The 6, 7 and 8 step "basics"

Tango Notation

A: So there are no steps?

B: Well there are certain common movements but explicitly learning them especially at the beginning I think spoils the dance. It's stressful especially for the guy and it makes him think. That's not helpful for dancing. It's actually dangerous because in people who do classes, it’s usually irreversible.

A: What about this 8-step basic?

B: That thing is a travesty of social dancing.

A: And the 6 step?

B: No idea but it will be the same thing.

A: So why do they teach it? Why does it have a name at all?

B: For social dancing? Dunno. It serves no useful purpose. It becomes a product, doesn't it, something you can sell. It makes you think, rather than feel. And it makes you dependent on the teacher for whatever step they want to sell you next.

I worried about them later when I thought I saw them being taught in the centre of the ronda.

B: What was that about?

A: Oh just about walking.

B: Ok

A: And about the chest.

B: RIght.

A: And about the 7 steps.

B: The what?

A: The 7 steps.

B: Uh-uh.

A: Forget the 7 steps?

B: Yeah.

A: And the 8 steps?

B: Yeah.

A: And the 6 steps?

B: Yes.

A: Just walk then, to the music?

B: Yeah.

A: And pause, with the music?

B: I’d say so. And play, explore, like we just did.

Refuge

Mick Lisson

Sometimes refugees from class come to the práctica.  It is a great pleasure and privilege to have them.  Some of these say they love the freedom of following the music. I guess that's in contrast to the tyranny of steps.

A: But what's this that's playing now?

B:  This is vals, Argentinian waltz.

A:  Not tango?

B:  Right. We play tango, vals and milonga, and maybe candombe in the social dance. 

A:  All different types of music? 

B:  Yeah, with different rhythms.

A:  And does vals have its own steps?

B:  Maybe more like a different energy.  You often see it danced with more turns because, well, I guess that circular energy goes with the music, no? Didn't you learn about the different types of music, in class?

A: No.

B: The ronda? 

A:  No. 

B:  About tandas, cortinas? 

A:  No.

B:  So what did you learn?

A:  Just a couple of steps, often without music.

Seating

Seven years ago I wrote a series on the good conditions for a good social dancing experience (in the milonga). For one reason or another I didn't publish them. I was reminded of one of the posts - seating - while in a salsa bar last night, from where I messaged my Colombian friend:

I asked a friend who had danced salsa in Europe if no seating was the same there.  Pretty much, she said, so maybe it is a European thing.

Most tango dancers realise that, given the significance attached to invitation by look, not to mention basic social awareness and courtesy, you never stand in front of anyone sitting down. But in the local salsa bar my view was often of the jegging-clad buttocks of other women. Salsa culture, for all that it's fun, seems to be one where the idea is to be out there and proud and for attire specifically not to leave much to the imagination.

The two banquettes were covered with coats and bags. The table held an assortment of hastily placed drinks. At the other end of the long room the only other table was occupied by an elderly man watching, surrounded by more coat mountains. Neither of them were places to get dances, and indeed I didn't, much, dancing only with a couple of guys I already knew and one I realised too late, who seemed drunk or stoned.  He literally seized me as I made my way to the bathroom. Why I didn't import my milonga behaviour to manage that situation better, I don't know.  Maybe I thought I already looked distant enough to most of the guys without visibly disengaging myself and causing a scene. But salsa tracks can be long, five long minutes or more.  Sometimes you're just a beginner and new on a scene again.  Later I watched, amused, and learned anew a long-familiar lesson, as a self-possessed girl turned down his walk-up invitation. 

Kami was right. Not having a chair and a table for your drink is uncivilized. So is a sticky floor.  So is the behaviour of some guys.  Some uncivilized characteristics congregate.  But it's free, and it's local and there's sometimes a vibe and you cannae always have it all. 

No judgement on other women who danced all night. But personally I just can't bring myself to hang about on the edge of the dance floor in clear sight of guys looking for dances.  I sought refuge in chat with a tall French-African non-dancer with a reassuring presence who liked to listen to the music and watch his friends dance. 

The girls get their dances light heartedly but if I were to do it that way it would feel too much like prostitution.

Self improvement

Casa: my local salsa bar

At salsa, I danced again with a friendly, local guy, one of those who didn’t patronise, or tell me what steps we were doing, or ask me how many classes I’d done. He just danced with me. I wonder if I’m getting better, I thought, as the dance ended.

