Healthy environment, healthy growth and practicas

 

Saughton gardens, Edinburgh (and my mum)

Years ago, I was taught the metaphor of growing, not building a tango scene.  A healthy environment, just like a healthy, tended garden, leads to growth, flourishing, and diversity in harmony.  

Someone remarked to me last week that the Edinburgh milonga scene had no new people coming through.  This was not altogether true - I have seen new people but then I haven't danced there since 2019, and barely then, so 'new' is a matter of perception.   I was pleased that they noted specifically that dancers were not coming through the local tango classes.  This has always been true.  Beginners are the most lucrative market for tango teachers so it pays to keep beginners as beginners in class.  You do not want to lose them to the milonga where they will get ideas of independence, discover the pleasures of social dancing and forsake class. Once someone has been a beginner for a year or three they can graduate to Intermediate and learn more to keep them out of the milonga, thence Advanced etc.

Now, if native teachers were to teach classes about Argentine culture, history, the stories of the tangos, that I might pay for. But I suppose that market is too niche.

New people in the Edinburgh tango scene tend to come through the university and occasionally through people who move here for work.  Young and youngish people from university are incredibly important.  They keep the scene fresh, with an energy.  They are often popular dancers.  They can be open-minded  - there are young women learning both roles just now - an initiative of the Edinburgh Tango Society.  I think the idea is to broaden the offering possibly in the hope that this attracts more people, but I am not quite sure of the logic at this point.  

It is a truism that class seldom leads to social dancing, certainly not good social dancing.  I reckon it takes a guy about ten years, and often closer to twenty to undo the harm of class and start to dance well.  It can also take women a long time, depending on how long it is for them to stop "thinking dance".  I have tried to make this point about classes and social dancing many times over the years.  It is fair to say it is an unpopular theory.  It's unpopular among classgoers, who think that to learn things you need to go to class.  It's very unpopular among people who have spent years in class, because they have invested so much time and money there.  Most of all it is unpopular with those who make their living from or have their sideline in tango classes. 

The university did run tango classes although when I went years ago they were significantly less of a class than most classes.  There was much more "find your own way", which I notice students are quite good at and, key, there was partner choice.  It's only now though, after two years, that the university is starting back again.  

The best way for people to learn to dance socially, is with each other; not beginner on beginner. Even many beginners realise this is a terrible idea. No, beginners with experienced dancers. Seeing which experienced dancers will do this is usefully clarifying in itself.

Teaching is probably suited to choreography for shows or competition.  That requires athletic style training and memorising routines.  

Often learning to dance (without explicit teaching) is fine, in the milonga, only a lot of people can't help but teach.  Learning to dance in the milonga is especially fine when it is women learning with experienced men or women in the guiding role.  Most guys, if they learned the woman's role first, would then find the guiding role much easier. But a practica - a place to practice and dance without interrupting more experienced dancers - is a good and relaxed environment for new people.

There used to be a sort of unofficial hour of practica between 7-8PM at the Edinburgh Counting House milonga, before the milonga proper.  But that early hour seems to be taken over by teaching now. Both times I went to the milonga recently, there was teaching going on.  Because I live far away I like to go early and leave early.  But it is really frustrating when an hour of your dancing is knocked off by teaching or dirge-like "early hour" music.  The first time, the teacher, to my shock, 'recommended' a guy for me to dance with. I already knew him well but we do not dance, with good reason.  It was a flashback to that hilariously awful afternoon at Tango Fabrik El Sur, in Antwerp when the teacher tried to set me up with a wholly inappropriate guy.

The informal practica in the Counting House used to be great.  It is a relaxed and tolerant environment.  From 7PM, some people did come to practice with a partner, quietly, always low key.  Around 8PM when more people started to arrive, this faded unobtrusively into the background, giving way to social dancing proper.  

The idea with a practica is social learning:  less experienced people learn from more experienced people.  This is the traditional way people learnt in Argentina, but it has never been particularly popular here perhaps because of the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant view of "working hard" at things in a certified "hard work environment", like class. So the grip of the class mentality has been too strong.  Surprisingly few people ask others if they will show them how to dance and I wonder why that this.  Whenever I have asked though, I have never been turned down.  

Recently, I was chatting with a more experienced dancer about the practica concept.  He agreed it was important and noted we see it even less now than we did previously.  At this point a teacher was teaching very overtly during the milonga.  The more experienced dancer asked if I would lead him and of course, I agreed.  With tact and subtlety, he offered to show me something that did not come as smoothly to me as I would like.  I was delighted and we moved outside the room. He was helpful, very patient and adapted to the way I needed to learn.  Then the teacher came along and that was the end of that.