Just a dance?

Various (Initial version by Silje), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The map is Wikipedia's current assessment of world homosexuality laws. Grey means same sex relationships are not recognised. Blue means recognised, with darker blue meaning more rights.  Brown / yellow and darker are places where same sex expression is limited or penalised.   

I had met another man from one of the countries along the far coast of the eastern Mediterranean.  Hewas young, worked in a scientific profession but categorically did not want to dance with men as a means of learning the dance.  He had, apparently some other, considerably more conservative beliefs. I had been very surprised. 

- There are a lot of people like that, said a friend from a slightly more liberal country in the same area, who dances.  

- Is homosexuality in your country illegal?

- Yes. But people turn a blind eye, as long as you keep it private.  

- So if you were gay you couldn't tell anyone?

- No! Apart from anything else, your family would disown you, quite likely kill you.

- But it's not a choice, being gay, is it?

- No, but many still think it is. Or at least it can be "controlled".

- Is your family traditional?

- Yes.  I had to go to the mosque every day.

- I had to go to chapel every day at boarding school. And church on Sundays in the holidays

We smiled at each other, laughed in shared recognition.

-  I was religious until my mid twenties.  Perhaps less from belief, more from fear.

- From fear?

- That God would smite me for example.  

I remembered that feeling.

- Religion controls people, he said, voicing my thoughts at that moment.

- Do you think there are a lot of people in that area like that, believing through fear?

- Yes, a lot of people adhere to religion through tradition, habit, fear, family pressure more than belief.

- So how is it that you have changed?

- When I started dancing tango.  I began to travel, to meet people from other cultures. 

Machismo (II): its womens' fault

betoscopio, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Common

I asked a Venezuelan conversation exchange partner in his sixties about inclusive language.  

- Oh, no, he said, I don't use it.  

- Why not?

- It's a pain, 'pesante'.

- How so?

- Oh, all this stuff about amigos or amigas, saying both, Let's just stick with how we've always said it.

- Taking the masculine form of the pronoun, 'Todos estamos aquí' if there is say, a group?

- Of course.

- So you wouldn't say "todes".

- What?

- Todes.

- Todos, sí.

- No, todes, con "e".

- Oh, I thought there was a problem with your accent.  No, I wouldn't say that.

- But if you are a woman, not being well treated by a guy, someone patronising you for example, which is very common, the simple fact of someone, the woman or those present, using that language, making it normal, is a reminder that women have the right to be treated equally by men. The point is not to change every word, but to use certain words representing inclusive language to make a point about gender politics, about treating each other, as equals and with respect.   

- But 'lenguaje inclusivo' isn't going to change anything. It just annoys people.

I thought disconcerting some people was very probably the point.

- Do you think there's a problem with machismo particularly in say southern and eastern Europe, say and in Latin America? 

- Yes.

-What do you think is the cause of that?

- Well, it may seem strange to say, but it's the mothers.

- What?

- Yes, it's the mothers. In our culture, raising children is seen as women's work.  Men don't get involved.  

- Mothers want their boys to grow up macho? To not treat women well, to possibly hit them.

- Yes. Not to hit women necessarily, but they don't tell them not to. My mother was very strict on that point, that I must never lay a hand on a woman, but that's unusual.

- Why would women want their boys to grow up and not treat women well?

- I don't know.

He raised his shoulders and lifted his hands to express the fathomless female. 

- And what about fathers, don't they have any role or responsibility for these macho cultures? They are after all, the ones treating women badly.

- Yes, to a point.  The father starts taking an interest when the child is bigger, or an adolescent. He starts wanting to teach them to be men. So when the dad starts featuring in the child's life, it's around the age when the child is looking for a male role model and in walks a macho one. And so it is perpetuated.

And yet, this sounded startlingly familiar.  My own boys' father, who has spent more decades in this country than in his own in southern Europe, more or less disappeared for twelve years after they were born. I had a well paid career but I didn't want to hand the children over to a nursery and later, I wasn't impressed with the schools and I loved being with my children so he travelled and I raised the kids.  He always had a "grow up quickly, let's make men of you" attitude, wanted to pack them off to military school early (which hasn't happened). 

Still, I left the conversation with the Venezuelan, reeling.

Being or becoming?

John Hain, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the very hard things in life is accepting things you don’t understand or you don’t agree with. 

I still find it difficult to understand why the salsa DJ doesn’t want to play the well-loved classics of salsa.  He said they were boring, but he also seemed to admit that they were well-loved when he said that the Latinos would sing them, not dance them. How can something be boring and well-loved at the same time? 

