'll call him Geraldo. I had seen him for years but we had never danced.  I think neither of us had particularly wanted to but I could imagine the reason might be that our respective prides might be of such size as to never admit the possibility of an unequal desire to dance - in which case, the question of whether to risk it or not would not arise.

So it was with caution that I approached him one evening and asked if I could join him for a moment. This is not something you do to Latin guys in a milonga & would be unthinkable in an Argentinian milonga. Presumption of that sort is seen as a very British thing.  I recalled a British girl who'd earned the humiliating nickname "Toast" in a Buenos Aires milonga.  She jumped up too early from her seat when she thought a guy had invited her.   But this was an informal milonga in Britain and he more than knew our ways.  

He looked a little surprised, curious, amused. He is often in the milongas and those types don't give much away. He gestured towards the seats. I wanted to ask about piropos and chamulleros and discovered in him a lively intelligence.  He had an interest in and knowledge of culture and history, a depth of thought and perception, a willingness to discuss subjects not necessarily straightforward and a somewhat detached amusement. It was a great pleasure talking to him. I wished I had not left it so long.  

He said: 

G:  Tango can't be understood without understanding the history of immigration to Buenos Aires. It informs the music, the way it is danced. The immigrants who came, largely from the south of Italy were male, poor and proud. Brothels aside, their one chance in the week for intimacy with women was to dance. So the music that developed was about longing, sadness, fear, loneliness, anger and social criticism. 

F:  But what do you mean this story "informs the way tango is danced"? 

G:  Those men couldn't show how much they needed and wanted that intimacy. It would damage their pride, their self-respect. 

F:  I see that and the few girls who danced in milongas would have been protected by the male relations of the families and, in the less salubrious venues, by pimps. It was dangerous to try anything on. 

G:  Absolutely! So, tango became a very close, intimate but restrained dance. 

He made his hand into a fist, turned it towards him and pulled down, turning, at the same time his expression into a very Latin expression of machismo, and of strong feeling, repressed. He continued,

G:  It was about intense feeling but none of that could be visible to onlookers. 

F:  There are a lot of lonely people, lonely men today, I said. Over the years I have heard some men say they have no-one. Ever. "You have your children to hug" they say, "I never touch anyone." They have no affection in their lives. It is sad and a bit scary in a way. What does that do to someone?

G:  Are they dancers?

F:  No. Just ordinary people.

He speculated:

G:  That's why there is such a resurgence of tango today
.... perhaps meaning, it filled that chasm of loneliness, of lack of affection.

F:  But where did the link to 'chamulleros' come from? 

G:  The Italians are like that, great 'chamulleros'. 

F:  To survive as a very poor immigrant, I suppose it helped too, to have the gift of the gab. 

G:  But it is an arrogant thing, he cautioned.

He was echoing a New York times piece which early on claims not just that Argentines are arrogant: "Argentines have long taken pride in their arrogance" [my emphasis].  My new acquaintance said the same things: 

G: They think they can talk better than everyone else, they can get what they want. Argentininas think they are better than everyone else. There is a joke in Latin America: "How do you kill an Argetinian? Drop his ego from a great height." 

But he looked faintly conflicted or at least a little exasperated with these Argentinians.

I have lots of Argentines friends, he stated, not quite defensively. But Argentinians are known as the 'chamulleros' of Latin America. When you meet them you have this - he made a gesture with his chest, that machista attitude, a kind of physical fronting up, of being about to lock horns. It was an entirely male, primal gesture. You have to show them that they are no better than you.

But something in the gesture told me that if other Latins felt that need to prove themselves they had in some way, already lost. I thought of some of the nicer Argentine men I knew and said I had a soft spot for them. They are easy to talk to, often sweet, I said. He shook his head in "I told you so" fashion. He meant: You can't trust them.

I realised that perhaps this might go towards explaining some of the lack of trust that Juan spoke of and that I noticed is so evident even on the street in Buenos Aires. You will not find names on the buzzers of apartment block doors in central Buenos Aires. In the centre, ordinary streets like Chile and those around with bakers and small shops will have bars across the windows from which you are served.  Locals I chatted to on guided walks said the same thing, always with sadness:  No, there was no trust.  Yes, people were superficially very friendly but it meant nothing.  Soledad had also said just that.

Geraldo ran through a list of Latin American countries, saying how lovely their people were, finishing with the Colombians who he said were particularly special. And then he remembered the Mexicans who he said were the most hospitable. Argentinians were almost exclusively not on this list. 

Argentine-bashing, however, is according to that New York Times piece, a popular pastime in Latin American countries. It may not be entirely unjustified:

"The Argentine daily, 'La Nacion', recently published a series of axioms that are commonly believed by most Argentines: ''Buenos Aires is the only city in the world that has libraries open all night. Argentina has the best-looking women in the world. In Argentina, you just throw some seeds on the ground and they'll grow. Argentina has the best beef in the world. An Argentine can solve any problem with great genius.''