But what a European style thought that is. Isn’t the question rather: Are you still having fun?

And the answer was: Yes!

Music, pause, silence

This year I came across Miloš Karadaglić playing classical guitar.  It is his most understated playing, the playing that includes pause and silence, that I most enjoy.  The local guy I met in Salon Canning, was the one who told me about Gavito talking about the silence between the steps:  El tango está entre paso y paso, allí donde se escuchan los silencios y cantan las musas.  (Also referenced here)

Gavito, also said, apparently something like: "A good dancer is one who listens to the music. We dance the music not the steps. Anyone who aspires to dance never thinks about what he is going to do. What he cares about is that he follows the music." I can't find a reliable Spanish version or source for this but I am glad somebody said it, because "anyone who aspires to dance never thinks about what he is going to do" rings true for me, when I dance in the guy's role. 

In the woman's role I can tell instantly when a guy is thinking his dance and when he is not.  Based on dancing since 2012, I can say that most guys dancing socially here in Europe, think dance to a greater or lesser extent. Vanishingly few dance the actual music and that, I think, is a direct consequence of the tango dance class industry. You generally have to go to a country's top milongas for good dancing and even then it can be a question of hunting for it.  Or you go to the international events around Europe. Other than that you're generally looking for the one or two guys at regular milongas that can dance.

The tango dance class industry is something countered by prácticas where there are no classes, no steps taught or techniques. Experienced people dance with new people albeit some unfortunately do teach steps. Nonetheless, at the one I run I'm pretty sure the new people pick up that, listening to our partner, we dance the music.

Postscript: Just after finishing this piece I bumped into one of the new, young dancers who have come to my práctica. He said that listening, following the music in dance, rather than thinking about steps was the thing he had taken away from his visit and that it had informed his approach to the other dances he does too. Music to my ears. 

Play

Through chat with the a friend in Buenos Aires about steps in tango, came a reminder of a realisation from some years back. My eldest son, still a child or maybe at most a tween, was dancing tango with me in the kitchen. He has never had a lesson or any kind of instruction, he just picked it up, absorbed it, the way I pick up languages, the way his brother somehow picked up reading before school. Maybe it was the years lying on the floor pushing the fridge magnets about in long, mysterious games punctuated only by noises of propulsion. 

The boys came to tea dances and the Edinburgh brunch milonga when they were little so they had seen dancing and they heard the music at home.  The eldest and I didn’t dance together often and when we did it was as much play as dance. He had been good at judo as a younger child. For him the game was as much about seeing if he could leverage me off balance. His dance was full of jokes and fun and experimentation. There was also, from him, an element of challenge. Although he was always tall he was very slight. Dancing with an adult 1.83m tall he had to be quite strong.  

Astonishing was that from his dance play emerged recognised tango moves that I never do:  sacadas, and ganchos I remember distinctly, maybe there were even voleos.  There was a sense of shock, delight and amazement at his discovery, like new land. This has never happened with anyone else. Even Colin, who learned to dance well in a night, without instruction, did not start evolving tango moves spontaneously in quite the same way.  If memory serves, Colin followed what I initiated and then took over the same.  

Watching my son discover the dance came the realisation that this must have been how the moves associated with the dance began originally - through that kind of exploration.  The element of necessary challenge, of pushing boundaries that my son had that probably aided those discoveries, likely also existed between guys dancing together when the dance emerged in Buenos Aires. 

My son was the initiator of the movements, that much was always clear.  He was also the only person with whom I would routinely and completely forget who was in the male role and who the female (in terms of the position of the arms).  Over time, he distinctly took over the arm positions of the male role. 

Sometimes I wonder, whimsically, if there are other moves out there, waiting to be discovered by someone or some couple untainted by class and received ideas of what is "correct". 

So why did these moves emerge with my son? For that kind of game you need a playful spirit, which most adults have lost and no sense of inhibition, which again, most adults have lost. You need that challenging edge.  You probably need a profound intimacy, trust and physical closeness with the dance partner. And for that kind of joint exploration you both need, at the same time, creativity, curiosity, and a sense of adventure.  Put all that together as a recipe list required between two people simultaneously and it's no wonder it doesn't happen often. 