Tango DJs who don't play classics don't pose the same problem. After many years I believe they, probably unconsciously, generally want to be special in some way. In short it's an ego issue. They think it's about them more than the dancers. They think it is their job to educate dancers who come out to have fun. Or they simply do not hear and see what people love to dance, what the floor fills to and what it doesn't. Or some tango DJs - and there are many in this camp somehow - have somehow reconciled themselves, like the salsa DJ, to the contradiction that well-loved classics are boring.

But the way it was put to me, and made sense to me then and now is that The music is like a familiar and loved garden.

Why not apply the same beliefs about tango DJing to salsa? Because it's a different genre. Maybe things are different there...

Maybe the clue the salsa DJ won't play the classics is in the word "commercial". Maybe he thinks commercial means cheap, debased, "popular". But when it comes to social dance, what is popular works. It's the only thing, really that works as he himself recognised when he said that if he didn't play bachata, he wouldn't have enough people to run a club night.

The real point though is not about DJing or salsa or tango. These are just context, examples. The real point is a question: should we accept illogical things, not waste our time trying to get to the bottom of them? Or believe that at bottom, there is some logic if only we can find it and like some tenacious burrowing creature keep at it until we find it?

Is there virtue in trying to learn, to find out or in letting go? Maybe it’s not about virtue, just about how you’re built.  But then, should we accept how we are built or try to be some improvement on that?

Should we be, or should we become?

Lenguaje inclusivo - Inclusive language

Ganímedes

It was the same evening that I was chatting to the pianist, a guy and bandoneon player, a woman, both from Rosario.

The bandoneonist, mentioned some word, I forget which, lets say it was estamos comprometidos. 

- ¿No querés decir 'comprometides?' I said, joking, and was surprised when they were impressed.

 Se me olvidó, ese lenguaje, ¿cómo es?, 

 I had forgotten the term for this kind of language.

- "Lenguaje inclusivo".

- Eso.

I have a long-standing conversation exchange partner who lives just within the AMBA (Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires) on its southern side. Most weeks we discuss language and related topics of culture. He had told me about lenguaje inclusivo, and that he, who is retired, uses it.

- Es un acto político, I said, remembering his wife's poem.

- Sí.

Understanding lenguaje inclusivo requires first an understanding of why Spanish is - controversially - not considered inclusive.  Spanish has a binary gender system, where nouns and adjectives are either masculine or feminine, like French, Portuguese, Italian. This gender system is reflected in aspects of the language such as pronouns, adjectives, and verb forms.  One of the conventions of Spanish grammar is that the masculine form is used as the "default" gender when referring to a group that includes at least one male, even if the group is predominantly female. 

If you have a group of female friends, you would say "mis amigas" (my female friends).

If you have a group of male friends, you would say "mis amigos" (my male friends).

However, if you have a group of friends that includes at least one male, even if there are many more females, you would still use the masculine form: "mis amigos".

This has led to calls for more inclusive language, as the use of the masculine form as the "default" can be seen as reinforcing a male-centric view of the world. As this article (in Spanish) explains at first and only in some quarters, the offending 'o' was replaced by '@' as in tod@s or 'x', so amigxs, but, being unpronounceable, 'e' was later used instead, giving "amiges", "todes".  

- How long has lenguaje inclusivo been in use? I asked the Argentinian musicians.  They conferred.

- About four years.

This was confusing.  My Buenos Aires friend (since he is not from the city itself, he rejects "porteño") said it had been in use for 20 years.

Yo comencé a escucharlo y leerlo hace unos 20 años, aprox,  por parte de ciertas personas vinculadas a las luchas feministas y a grupos Lgtb, aquí en el país. Tuvo un gran impulso desde que lo implementaron en ciertos discursos gubernamentales, en especial cuando los Kirchner estaban en la Presidencia. al principio, a mí también me parecía absurdo, pero después me di cuenta del valor que tiene, como te conté el otro día.

He started using it in solidarity with people linked with feminism and the gay rights movement.  Discussions around inclusive language increased when the Kirchners were in power.  The concept seemed weird to him at first but later he realised its value.

- And do you use it?, I asked the Rosarinos.

- Yes.

- Do you think Argentina is an inclusive, progressive country, socially?

- Very much so.