Geraldo had told me, earlier, that piropos were compliments and as I had already learned, that they could also be a form of street aggression. But, I said again, caving easily, It can be lovely to chat with Argentinians. They give compliments, which might just be ends in themselves, which might not turn into chamuyo. The chat isn't of any consequence but somehow it makes you feel feminine; it ignites that male - female energy. Dancing with some Argentines, some of these dangerous, Latin, chamullero types could be a sublime experience where the entire world drops away for the time that you dance together; where nothing else matters besides moving to this music with this man whose name you probably don't know and don't need to know. When Isabella talked about the milonga being her fantasy world, this is what she meant. When I observed that "possibly disreputable guys can be very nice to dance with", it was the same thing. 

I asked Geraldo, Isn't there a contradiction: the way women feel so wonderful dancing with some of these men and yet they are so machista? 
- No, he said immediately, shrugging his shoulders. We treat women well and with respect, with much more respect than the British treat them. Faint scorn twitched in his face.  I wondered if he was aware of it. Look at the dance, he said. It isn't equal. The man guides the woman. The roles are different. We respect women and treat them well, as long as they...obey us.

I stared at him open-mouthed.  Did he squirm ever so slightly?  The pause before he then said he was speaking about Latin men in general caused me to wonder if this was a deliberate provocation but it was impossible to tell.   The idea those men have of women isn't real, I objected. The women they are thinking of are on a pedestal, they are inventions. I switched to Italian, for examples: La mama, la fidanzata. These are idealised, easily stereotyped women.  I thought too of the women in Money by the great prose stylist Martin Amis in whose work, particularly the later work, the themes of freedom and control never seem distant.  Throughout his career he has been called misogynist in work and in life though he describes himself as a gynocrat.  But if you use stereotyped female characters to set off the unpleasant traits in men for comic effect, how different is it?

These women have no true equality, I said. They don't have the range of emotions, capabilities and limitations of real women. He looked both amused and uncomfortable.  That's a big subject for another time, he said.

Rules, shoes and milonguero style

As I was leaving the milonga in Edinburgh a little before 10pm on Sunday I saw a guy walking, head down, casually along the street towards me, smoking a cigarette.  I looked to him to nod an acknowledgement, but he didn't look up.  I wasn't surprised.  I hadn't dressed up for the milonga. I was fed up with that and besides I had been to a lunchtime barbecue and had had things to do in Edinburgh, an hours drive from where I live.  I had freshened up but again, I hadn't even intended to dance.  Still, I had seen a few friends and ended up dancing a little.

From the street light I saw he had black hair and olive skin. He was smartly dressed in trousers, a jacket, a shirt and, if not a swagger, then a certain, confident, easy style. He looked quite different to people one crosses on the street in Edinburgh and yet he looked almost at home there, strolling along, smoking. I had the strangest sense of seeing something very foreign and yet familiar. It was Buenos Aires. It was like a little patch of Buenos Aires, walking down the street. He was just like a guy one might come across in one of the younger milongas there. I realised it was a visitor, a guy with much presence, whom I had noticed, with his partner, in the milonga that evening. I had assumed, from his looks and style he was Argentinian, a view strengthened when I heard him speaking castellano to another visitor, a friend who lives in Buenos Aires. She had seen him around in the milongas there. Apparently, he now lives in the north of England. I didn't ask but I expect he teaches there. 

Many guys in the traditional Buenos Aires milongas have what Janis describes in number one of her Ten Commandments, a certain style. Don't misunderstand me, I can't bear commandments, "thou shalt not's", rules, anything that smacks of people trying to control others but that is not to say that I disagree with these. For one thing, nobody wrote out the milonga codes and said this is how it is. They evolved. They are essentially unwritten and the usefulness of writing them down is offset by the danger of people thinking of them as rules. When they start to be seen almost as legislation, that idea of controlling others in class or even in milongas has an 'in'. It is there in some of UK milongas where people talk about 'lanes' of dance instead of a ronda, or in milongas like one (now defunct) famous for its floorwalkers inspecting the dancing. But the 'commandments' on Janis's blog are trying to convey ideas and number one says that milongueros - Argentinian ones at least - have a certain style. Ironically, style is of course, individual, and nothing to do with rules. The men dress up perhaps to impress but respect is also part of it. Self respect and respect for the women they hope to dance with. This style of the guy I passed in the street was different from that of the older milongueros I met in Buenos Aires but he was decades younger. 

I remember in Salon Leonesa, on Humberto Primo in Buenos Aires, seeing a tourist dancer, a Brit I think, scrabbling about in the foyer.  In front of everyone he was changing his street shoes to the expensive dance shoes he brought in a drawstring shoe bag, the name of the shop emblazoned on it like a justification. If you absorb the essence of those commandments that Janis wrote, it is hard to imagine one of those older Argentinians doing that. I never saw them change their shoes. I don't think they did. Janis confirms it here. Nobody with any dignity or style changed their shoes in front of others. Not women flashing their knickers or cleavage to the other side of the room and certainly not the Argentinian men. Any respect you may have for those guys would drain away like water down a plughole were you to see them doing that in the salon or even the foyer.  I use the conditional because such a thing just wouldn't happen. It would be a contradiction in terms. There is a certain kind of guy, an Argentinian guy, maybe an Italian too, or a Spaniard who dresses smartly, not ostentatiously, years from lessons, if he ever did them, who it is impossible to imagine changing his shoes like that in front of everyone. It would contradict something fundamental about his dignity and the respect accorded by others to that. 