The three of us had always been tactile. We walked hand in hand or arms around one another for years, the boys were constantly in each others arms or the big one carried the little one on his shoulders. My youngest usually sat on my knee rather than a chair for at least the first five years of his life.  Maybe that’s all you need to become a natural and creative tango dancer - a sense of fun and lots of cuddles!

Dancing tango is a shared exploration in movement anyway albeit one of you is often more the guide; this was just more equal somehow, more inventive, more adventurous.  I live in hope I may find it one day in someone again.

Active peace

If there is a complexity in dancing tango - and this will depend on your perspective of what the dance is - it is emotional or psychological. Actually, "complexity", is a misnomer. It is just an apparent complexity.  Why then describe is as complex? Simply because we are not used to it and so it seems difficult or complex.

It is actually, as with steps in dancing tango, something simple. It not, though something most of us in our western societies practise much. It is being at peace in the moment, with another person, but in some active way.  Children have it.  I see it in photos of my boys as children, their easy intimacy, their shared movement, shared balance, their life in the moment. They are profoundly physically at ease with each other, as you can only be, sitting happily atop your brother's shoulders.

This emotional or psychological state that many find difficult or can take time to discover, is being at peace yet engaged with someone, perhaps a stranger in an embrace lasting long minutes. This "active peace" or "engaged peace" as I think of it, is similar to the way people describe yoga, or meditation, albeit, as far as I know, these are not usually done with a partner.  At the weekend I met someone who has practiced "Dances of Universal Peace" for about forty years who described something very similar.  

This same person mentioned they went to Quaker meetings.  They had investigated Buddhism and are spiritually most at home in Sufism. When, idly, I typed in "active peace" to Google, the first result returned was connected with the Quakers.  

What is this state, this active peace like?  It is feeling calm and delight in that synchronised movement with a partner to gorgeous music. It is being wholly in the moment, a peaceful focus on the other, on the music, on the joint movement, on the possibilities of movement opening and opening until they come to a natural close.  It is not being disturbed by unexpected things happening, but enjoying the opportunity of them. It is an understanding that some of the most profound, shared moments happen not even in the movement but in the stillness between the steps.

I add a caveat: when I am at last dancing in my heels with my very tall Spanish friend, who loves rhythmic music, I feel, finally, a rare, shared powerful energy which is not quite the same thing.  Maybe it is the flip side of the same coin: one side peace, the other energy, both though coming from a symbiotic engagement in the moment. 

Hand in hand

By Bart

Dancing tango is famously "difficult".  Neophytes often ask what the “steps” are.  Some common figures are danced but most of those thousands enjoying the dance socially do not use many.

Regular readers of this blog will know that for years I have balked at the term “guy’s role” (because of women, myself included, dancing regularly, even mostly, in that role) and also against the term “leader” for the way it diminishes that role and the perspective it casts on the other. “The traditional guy’s role” which I used before is just a mouthful. I’m going with the guy / the guy’s role here. No offense intended, it's just shorthand.

So guys use perhaps three moves, socially: the cross, the giro, the ocho. A few others might add the ocho cortado, perhaps a sacada. Some might include the volcada, or the colgada, which latter in particular I admit to enjoying, guiltily. There are others, particularly contrived, you might see on the social floor the barrida, the mordida (sandwich), the gancho, or just plain rough, not to mention dangerous, like the voleo. That’s probably about it in terms of moves you’ll see in most milongas. Those last four form the true banner of the class style dancer. I find them among the ugliest moves and I have usually inwardly cringed any time I made the mistake of dancing with a guy who extracts them gleefully from his tango toolbox.  If that's your thing, there are exceptions to every rule and tango is nothing if not about personal preference and perspective. Some people love those moves.

Recently, I met a curiously reluctant porteño, who apparently knows a lot about the lunfardo in tango lyrics.  He is not a dancer, calling us, fascinatingly, that "corrupt army" and has only once been inside a milonga. I asked him how many steps he thought there were in the dance. Eight, he replied. Why eight? I asked perplexed, but with a dawning dread. He mentioned a workshop and described that travesty of social dancing: the “8 step basic”.

If a new guy is asking about steps I sometimes ask him: What steps do you see here in the ronda?

At this point he is understandably a bit confused. So I might prompt him: Are the guys jumping?