I had hear this before. Back in 2016, The lesbian couple in the queer tango club La Marshall had said, that it was very easy to be queer in Buenos Aires, surprising me greatly after my experiences of the traditional milongas. My friend in Buenos Aires had also said it was not uncommon to see, for example, young teenage same-sex couples demonstrating their affection in public and no-one batting an eyelid. Talking about piropos (compliments between the sexes) and chamuyo [deceptive or insincere flattery to some end], a guy on the Word Reference Forums had said this year:

No es que sean propios de las milongas en sí. Es propio de una cultura tradicional, en particular latina (en el sentido más amplio de este adjetivo) y que obviamente los nuevos tiempos están llevando a modificar. En el medio en que me muevo en Bs. As. eso está absolutamente demodé, por decir poco. La cultura es dinámica y abierta.Y hay todo tipo de milongas, si vas a La Marshall, milonga gay, obviamente no te vas a cruzar con las clásicas y estereotipadas conductas de varones a mujeres.

["It's not that they are specific to the milongas themselves. It's characteristic of a traditional culture, particularly Latin (in the broadest sense of this adjective), and that obviously new times are leading to change. In the environment in which I move in Buenos Aires, this is absolutely outdated, to say the least. Culture is dynamic and open. And there are all kinds of milongas, if you go to La Marshall, a gay milonga, obviously you are not going to encounter the classic and stereotypical behaviours of men towards women."]

At salsa, I asked some Colombians whether they knew of lenguaje inclusivo.  They said it has only existed since Petro's rise to power and they - one young, one middle-aged - don't use it. [Conversation in Spanish here.]

===========

Thanks to JC, for permission to quote.

DJ chat: playing classics

At the salsa club, the DJ plays salsa and bachata and everybody dances, all the time.  Of course people sit out sometimes, rest, chat, but there is always a vibe.  The DJ is known for his good music.  Latinos who have danced salsa all their lives leave distant cities and travel a long way for his club nights because of the music. 

I was puzzled though.  The salsa felt danceable to me and yet it was never the classics I knew and loved. He DJd then, the opposite way of those who DJ well in the milongas: around the well-known classics. I asked him about that.

- There are people who come and try and steal my music, he said, unexpectedly.  But they can't.  Because I never play the same track twice.

- Never? Not even on another evening?

- Never. 

And yet sometimes I heard the people start whooping at the start of tracks they appreciated, and clearly knew.  

He said he didn't want to sound arrogant but he had been doing this for twenty five years and DJing for six and that I couldn't learn in a lifetime what he knew about salsa.  

Okay. 

He went on to say there was so much salsa that you could play it and play and never repeat a song.

I asked him why he doesn't play the classic salsa numbers I know by e.g. Willie Colón , Ismael Rivera, Celia Cruz.

- I don't play commercial music.

- Commercial music?  The classics of the seventies and eighties are commercial music?

- Yes.

- What, nothing?  Never? Nothing by La Fania, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico...?

- No.

- Why not?

- They're boring, he said.  People who want commercial music can f*** off.

Wow. I had complimented him on the music more than once, but I felt warned. And I was too surprised to ask if people were not getting paid from the  music he did play. Wasn't all recorded music 'commercial'?

His line sounded familiar: DJs who avoid the classics to play hidden gems.  And yet the people were dancing.

- I could play classics, for Latinos, he said, who know the lyrics, the culture, and they could dance it, but I know they'd just sing along.

He does play other versions of classic numbers but people make covers of classics because they are really good, meaning the likelihood of the cover being as good or better, is slim.  That night I heard Lluvia con Nieve and Detalles in cover versions but it's like hearing the promise, the memory, the ache of something really good that isn't there. It's like a carrot being dangled in front of you but each time you get closer, being moved away. The music is still good but that sense of never hearing the original is frustrating.  It feels like a fire deliberately being dampened down.  

When I play the music, he said, the whole room dances.  

This was true.

- They don't know what they're doing, that they're dancing but they do it anyway.   I can bring them up or bring them down.

- So it's about power? Playing God?

- It's not about power, it's about flow.  

This sounded a bit like the DJ arc.  But despite this the guy made sensible points, about playing variety, about varying tempo so as not to exhaust the dancers.  I wanted to say what really brought about flow on the floor was the live percussion we sometimes had, but never got round to to it.

Neither of us like bachata but he plays a mix of salsa and bachata. 

- Why not just play salsa?

- Because if I did that I'd only have ten people here.

- Doesn't bachata break up the flow you mentioned?

- Yes, but they adapt. They trust me.  It's an education.  

- You are educating the dancers?

- Of course. 