I can think of a very Argentinian guy I have seen change his shoes in the salon. Except perhaps he has an insouciance which I associate more with entertainers than Argentinians. He teaches which goes towards explaining things. And he wriggles into his shoes somehow, like a shape-shifting seal might wriggle into its skin. His humour, his insouciance is like a slick coat around him, protecting him, letting him get away with things others might not. He is warm and welcoming to all. It goes with his job. And yet, that dignity, that reserve, perhaps machismo even, that many Argentinians - at least those who dance - have, is still there underneath, or perhaps it is a cape he pulls on. One never knows with actors. He somehow pulls of both. The exceptions are always interesting.

Janis, in an unforgettable, sharp, concise, remark on her blog which I can no longer find, said, years ago, that the only thing worse than seeing a guy changing his shoes in the milonga was seeing him change his socks. When I think of the guys in Edinburgh who might, in a different way, be described as milonguero, what is common to them? None of them in fact, do dress up.  They wear casual, ordinary, nondescript clothes.  It is a different kind of milonguero, but this Argentinian was the same.  They have all been fixtures in the milonga for years, people you almost expect to see there and wonder where they are when they are not. They are guys who are popular for dance with women whether or not they dance much.  They have an uncontrived reserve, an aloofness, a dignity. Perhaps they did, but I don't ever remember seeing them changing their shoes in public.

Earlier in the evening I had gone to say hello to that friend who now lives in Buenos Aires. She used to host a milonga in the north of England where she is well known for that milonga, her voice, her strongmindedness, generosity and most of all her indefinable style.  On trips to the north I had asked after her and over the last year or two had heard the news of her move.  She sat now in this unfamiliar milonga, many years past retirement, diminutive, well dressed, as ever, hands clasped in her lap, looking at the world from under her trademark false eyelashes with much quiet dignity. As she told me her news in her inimitable voice like smoke from northern chimneys, she kept an astute eye on her young taxi dancer, one of three she uses when she goes out to dance every night back in her new home. And why not? It costs a fortune but I don't have children, she said. Don't justify yourself! I replied. It's your money. Do what you like. Enjoy it!  Why were they here?   The young man had been curious apparently.  Despite some health issues, every night in Buenos Aires she dresses up and dances. I hope I can move like that at her age. She may not be typical of women in the milonga.  But she is atypical in life, too.  She has style.  And she has something else, hard to define, that is connected to living for the milongas and to that reserved, dignity. For me, that's a milonguera.

Now you see it, now you don't

Happy Easter!  I think for many these days this means Happy Spring! This weekend in the UK, weatherwise, we have most certainly changed seasons though yesterday with the temperature at 27 degrees it was as if we had leapt right into high summer. Many of us, even in Scotland, were at the beach yesterday. 

I have some Holi powder which I hope we will use with our visiting friends before they leave. I know it is past the official day of Holi but after a cold April, it is, at last, the kind of weather in which one wants to celebrate both a new season and old friendships.

Recently I saw one of Tesco's takeaway recipes: "Helen's Homecoming Lamb", the recipe hung around a human name and a photo and a story to make us buy more.  We don't eat lamb any more because of my youngest. He stopped is because he is tender-hearted. During homeschooling, around this time last year, we went to see lambs being born on at Arnprior farm near Stirling. It was a ticketed affair, about £50 for four, all in, for an hour. Considering that you can pay that for a family day out at many attractions I thought, beforehand, it was a bit steep. In fact it was more like an hour and a half and very interesting. We had a tour, saw at least two lambs born, learnt a lot about sheep farming and we each held lambs only a couple of days old. Swathed in high viz, a plastic apron and wearing plastic gloves (apparently as much to protect the lamb as the child) my younger son remarked, with, I felt, clear-sighted justification: What's the point, if we can't really feel the lamb? Besides, his lamb was active and soon escaped. 

Yet the experience marked him for since then he never has wanted to eat that meat. Recently, though, in a moment of madness, I used lamb for the first time in a year.  It was a large batch of shepherd's pie.  I made it thinking, perhaps we would eat it without him but we always do eat together and the pies lingered in the freezer.

Leaving the supermarket, I was reminded of my son's conversion and of the vegan butcher story recently in the news. "Before I just looked at it as a piece of meat going on a dinner plate but then you see it as an animal and not just a steak."   That's how it is for some of those who don't like to eat meat.  From there the leap to "And what right do we have to use animals at all?" is shorter, while the arguments around health and land use pile in too.  

So what about the shepherds' pies? I wondered if I should just say it was cottage pie but dismissed that as like giving a Muslim a bacon sandwich. Three out of four of us ate it.  It was an unusual recipe, spiced with apricot and cumin and tasty but I wished I hadn't made it.  Because it is as the butcher says.  With lamb we don't even disguise the name and at this time of the year, the real things are being bottle-fed by children in petting farms or gambolling in the fields all around with all the joy of new life.  

A few days later we were petting 'X factor', the sheep (2017 when he was born was year 'X' apparently), and Harmonica the Highland coo and her friends at Scone Palace. I asked the lady feeding them:

-  Do you still eat meat?  