He will say, no, they are walking.

And in which direction are they walking?

Forward, he will reply.

So that’s your first step.

From there he notes that there might be a sidestep (or a half step if it’s busy) each way and a (very small) backwards step. So, there are your four steps. No matter which way you face or what figure you are doing, you will be doing one of those four. The purpose of this conversation is not to come to some definitive answer about steps, merely to highlight, to those who believe that tango must be made up of complex steps, the essential physical simplicity of the dance at its core.  There are questions of shared axis and balance and how to not step on each other's feet and so on, but these are sideshows.

It's a great pleasure to dance with this experienced dancer and it's interesting that most of what he does is walking, forward. Actually, his first four steps I notice just now are exactly those four - side right, back, side left and forward.  Naming them actually over-complicates things.  What he does is (as far as I know) without thinking and extremely simple.  He then takes about 12 steps forward before he runs out of room and does simple, small variations of side, back, forward steps.  This guy has danced for eleven or twelve years and actually has a more extensive repertoire of moves than most.  On this occasion he chooses to use almost none of them, because they aren't necessary.  Other times, he does, but carefully and it's fun.  Here, because he's calm and not flustered or trying to rush around the ronda and do stuff, when something small and unexpected happens he sees the humour in it, accepts it, manages it and moves on. He's halfway through the song before he even does half an ocho.  He's with the music always.  That's a good dancer.  

Faced with embracing a stranger, even connecting with them in an open hold, many people, northern Europeans and north Americans especially, will feel uncomfortable. If you have told yourself you are doing this for pleasure, in, say, a tango class, or even a práctica, the instinct there is often to exaggerate the walk, or the step, to “do” it and to “finish” it, essentially to over-focus on it as though it were work. They will take a clear and distinct step. This person is thinking and doing, not listening and sensing. You can almost hear the cogs whirring. On the other hand, the dancer’s step, especially at the end of a musical phrase can be long and slow, perhaps never quite finishing before merging in to the next phrase, allowing possibilities, extending the moment. This is a grey, perhaps controversial area and depends on the music and on the dancer's own style.  My point is that some people’s whole thinking focus is “the step” even when it’s just walking.  The awareness is not on the partner and the music and so the dance feels mechanical, rote-like, pattern-like, not musical and not actually, a dance at all, but rather mere movement.

Another common symptom of fear in the new guy is he wants to run away in the ronda, get round it, go somewhere, do something, including learning a new step. He can’t be still, enjoy a pause, enjoy the moment. He finds it uncomfortable.  

A few guys are fine with this from the beginning but they are unusual and often not British. I remember being surprised to be asked directly to dance in La Viruta by a very young Argentinian.  I guessed,  correctly as it turned out, he was a new dancer.  Walk-up requests from guys are invariably turned down here but we often indulge the young and I agreed. He was not yet a good dancer, but in his embrace, to my great surprise, I encountered something precioso that I had only found in a much older dancer, a man whose dance experience probably nearly equalled this young man's age.

Sometimes the new guy doesn’t step with you, to the music, even when you’re guiding them. I am apparently a very light lead and admittedly this can be made easier for them by dancing with one of the experienced guys who are stronger and clearer.

New guys can not infrequently tense right up and hurt my arm and shoulder, especially if they insist on or really want to lead, which can be a warning sign. Both the tensing and the ignoring the music are, like the focus on stepping, problems of listening - to the music and to the partner and could well be borne of a stressed state.  Imagine two stressed newcomers dancing together - what a recipe for disaster but not uncommon in class.

I danced with a  new guy who repeatedly tried to move without making sure I was on the right foot.  This is the simplest of simple things to notice and change.  It is not an unusual problem, but it's something most people pick up instinctively, once you do it with them.  It's a clear sign you're not "listening" physically, to your partner, but just doing our own thing. 

 

For years I tried dancing with these new guys, guiding them, being guided by them, trying, wordlessly, to help them find their way, feeling uncomfortable but without saying anything. The idea that had been conveyed to me by someone more experienced was that just dancing with new dancers would be enough to help them get it. I did that and it really didn’t, or not, I felt, enough. It does tend to work with women, especially younger ones but often not with guys and the older or heavier the guy, or the more he has a fixed mindset, the less it tends to work.

