Codes and cues

Clear lines of sight at the last milonga I attended; Glasgow, Oct 2019

I sent The Erring Eye to a non-dancing friend.

"It was perfectly clear that some kind of awful experience was underway, but I had no idea quite what it was - even after finishing the piece.  Some bloke spurned a dance with the sort of all but imperceptible Sotheby's gesture which then panicked you into dancing with someone half as tall as you?"

This was almost spot on so I was puzzled about "no idea".  Maybe it was because the piece was written for a dancing readership who understand a lot of the milonga context that isn't explicitly mentioned.

Told bare, it sounded like a storm in teacup. But it wasn't just from being strung out from culture shock, fatigue, heat and homesickness after landing, alone in a city 7000 miles, as the crow flies, from home.  Perhaps the piece did not convey the hothouse atmosphere of the milonga, the intensity, the focus beneath the seemingly relaxed atmosphere and the social behaviour.  The consequences of small mistakes seem huge in that world behind the velvet curtain.  Tango can be vampiric.  It has sucked people over to Buenos Aires,  giving up lives, partners, families, careers; sucked them dry and spat them out, hollow-eyed. 

All the senses are in play in the milonga.  We are, after all, animals.  Buenos Aires prides itself on being a place of refinement, education, culture and so civilization there is, in its milongas.  Dress, behaviour, presentation, adherence to the social codes, are of the utmost.  Nevertheless, it is a very cultivated veneer.  Sight is the sense used for making dance arrangements.  Inside the milonga everyone sees everything.  Within this environment have evolved a whole set of non-verbal accepted cues and behaviours.  In 'The Erring Eye' things went so wrong because the codes were not being adhered to, as they should.

First among these codes, it is unthinkable that women explicitly invite men in traditional Buenos Aires milongas.  I once saw a European female tourist try to dance in the man's role with another woman mid-evening in El Beso club on a traditional night when it was packed.  A fight nearly broke out.  These two were told in no uncertain terms how to behave, but they resisted.  Things didn't go well at all and they had to admit defeat.  On another night around 3AM, when a different traditional milonga was emptying and only after my local female friend had got permission from the easy-going host, I danced in the guy's role with her. I joined the ronda -the anti-clockwise movement of couples around the floor - behind another couple.  Because he was dancing, naturally, in a forward facing position the guy had his back to me.  As he invited his partner into a giro, he momentarily faced me in the turn.  He was considerably smaller and recall even now can recall the look of shock and disapproval on his face as he glanced up at me.  

I think local women as much as visitors know that men hold a lot of the cards.  Men can tend to dance more and that power of initial choice is considerable  But men by no means don't hold all the cards. Women dancing the traditional role don't have to feel disempowered. I don't, or very rarely but then I do have the option of dancing both roles. Women can send a "mirada", a noun peculiar to women which means to suggest, by look, that she may be available for dance. "Mirar" - not gender-specific - is "to look".  The man then invites, also by look: "un cabeceo (n) / cabecear (v)". This is a term specific to males unless in e.g. Europe or less traditional milongas, a woman dances in a man's role.  "Cabeza" means "head" so he might nod his head down in a question, or raise an eyebrow or smile.  The woman then accepts with a nod or smile or looks away, so there is no loss of public face. The power of refusal is also certainly a power.  I have found more refusal among British women accompanied by embarrassment or shame than in their Latin counterparts who seem to see it more as a power or a right.

Only once she has accepted does the man rise and come over to her.  Only when she's certain he means her and not, say the woman behind her, does she get up.  Otherwise, she risks being  "toast", too keen, popping up too early.

The difference between a look that signifies "I am available to dance" and "I am inviting you" is subtle, fractional even, yet absolutely distinct.  

The non-verbal invitation is a practical system that has evolved over time.  It fulfils two functions.  It allows for a woman's refusal probably without anyone else noticing.  This is especially important in a macho culture.  It is also very different to Britain in the 1950s where a guy might walk up and potentially risk the walk of shame, alone, back to his seat or the woman would feel obliged to accept his direct invitation.  

This practice of walking up or shudder-inducing hand-proferring, as an invitation, is seen as gauche in many milongas and in some is explicitly or implicitly not tolerated.  The best enforcers of this code are women themselves. Beginners tend to be keen to dance so the places where you tend not to find the male hand-offer are where there is a level of milonga experience and competence among both sexes. 