- Oh yes.  

- It doesn't bother you? 

-  No, you just have to separate the two things.

But some, like my son can't avoid seeing the one as the other. 

There are other things like that.  I learned about Magic Eye decades after the phenomena came out. It was a few years ago in Edinburgh's Camera Obscura and world of illusions, a great place for a rainy afternoon, having as much history as pure fun. The magic eye pictures there are good quality and, after a few moments meditation, I saw the second picture and was hooked. Now you see it, now you don't. 

It is the same concept as Aut sensum, aut non. Some see that dance class is a business strategy and not the way to learn to dance socially. Some don't. Some see that dance class is exploitative and "thinking dance" is harmful to dancing. Some don't. Some get that dancing tango can be a meaningful, wordless connection between two compatible people, even between strangers and, watching them, some seem to feel dance as a largely mechanical movement around the floor. 

About this, I feel like my son feels about lamb: no way.  Perish the thought of being "led" while I merely "follow" like some grotesque artificial creation with the body of a human but the heart and head of a sheep. I would rather sit and listen to the music all night than be, even for a tanda, a song, a minute, even for a few seconds, part of some cog-like contraption lurching about the floor. 

Yet so many men will inveigle women with smiles and chat, social pressure or [shudder] proffered hand into just such a cage. Imagine, sentient yet trapped inside a moving machine, unable to get out or to get off, as in some dystopian sci-fi movie. Thank goodness for those two words in a tanda which mean escape and freedom: "Thank you!" And yet many women hesitate.  Oh, no, it would be rude! I reply:  But what was he, pressuring you into a dance you didn't want? Or:  Do you think a guy who liked you enough to embrace you in dance would want you to be in a dance you weren't enjoying?  And they agree.  But then they forget, or brush this inconvenient truth under their mental carpet.  No wonder so many pretend there is any such thing as a real dance. Not to do so would be to think too much, to question, to ask things like: Why do I accept dances I don't really enjoy?  What do I really enjoy?  Isn't it weird to do things you don't actually enjoy?  And, If I don't enjoy them, what am I doing here? Or, Can things change?

Closed events

Linlithgow Burgh Halls

I want to pick up on what MOCKBA said about the 'committee vote' issue regarding closed events.  I understand that objection to be that there is something distasteful about the selection of attendees to closed events like marathons or encuentros.  One argument against these is that milonga culture is traditionally open to all who understand how things work in a milonga.  Obviously if someone behaves in a way that is going to physically harm others they are likely to be ejected, as one would expect, but otherwise, milongas tend to be open. 

There are variations.  I have heard about milongas in Europe that are more or less homophobic or can be on certain days or when certain people turn up.  In Buenos Aires at least three years ago you were asking for a lot of trouble dancing with the same sex in a traditional milonga.  You can argue that view is old fashioned, politically incorrect, illegal, out of step, out of date.  But attendees in these places tend to be over fifty, often well over sixty. They are not going to be around forever and there is also a view that they are protecting a traditional cultural form.  Buenos Aires is not London.  It is culturally,  a very different experience.  

I have less tolerance, repulsion even, for what used to be a milonga in Sheffield in the north of England that wanted to say it was a little corner of Buenos Aires in Sheffield.  I thought it sounded lovely but what it meant in practice was that they wanted to run a milonga so traditional that women dancing together was in no way acceptable.  So said the very uptight organiser to me.   If it was that traditional they wouldn't have teachers over all the time, because traditionally, recall, people did not learn to dance tango from dance class teachers.  Even today young Argentinians will say that people learned to dance at home, with friends, in parties.   That milonga no longer runs for, I would imagine, obvious reasons and has become only a practica where same-sex dancing apparently is OK but I cannot now imagine going.

In Spain and in Argentina there is disbelief and disgust for the kinds of selection to closed events that you hear about in other parts of Europe. Some organisers demand that you have or open up your Facebook accounts so they can poke about among your friends, to see if you know the right people! You have to answer intrusive, ridiculous, questions about such as who is your favourite European milonguero, how many encuentros you have been to and so on.  It's horribly undignified and demeaning.

But in Europe, people say we do things differently here.  Tango, and dancing to it, emerged in Buenos Aires to fill a need.  I tend to view the emergence of encuentros and marathons as a response to a need.  Local dancers are not finding the music and dancing they want locally, or even when they travel to other local milongas.  So, they have made something different - something which seems to work and for which there is a market - at least for now.   But as Mockba's comment elicited, there is a world of difference between being invited to an event and applying to go to a closed event.  In one, you have the rigamarole, practical disadvantages and humiliation of selection and in the other, you don't.  Plenty of people though, don't like closed events and many  - probably the majority - can't afford that sort of trip.  I hope that encuentros and marathons are a stop-gap until there are more and better local milongas, especially in the cities where you would expect to find them.  But in Edinburgh, there are nearly half a million people, the tango scene has been going for over twenty years and it still doesn't have a regular Friday or Saturday night milonga so it is not a destination for a weekend of tourism and tango and there are as yet no signs that it will become so.