I tried swapping roles and showed them whatever the issue was simply by doing to them what they were doing to me.  Often that was enough, but not always. Eventually I had enough of this. My body, my discomfort, my decisions.  You might ask why I do it at all. Why not just dance with experienced dancers?  a) There are not enough good guy dancers b) I want to bring up good guy dancers who, ideally, I can then dance with! 

For some time now, probably even before the pandemic, if it’s like that, I take them by the hand and walk with them, hand in hand, round the ronda until their arm loosens up and becomes relaxed and natural. It’s a trade-off: will they feel uncomfortable walking like that while others are dancing? But this is a práctica and so far it’s worked. It is pretty amazing that it works, considering that, in the UK, walking hand in hand is something you probably do publicly with someone only when you're thinking of sleeping with them, or you already have.  I think it has a lot to do with trust and norms change depending on context and environment.  In Buenos Aires Janis pointed out to me it's different: friends, especially women, commonly walk hand in hand or arm in arm.  

So we just walk together like that, hand in hand, side by side, super relaxed until they tune in, walking with the music, pausing when there’s a pause, not trampling on it, as it was once memorably put to me. How long does this take? A matter of minutes; usually just a track or two. Then, quite simply, they feel the difference: when they were tense and when they were not; what it is to trample the music and what it is to hear it and respect it and be part of it. And actually there still is no need for words.  And then we can try dancing.

Competition

By: Alberto G

I have begun going out occasionally, to dance salsa, learning as I go. Some friends from the milonga went so I joined them. Over the last year, through Conversation Exchange I have become interested in other parts of Latin America. Salsa seems to be important in some parts of some of those cultures.

Through chat with a Colombian musician friend and through interest, partly from tango, in the historical-cultural roots of music, the music itself became, if anything, more interesting than the dance. Exploring its origins led me to Puerto Rico, New York and especially Cuba.

With the perspicacity of a lifetime’s experience of this music and an awareness of how some “gringos” might tend to hear this music, Kami Rey Vegas wrote:

I recognised something delightful in Point 4.  Yes, people dance socially for fun, for that "expression of community life and the joy of seeing and meeting people spending time together, and sharing common spaces and traditions".  I do see that in the Latin Americans dancing salsa at our local club in a way in which their relaxation and ease sets them apart and makes them recognisable.  I don't see it in the locals uptight and concentrated in class, on getting it "right" and not "wrong" be it tango or salsa. I don't feel it when I feel "classeros", to borrow a term, concentrating on implementing their bought-and-paid-for steps or techniques in the social dance, or, god forbid, talking to me about their dance "homework".

Many Europeans, and now, sadly, even many younger Argentinians see tango, and I am sure, from what I see online, salsa, as  something to be attained, conquered, dominated. For many living in Latin America, those words will have a particular resonance and maybe that is in part, why learning socially still happens there and why dancing socially, is apparently a more relaxed affair. 

In the light of all that ambition, the gathering of people that Kami mentions, to simply dance together may seem quaint compared to the drama of exhibition dancing, or of the kind of "social" dancing where the intention is to be seen, to draw attention to yourself and to what you can do, to "get", and to "have" (power, status, attention) more than to enjoy the music and company of others.

Months before, Kami had described salsa in his country compared to in the Netherlands:

Tango teachers at any rate, will tell you, specifically, not to learn socially, because of the “bad habits” you will pick up. If people are so keen to pay for dance perhaps they should go, not to a self-styled teacher, most of whom I have not enjoyed dancing with, but to a social dancer they like dancing with, or who is recommended by other social dancers. I began dancing tango in 2012. Since then I have never seen a social dancer charge for help. It goes against the definition of a social dancer. If they did, we would call them something else: taxi dancers.  These exist, as volunteers, in the UK Ceroc world, but as professionals, in the milongas, even in Buenos Aires which is the only location I have ever seen them, they seemed a rare and private breed. The taxi dancers I have seen, dance, socially, much better than teachers, because their job and reputation rely not on selling steps and technique but on making the girl look good and more importantly, feel good, in the social dance.

So how did I find myself in a salsa class? I went at the suggestion of, ironically, a competitive dancer. While the initial, solo dancing bit was unpleasant, the part where the guys circulate round the women to practice the things learned was not, or rather, the bit where the DJ and teacher dance with you, was not.  I had, long minutes before, given up learning the steps and decided to just try to follow the guys. I had done the same in tango dance class years before until I realised it was ridiculous paying to be the prop of critical, stressed out guys I didn't want to be near anyway.  