The non-verbal invitation's other function is speed and efficiency.  To understand that we will backtrack a little to the end of a tanda (three or four tracks, depending on the music, danced by the same couple), whereupon the guy escorts the woman back to her seat.  This fulfils two purposes:  the guy shows his care and respect for the girl and the girl has a chance to get her bearings, after say, a dizzingly lovely dance which ends in a state so separate from the reality of the room that she literally cannot immediately orientate herself. Experienced, usually older men know this.  The reaslisation that this has happened is a great, unspoken compliment to the man's skill as a dancer, yet it is extraordinary how many experienced younger men have yet to arrive at this knowledge essential for ending the dance well. They mistake accompanying the woman back to her seat as just an outdated tradition. I have found nothing though that is superfluous or accidental in the milonga codes.  

This practice of escorting women is absolutely typical in a traditional Buenos Aires milonga and in many milongas there because that respect for women is part of the culture.  In Europe I have only seen it in better milongas or among individual men.  Alongside other things, it is an invaluable clue as to a man's dance experience and ability. It happens more in the south of Europe than in the north.  Being left on the dance floor after a dance, especially after a good dance is a horrible feeling.  "Like dumping a girl on her own after a night out," said a friend.     

The man then returns to his seat.  Some non-tango, interim music called the cortina (curtain) plays for a couple of minutes while this is going on, 

In good milongas, everyone at this point is seated. It is both good manners and essential for the success of the next stage.  There is then a second or two of delicious, anticipatory silence one might hear a pin drop - and then the next track begins.  In those first few seconds of the new track - and not before - non-verbal, visual arrangements to dance are made. Only usually poor dancers make arrangements to dance before they know what the music will be.  Good dancers match music to suitable partners. 

If people stand, it blocks the line of sight preventing these arrangements which, in the large dance halls of the capital can be across significant distances.  Short-sightedness is a distinct evolutionary disadvanage.   That is why good venues, and there are many outstanding venues in Buenos Aires, are rooms with plain lines of sight and no obstruction.  If a guy had to chase a woman round the room to invite her he could lose half the track and a couple usually wants to dance the full tanda together.   That is the second reason dances are arranged visually and why they are efficient.

 

"Have I got the gist? Or is it more serious, and in fact much closer to sexual assault?" wrote the non-dancing friend, referring to the events of "The Erring Eye"

He had and it wasn't sexual assault but in Buenos Aires the inkling of something potentially dangerous, or more dangerous than in Europe is never too far away.  In Buenos Aires if you leave a milonga with a guy "for a coffee" it is well known to mean one thing so you had better know what that is.  The Argentines are up-front about these things.  They have long had the telos, the albergues transitorios or dedicated "love hotels".

But doesn't the great game between men and women have that sense of if not danger then something uncertain, something hard to put into words?  Girls used to grow up with that idea of uncertainty regarding men, pulling petals off daisies as they chanted a rhyme.  No doubt men did and do too even if they don't resort to mutilating flowers.  Of course that game and uncertainty can go too far.

On the whole, in those short three weeks, I found Argentine men tactful.  No doubt, they also knew how to spot and try to exploit a sexual opportunity better than any nationality I have ever come across, or possibly they are on a par with the Italians.  There are strong historical links between Argentina and Italy.  Because of immigration, the porteño (Buenos Aires) accent sounds like a toned down, Italian form of Spanish.  Argentine men, especially men from Buenos Aires are known in other Latin American countries as the players of that continent. But if you were clear about your boundaries they could back off and sometimes hold no grudge.   In dance it was different.  If you refused a guy, that was it, he never asked twice. Almost never.  

So the men would escort you off the floor, stand aside when you passed, show formal respect of the highest order, a respect largely vanished in Europe in the name of equality; but they would do so with, often, a glint in their eye.

Before I went, someone warned me:  "They're not like the men here.  They're wolves."  In Buenos Aires, give a guy an inch, by which I mean, let him keep hold of your hands between tracks - and he might try to take that inch, with teeth.   He is very possibly disreputable.  But there are always exceptions.