I made a brief foray to the Bristol (UK) encuentro in 2014 which ran I think twice.  I did not enjoy it. I felt trapped and stressed and out of place. It was a hothouse atmosphere with huge DJ egos and people stopped dancing to applaud songs I just thought it weird to applaud - weird to applaud at all actually. I never saw that happen after a tanda in Buenos Aires. It required registration but it was the first time they ran it so I doubt they were that fussy. After long delay I started going to events requiring registration last autumn for the reasons others do, outlined above. But a lot of these events struggle to find enough people to go. The Marbella event in November which required registration had a hard time attracting people. I was one of a scant handful of non-Spanish residents who went - we were possibly only two, me and a prickly Swede. The Murcia event was better but hardly packed to the gills. I had a random message recently on Facebook from a stranger inviting me to his festival in Spain. If people struggle to find attendees for open events it could be a warning about difficult it can be to get people to turn up. Similarly, the milonga weekend in Ramsbottom must have, sadly, left the organisers heavily out of pocket.

A view in favour of invitation-only events is that it is an opportunity to get your friends together -  to see and dance with the people you like and that you rarely do see or dance with. Who would censure a private party?  Milongas can be harsh, hurtful, toxic, stressful environments, especially I think for women and yet you can also find wonderful experiences.  So it would not be surprising if people wanted to create private, more intimate events with like-minded people where the atmosphere was more likely to be enjoyable and cherished as such.  You can rarely find though, enough people locally to make this viable.  A milonga is exciting partly because of the strangers, the friends of friends perhaps, hence the attraction of international, invitation-only events.

One thought against regular closed events is that there is an impact on the local dance community because a private milonga isn't quite the same as a private party among just friends.

Here is an illustrative example of a closed encuentro, Sueño de Escocia, that was run locally here in Linlithgow Burgh halls in central Scotland last year. The low-key website that there was, has gone but there is still video.  I was not invited. I knew the hosts before they moved to Scotland.

Five or six years ago I started dancing occasionally at the special events at Eton, attended at the time by this couple and many of the better dancers in Britain.  This couple was very different when I met them there. They were in a set of confident, polished people who all knew one another and were very choosy.  Next to that set, I felt like the poor, visiting relation when, after one of these events, a large group of us went out for dinner.  I was ignored by that group and if spoken to, heavily patronised.  Some aspects of those events could be a bit like that, pretentious, monied, very southern, and it is why a lot of people from outside the area stayed away or did not return.  But those milongas were also very popular.  The floor was good, the floorcraft was generally good for the numbers, the ronda was slow but it was usually packed and the music could be good.  They were  - and still are, in a new location - open to everyone which brought criticism of gender imbalance but that didn't stop people coming.

Now that this couple who danced there  - Kiwi, not southerners - have moved here, I go to the occasional milongas they run.  It is the best around, bringing in people from Edinburgh, Glasgow  - the twain never usually will meet - and many other areas.  The floor is good, the venue fresh and nicely presented, the food is healthier and better than average and the hosting is warm.  I preferred it when the host DJd but I think he prefers to dance!

I know by sight probably most of the people in that video who dance in the UK.  I don't know why I wasn't invited and I didn't give it much thought at the time.  Perhaps because one of the hosts had spoken with me about closed events earlier in the year and they knew I was not that keen. Perhaps because I'm just not "in" with any of that group in the video - neither the Scottish lot nor the English group. It's a set, a group, an in-crowd.  You have to be part of it.   You could 'apply' on the website but the vibe and rumour were that attendance was by invitation - it was unusual that way.  Most advertised events are either straight up about it being invitation only, or they say you have to register (meaning apply and for many events, and in some countries more than others, go through a hidden selection process).  In this case it was not clear.  Perhaps they were hedging their bets in case not all of the people who were invited accepted and they needed a pool of applicants as a top-up.  But who wants to go where they are not invited?   And yet a lot of people do feel hurt. They hear about something, they are not invited, they don't know why, they feel hurt, excluded, not good enough. One feels for them but personally, I just find it usefully clarifying.  If a friend had behaved unpredictably, I might feel differently but that is not the case.

These hosts have used various venues for their local milongas, open to all, as they search for the right place.  Some might say it was slightly distasteful that they used a local milonga to do a dry run of the venue which they then used for the encuentro.  But perhaps it was nothing so calculating.  You could say they tested out the hall on the local oiks who in the overwhelming majority were not then invited to the special event. You could say that was elitist.  But then, testing the venue was a sensible thing to do and I can't say that I blame them. You could also quite plausibly say that the milonga was a standalone event and nothing to do with the encuentro.  And we, milonga-goers were fortunate it was in a particularly attractive venue. You would be hard pressed to say that the Linlithgow encuentro was flagrant, in your face and a kick in the teeth to the locals. You could not even call the website 'advertising'.  It was all very hush-hush; perhaps most locals did not know it was happening.

Sueño de Escocia was so quietly organised I only heard about it on its opening day, from a friend in England who was also not invited.  Later, I heard too from someone who was very keen to go, applied and didn't get in - a lovely dancer, also in England. And I heard from a so-called friend of the organisers, again in England, who also wasn't invited.  I only heard these stories at different times, by complete chance, from a handful of people but already you can see that a number were put out or upset. Equally, I'm sure that the 150 odd people or whatever it was that went, had a lovely time. What will undoubtedly be true is that things are clearer to those not invited.