I say I enjoyed this circulation, despite everything I know about the paramount importance of free partner choice in social dancing. When you are still learning a dance, people who can already dance (in this case, the teacher and DJ), dancing with you, sometimes trump things like mandatory changing of partners. There is a sensory overload of music, new partners, the excitement of participating in something new with someone who knows what they are doing, to guide you. That is a heady combination, especially when later, you also have a great time with your friends.

Those two guys could dance and that is why I went back to the second class. I figured at my age I wouldn't necessarily pick up the dance as a beginner, socially, because guys who can dance want to dance with women who can, particularly younger women.  But actually I know that's not wholly true.  Plenty of younger guys dance with much older women, for good reason.  At many different social dances I have seen countless women not in youth's first flush, dance with guys of all ages. Despite knowing this, at the time I believed what I really needed was dance time with guys who could dance so that I could quickly get dancing socially.  I wrote to the DJ about paying for that. He said yes that could be arranged and we would talk about it.

When I turned up he encouraged me to go to the city where they organised bigger events with plenty of good leaders, with workshops beforehand.  I was puzzled because I'd explained I was not good in class. He also said he could organise private dancing locally with the teacher and that he himself would dance with me within the constraints of DJing. None of this, in fact, came to pass. I joined the class that day and found it instantly stressful. I knew we were learning steps that almost none of the guys would do in the social dancing, as is common in many dance lessons supposedly intended for dancing socially. I hate solo dancing and have no experience with it. The less I believed I could do it, the more anxious I became and nothing hinders dance more.  I had hidden myself at the back of several rows and couldn’t see the guy's feet, even if I could have kept up. I felt stress building up inexorably like liquid approaching the top of a container. Within 15 minutes I squeezed, desperately, through the gyrating bodies and manic feet, hurtled blindly up the stairs, lunged at the bar and ordered a G&T…and then another. I tried to think of a word to describe how I felt.  It was "traumatised". 

I marvelled that something I was purportedly doing for fun had had so much the opposite effect, simultaneously wondering why I was surprised.   "Sign of a healthy immune system, I'd say" said the imaginary voice of the guy I'd learned much from about tango and life, years before. I decided to go back down to the chilly basement with the bad seating and a floor so tacky you could practically walk out of your shoes, because my friends were coming for the social. I still wasn't feeling myself and didn't expect to dance. But I did, and it was a huge relief, relaxing, laid back and fun. People were nice, friendly. They didn’t care that I was a beginner. I knew I was somehow losing the rhythm on turns or when we changed position but they didn’t criticise me or even mention it.

But not all social dances are the same.  I had been recently to another social salsa event and described it to a Latin American friend afterwards:

- "Went from a poor milonga to, briefly, a hypnotically, embarrassingly bad salsa/bachata/ kizomba night. I told the guys who invited me to dance I was a beginner, whereupon the Scots among them would, on the way to the floor, ask, I kid you not, how many lessons I'd had & during the track, would reel off the names of the moves we were doing as though this were fun, normal or interesting!"

Friend: "Wow. Well, not necessarily surprising I guess... " 

I think his view of both the attitude and at the mix of salsa / bachata / kizomba was equally dim.  

The people had been friendly and well-meaning but I doubted Latinos would have done that. In fact, they didn't. Some Peruvian musicians I had met elsewhere turned up and one of them danced with me, in exactly the way that seemed normal - just dancing and adapting to what you can do.

It was surprising that the better social had the class beforehand, but in that social, the guys, no matter where they were from, didn’t name the moves as we did them or ask me about classes, they just danced with me. The atmosphere is always good there but that evening there was live percussion which took everything to another level - this time mesmerisingly good. I noticed a Colombian dancer who'd picked up the güiro for that song, smiling, watching us dance. It wasn't a smile of pity at a newbie because judgemental attitudes like that are maybe more European. I was in the zone created by that percussion, dancing with an experienced friend, and having a great time. Social dancing has nothing at all to do with steps but everything to do with music and connection with other people - the partner you are dancing with and those around you and that doesn't matter whether it's tango or salsa.