I went to those hosts' next open milonga in December.  I was on my way back from Glasgow and wasn't really in the mood.  I peeped in to see if there was anyone I wanted to dance with, else I would have gone on to do some local tourism. There wasn't, but just as I had decided to go elsewhere, I was spotted and warmly hauled into the room by the laughing organisers.  It was as nice a welcome as I have always received in Scotland at their previous events. They are good hosts and good dancers. So, do I think there is something wrong with invitation-only events and this event, illustratively? No, I have no criticisms. The hosts ran a party for their friends, for the people they thought would gel and it looks like it went very well. I think that's to the good. The fact is these places have a limit on space. Why shouldn't they get their own friends together if they want to? It's the same in people's houses. You have a party. You can't fit everyone in who you wanted to come or you don't think person A would go so well with that mix of people so you see them in other places or have another party and invite them next time. I think that's just normal social life. I have friends I see in the milonga, friends  I see in restaurants, friends I email, friends I see just at sailing. I don't get upset because some of my sailing friends meet up privately because that would be weird.

There are obviously some issues with holding a private event and closing the doors to the locals or to say, that nice dancer and nice person who clearly wanted to go and couldn't. But in this case these people moved to Scotland and they had a lot of friends from the places they lived in or danced in before.  They wanted to invite them, see and host them in their new area.

An event where you have to apply and be selected according to hidden criteria is a very different creature compared to one to which you are invited.  Think of it in dance terms.  In the latter you know you are wanted, as with a dance where you are invited by look.  In the former you are asked to essentially walk up and beg....and still you may get turned down! Not very like milonga culture at all.

Levels and labels

A friend wrote recently about 'levels' in dance. I have written a bit about it in other posts, especially in Notoriously Unfriendly and in "Why we are often confused about what it means to be “social”" - a different view but perhaps not explicitly.

My friend was referring to 

"the pernicious stratification and segregation by 'level' inflicted by class teachers. 'Level' being of course which level of class level you are in, as a decision of the teacher, not anything to do with your level of accomplishment in dancing. This isn't just to put the advanced material on the other side of a paywall, Scientology stye, but also do the same to past joiners. It monetises past teaching 'successes' by turning intermediate and advanced classgoers into product for which newcomers must pay.

I once heard a teacher refer to her 'class ladder'. Unintentionally apt, I think, given a key characteristic of a ladder is that once you're on it, the only way off is at the top ... or bottom."

See also: Learning naturally: most people won't. So the idea is that thinking of dancing tango, for instance, as something where people are assigned to levels: beginners, improvers, advanced -  is not helpful, is pernicious even. It doesn't just apply to learning to dance tango, it's anything. 

Putting you in a level is usually a teacher's decision. We can't assume that the teacher has your best interests at heart, especially not where money is involved. Just look at Trust me: You need me:  it is a transparent business strategy.

It is fine if you know and trust your teacher. It is the same again, with doctors. But I don't know anything about my doctors at all. Why should I trust someone I don't know? Just because of their qualifications? Yes, I trust a doctor over Joe in the street but what does that say? Not much. And in fact, I don't trust my doctors much and some I trust far less than others because I've known them on my account and my children's for well over ten years and have often found reason not to trust them. So it's not as though I started off not trusting them. I am not particularly inclined to be distrustful but I should mention that ours is a practice with the worst reviews in town.

So if we can't even trust a doctor that much on what basis should we trust a dance class teacher who can set up with no qualifications whatsoever? Doctors are at least regulated. 

But let's say our teacher seems nice. They smile. They nod. They say all the things you want to hear. They are reassuring. They have years of experience. Builders who rip you off almost routinely in the UK, not to mention second car salesmen, are the same, but leaving all that aside for convenience let's say all seems good. 

Recall, the idea of dance levels is a commercial construction. It suits the teacher to have a concept of levels because it makes money. The punter want to get to 'advanced' so you stay and stay in class, 'advancing' when the teacher says you can, until they decide they probably aren't going to make much more money out of you or eventually you twig that there are better ways to learn. The idea of other more experienced dancers as 'product' (and free advertising) is insightful.

But are you "advancing"? How do you know?  It depends on what the goal is.  What are you buying?  And if you go in buying one thing, is that thing you end up staying for?  

It is difficult where you don't know the brand. With no qualification, no regulation, this is really all about trust. So what do you go on when deciding who to trust with your exchange of money for whatever you think you want from the experience? Do you just pick the local one? The one with the best reputation? The ones who travel and perform? Plenty of people say certain teachers are great. And they can be all sorts of things: charming, funny, entertaining, hospitable, great with groups.

Unless you are going to the class for these things, they are beside the point.  The punter probably thought though that they were going to learn to dance Argentine tango.  Once they realised there was social dancing and there was Strictly style dancing they probably wanted to dance socially but they do not make the connection that they are being taught watered down Strictly type moves, or at least moves more suited to performance than social dancing.  Performance dancing is suited to 'levels' in a way that social dancing is not. 

But perhaps you don't want any of that. Maybe you just do want to work your way through the levels of dance class because that's what you want to do on a Tuesday night - and why not?   Or perhaps you started class because you wanted to learn to dance tango (whatever that meant) and ended up wanting to just stick with your group because for whatever reason you enjoy it and again, who is to censure where and how you find your pleasure? Some people like Bovril. You can love tango class on a Tuesday and no one can say anything against that. Or perhaps you do start wanting to learn to dance tango in class (because that's all you know about), and then that changes because you hear about milongas and you want to learn to be someone other people want to dance with. But recall the moral of The Frog and the Nightingale: don't mimic self-styled teachers who try to woo you.

But if you want to learn to dance tango socially, the people to ask about that are the people you see dancing socially, and who you see or better still, feel, dance well.  That is an independent judgement, by you.  Most teachers are not social dancers.  They just don't dance socially, or they don't do it much.  And of those who do, even fewer dance socially, well.  They do a different thing - they may perform and they teach dance class which I can say with confidence -  having done class and danced socially and having been to many teachers - that dancing socially and dancing in class are not the same thing at all.  Not remotely similar. One does not lead to the other.  To try and say that you can learn to dance Argentine tango socially by going through the levels of dance class is like saying you can learn to climb to the high level of a diving board only to dive into an empty pool.

I went to Newcastle the weekend before last.  On the Saturday night I went to a milonga.  I was in a good mood, the community was small. I didn't want to get into an early funk from not dancing and getting hung up on things so after I'd danced one  - good - tanda with a woman across the room, I invited a woman down the row from me even though I hadn't seen her dance and we hadn't chatted.  I rarely do this with partners, and never with guys. She was surprised I think that a woman was inviting her, but enthusiastic.  We established that yes I was inviting her to dance and I double-checked: did she dance with women? Yes, yes!, she said.  But I'm a beginner, she said clearly.  Great!  I said, meaning it.  Now it isn't actually always great dancing with beginner women but it very often is; it just depends.  But this woman was lovely to dance with.  So much so that I exclaimed in surprise:  You're not a beginner! But she had been dancing for six weeks.  It turned out she hadn't heard of tandas, cortinas, cabeceo, ronda, nothing. She didn't know about by invitation by look but she had twigged anyway when I did it. People who are attuned just pick these things up. She felt lovely to dance with. And she was sixty-five! Now if that isn't an inspiration I don't know what to tell you.

The point is, levels don't mean anything, really, not to me, anyway.  They will to some people.  You find some - usually ones who you can tell - by the way they dance - who think they are big shots.  This type thinks levels are important.  They are often teachers anyway or wannabe teachers.  They hog the floor, they get in the way of social dancers.  They dance wildly and selfishly.  They perform - usually for themselves on the social floor where it just isn't appropriate to do so.  They are very out of place. Quiet social dancers try not to end up dancing next to them. You really want them to go to the kind of milonga where people dance like them. The main thing is to suss out who thinks levels are significant and who doesn't.  And decide which of these you prefer dancing with.  

What counts is not levels, but  - I've said it many times - compatibility.  Do you feel good with the person you dance with?  Sometimes you won't feel good dancing with someone with a lot more experience.  The person with less experience is liable to think the problem lies with themselves and their inexperience but it is often just a question of incompatability.  It is like talking to someone with different values.  You click with some people and not with others.  But do we ever talk about someone being a beginner in conversation?  Not really.  Not unless they're a toddler and then we call them...a toddler because it's more meaningful! 

This lady said to me: Oh, but I've got so much work [that word again!] to do in the classes.  

- Honestly, don't think that, I said with an all-too-familiar sinking feeling, predicting the future and thinking this could be the first and last time I was to enjoy dancing with her.  

- Oh, but I do! she said.  

- Like what?  I said, not wanting to feel tired.  

- Well, my feet don't point the right way! she said, ludicrously.  But oh how many women do want their feet pointing the 'right' way. I remember wanting that, wanting to look and dance just like my teacher in all ways, never mind that she must have been a (UK) size six and close on a foot smaller than me. 

- Your feet felt fine to me!, I said laughing.  Who cares what your feet look like? I don't care.  Why would I care about your feet?  I can't even see your feet!  

- You're right, she said, laughing.  

But for some inexplicable reason, it's what the teachers say that sticks.   

Recently, while travelling, I asked a friend what an Argentine teacher who was at a milonga was like to dance with.  I had noticed he had started the evening dancing quite quietly and had gotten ever more extravagant.  She wasn't wowed, I remember.  She dances with much better social dancers by her own admission.  And yet, she pays this guy for private lessons! Tell me, please, how does that stack up?  And this is common! 

Why don't people trust their own instincts more of the time when learning to dance tango?  We go in general I think on a combination of what we think ourselves and what others tell us or what they let us know, in many things, not just dance.  We make judgements and adjustments based on this.  We do it in our social interactions all the time.  But haven't you been in a situation in life where you have learned something largely by instinct, by experience, perhaps alongside someone else who can already do it?  Perhaps it was art or cooking, or yoga, or piano, woodwork, boat-building, computers, gardening, learning languages, running, building a business, your job perhaps - the possibilities are infinite.  People do it all the time.  They start not knowing anything and get very good without ever really putting themselves into a category of beginner or intermediate or advanced. In fact we learn to talk without ever calling ourselves beginner, intermediate or advanced talkers! These categories anyway, are far too general to be of use.  I have been dancing socially for seven years but I just learnt ochos - what does that make me?  