The next time we went out I asked my friend what was happening on the turns. "You just keep dancing", he said, simply, showing me. He'd never mentioned it on the three or four other times we'd been out.  I appreciated, not for the first time, his discretion.  "Just keep the rhythm going while you turn." I tried and it worked. “There you go” said his grin.  I beamed, delighted. It was so simple and I learnt this essential point in 5 seconds, with him. That’s learning socially. That’s social dancing and I will never do another salsa class.

Criticism and feedback

@mohamedhassan22302

Recently, I have been on secondment as a trainee and on this secondment, the culture has been to criticise the newbie.  Criticism is killing. It creates self-doubt and uncertainty, cuts swathes through self-esteem and worst of all creates a climate of fear, especially fear of trying.  Unremitting criticism, is, in short, paralysing and deadening.

No doubt, the intention is to be helpful, from which you are supposed to formulate long lists of "areas for improvements" for bedtime reading. What I notice though, is that if I self-flagellate to my critics, a technique straight out of Chairman Mao's playbook,  it goes down remarkably well.  Why?  I think it's to do with power - it is an acknowledgement of your lowly status with regard to others and this makes those above you feel good. I think it is an utterly toxic and macho culture - perpetuated, surprisingly, by ardent females. I dared to say last week "Did I do anything OK?  Did you not think perhaps that X went quite well?"  The leader snapped back the savage retort: "We are not here to massage your ego".  I notice they have moved on to "your bag was in the wrong place" or "you missed off the letter 'p' in this word".  I take this scraping of the barrel as a sign of progress. 

I cannot describe the shock and sense of demoralisation I felt encountering this value-system and culture where detailed technique is particularly valued.  Outside of this environment I tutor, (I hope as more guide, than teacher) one to one, non native speakers in English and in French, I volunteer teaching English to refugees and I run a tango practica in which I largely just dance with new people and answer their questions based on my experience.  Most happily, for about a year I have had regular conversation exchange with native Spanish speakers where there is more equality and therefore more freedom.  My starting point in all these activities is always how well this person is doing - how motivated they are just to turn up, to participate, to interact, to try.  

The very last thing I want to do is to criticise them or even say, well you need to work on this and this and this because it's overwhelming and unhelpful and depressing. Conversation Exchange has been curious in this respect.  Often people say they want you to correct their English; being fairly literal-minded I have taken this, for months and months at face value.  But I suspect the reality is more often that they just want to speak.  People, I find, will ask you, if they are unsure and if they really want to know.

My mother was a great practitioner of the power of praise, and there is no one you could call less patronising. To praise without patronising is a sublime art. There is always good stuff and that is where I go from when new people rely on me.  People, when they are new to something feel good, from praise and it can be as subtle as a smile or a nod.  But if you are in work situations where you are obliged to "give feedback", there is a saying in primary school:  "two stars and a wish" - two good things and something to work on.  I find this good advice applies across the decades.

Feedback is a vexed and complex subject.  Academic theory shows that is can be be the most valuable tool for development but this is a blunt comment - it depends who you are talking to.  Hints, faint suggestions, people who know more than me taking time to ask me questions which get me thinking have been among the most powerful forms of feedback for me, personally. Unwanted feedback, feedback you are obliged to accept to "progress", from people you don't know, or worse, still, don't esteem is one of the vilest things.  Worse still is when you have to contort yourself to prove you have taken on board and changed things about yourself or your work to fit these people's perceptions of what you should do or should be. It is an extreme form of control.

Feedback assumes an inequality, someone "knowing better", which is a phrase that ought to send shivers down the spine, and in my experience that explicitness does not help human relations.  It is the people with most experience and from whom we can learn most who have least to say, least to prove, least need to give feedback, who are more inclined to answer questions, or rather, to ask them, rather than to give unsolicited advice.  Sometimes, they won't even give solicited advice, a clue that the question is wrong, or even that it is not the moment for it. We choose our best mentors, mutually, or they happen to us, fortuitously, almost like grace.

With things like dancing tango, which is so much not about feedback and analysis, but about sensation and feeling, anything, including feedback, that makes you think, is not likely to be helpful, however much you are convinced, as a neophyte, that you need it.  Mostly, what is needed, is more listening, more awareness and simply, more time.  Mostly, what is needed, is patience.