I am learning Spanish from milongas and taxi drivers, the Duolingo stories, tango songs, parallel text  story books and videos for children and 18 rated films.  I don't know and I don't care what level I am.  What I care about is what I can do - if I can get around or read a book, or a paper, or how much of a film I can watch without referring to the subtitles. 

One of the reasons people get stuck with these beginner / intermediate / advanced (I've even heard of' maestro' (!) levels is because not just teachers but gulled students use them, often to feel better about themselves.  It is unfortunate that people sometimes say truly dreadful things in class or at the milonga.  They can put you down, run you down, make you cry.  The cruelty and tactlessness of people in social situations is endlessly variable.  I think many don't realise the effect they have.  I haven't been back to one of my local scenes for six weeks for just that reason.  One starts feeling nauseous seeing the people who have said these things and when after years the people from whom you have heard these things said, either to oneself or to others, start to add up you just stop wanting to go.  Seeing them sours the atmosphere.  But that is the risk you take going to a place where you can end up talking to random strangers or people who are nothing more than acquaintances.  Yet random people can also be kind, complimentary or interesting.  You take a chance, going there, that's all.  Sometimes you get kisses and sometimes you get knocked.  You come to notice that the crass ones start to appear fairly friendless or they ally with a similar type.  On the other hand it makes travel attractive as people tend to be on better behaviour with strangers. 

So the suggestion is just really to unstick the labels on you.  It is a good time to do it.  Labelling people is not fashionable now.  The zeigeist is swirling with chatter about the variety and uniqueness of each one of us. While that does sound trite and ripe for the sorts of social media posts about 'positive living' that frankly make me beg to see parodies (there are desperately few!), it is also true.  Who wants to be a labelled by someone else who doesn't really know you and who has all kinds of vested interests whether they are a doctor, a school teacher or a tango teacher?  Let me know your other top professions for people that label you and have power over you... 

My son came back this week saying with some sadness in his voice that he wasn't in the top set for spelling.  What?! I said, astounded.  I say it as his mother but my younger son is a very good speller, all the family know it.  He can certainly spell eligible, better than the teacher who wrote 'elligible' on a note this week, or another school staff member who kept writing 'discrete' for 'discreet'.   He always has been good yet the schools have always given him words to learn that he already knows and they won't be told. I have tried. but it is like banging your head against a wall  But then they aren't teaching the individual.  They too are teaching the class.   No, I only get 26 words a week, he said, and the two people in the top group get 28.  Thus do we have to try to undo the damage of this kind of stupid segregation and labelling - and all for two words that he probably knows anyway.  Did he think it was fair, just, a good assessment by the teacher?  I asked.  Did he himself think the two others could spell better?  Not really, he said.  I told my son I'd never met a child who spells so well and that school doesn't really know a child or much care. But he knows that because if nothing else my kids get hit and no-one tells their mother, or the dinner ladies serve the burgers and chips with their bare hands....(Oh, the things that go on).  Your family knows you though, and cares about you.  Yet it is like the lady who thought she had to work on her feet.  Despite knowing what is true and what counts, the damage is done and keep listening to the ones who harm them.  That kind of hurt sticks because, foolishly, we put our trust in teachers, for whom we are nothing but a job.  They forget about us but the things they have said stick with us in life.  Despite the obvious warning signs we see in the behaviour of school staff and school life, school is responsible for so much of the limitation we put on ourselves in life - in every area.  A lot depends on what you are told by some 'teacher' who should be inspiring and motivating you but so often destroys the budding hope or just enjoyment we have naturally in so many things before we go to school.  Dance is a prime example.  It happened to me in  school in art, sport, maths, science.  I don't have talents in those areas but it might not have taken decades for me to get back the confidence to have even an interest in these things after having it knocked out of me at school from neglect or disregard or put-downs or being relegated to lower categories or just written off into no category at all.  

Know what you can do and what you want to try.  Don't limit yourself because of a label or someone telling you you're some level, like one of my tango teachers who wouldn't let me join a practica until I had done lessons for three or six months.  No one who truly believes in you would try to limit you.  Think of the films where the protagonist outstrips all expectation.  Did it happen because someone was telling her to stick to her level and plod along with everyone else and she'd be a winner?  Or was it just the opposite?  I think a sceptical and questioning outlook, of oneself and of others is healthy - in moderation.  The same is true of self-belief - we need it, in a balance.  But certainly one needs enough of the latter to counter the put-downs, those obvious and more sly from teachers and the co-learners they have succeeded in brainwashing.  People will try to control you and put you in categories because it suits them, for money, for status, for how they feel about themselves, for their targets, their bosses, their bonuses, for all sorts of reasons.  It is just another form of control.  But there is nothing more wonderful than seeing someone breaking free from the constraints of others, finding their own way, being themselves and thus thriving.