- But if they are dancing unconsciously, how can you be educating them? Isn't education a conscious thing.?

- When you ride a bike, are you conscious of how you do it? 

- Well, no.

- But if I stopped you and said 'What are you doing?' You'd say you are riding your bike.

- Yes.

- So you can be conscious of something and unconscious at the same time.

This I conceded, but it felt a bit like sophistry and unsurprisingly, I couldn't put my finger on the problem.

I sidestepped the issue of whether a DJ should be "educating" dancers, or playing for them.  Instead, I said, 

But what is the point of educating them if they don't really know, or care, what is happening? 

One or two may go away with a tune, look into the music...

I wanted to say, But if you never play the same track twice, what good is that? but it escaped me.

I was still struggling to understand why he played unknown music over classics, or at least a mix. 

He must have been thinking 'These questioning, nordic women are pesante. Why can't they just be, relax, dance?' 

- If you played the classics do you think people would dance?

- People here, yes. 

- If you played  bad music, would they dance?

- Yes.

And yet I felt I still didn't really understand what motivated him to play cover tracks, music that wasn't well known.  All in all, I went away more confused than when I started the conversation.

Later I heard a great track I knew, a classic number. I forget the name but he told me when I asked. 

- It was really close to the original, I said, remembering he never played commercial music.

- It was the original, he said, mystifyingly.

"Tango is terrible"

'Tango Macho'

After the Rosarinos had played their set of live music we chatted. She had got him playing tango music. She danced, he didn't. I asked them if they found differences in milongas in different places but they mentioned nothing in particular.

I mentioned the story from Buenos Aires that demonstrated the near zero tolerance for same sex dancing there is (or was, in 2016) in the traditional milongas there.

She was amazed that such things still happened.

I was amazed she didn't know that.

Tango is terrible, he said, with a sorrowful shake of the head. I wasn't sure if there was irony there.

What do you mean?

The lyrics, they are awful. He meant sexist.

Ultimately, sexism, machismo is about control.

And yet you travel the world, playing tango music!

Ah, but not the lyrics. There are no lyrics when we play, he grinned.

Repeating orchestras

Brett Jordan

In the local city milonga there has been a DJ for some years now who can play classic tracks, quite often three or four in a row with the same feel. The problem was it was erratic but more particularly it was deafeningly loud. So it was with trepidation I returned after a long absence. Delightfully, it was not too loud.  It was even too quiet sometimes, or variable, but it was a vast improvement. I remember a Rodriguez tanda with two good tracks plus Horas, which I used to think was lugubrious but tolerate better now. The last track was Marinero where those triples from the start are annoying. Neither are top flight Rodriguez tracks. 

Then there was a tanda with Tigre Viejo, something from OTV and Malerba’s Sollozos.  I seem to remember all the tracks were good and that’s what I most care about, as long as we don't veer wildly between the eras of an orchestra or flail between the mood of a track by one orchestra and a different mood by another orchestra in the same tanda. That join should be more or less invisible to the dancers.   But I blinked in disbelief. There is so much good Fresedo to make a tanda with Tigre Viejo.

Chris's Setblog

Still, I went back when there was some live music and the same DJ playing either side. There was an OTV tanda before the live music.  OTV is fine, a creditable orchestra, some nice tangos, some lovely vals. I went to see what the DJ was planning after the live music.  OTV, he said.  Again?!, I said, the surprise doing a number on my manners.

He looked characteristically put out. Why not? It’s like saying "Don’t play Di Sarli twice in an evening".

I said nothing.

But the point is this: Pet favourites of the DJ’s apart (which should not count), In a short set of two or three hours.  D’Arienzo is the only orchestra that really bears repeating.  Why repeat an orchestra at the expense of one we haven’t heard from yet? If I was feeling generous I might say Di Sarli is another possible exception. Di Sarli is not my own favourite but that orchestra does have three completely different styles - the four good tracks from the sextet, the rhythmic tracks e.g. Catamarca and the more romantic tracks, often with the singers Podestà or Durán, numbers heavy on the violins like Vamos .  

So did I mention, Why repeat an orchestra at the expense....?

"It'll be traditional music..."

Biagi,  Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

I would have a string of hot dinners if they could be exchanged for the number of times I have had this conversation:

Are you coming to the milonga?

No, I don't fancy it.

How come?

I just don't like the music that DJ plays.

Oh, but it'll be traditional, they say, knowing that's what I like.

But it isn't. I know, from experience, they mean the music will be from somewhere between 1920 and 1970 and that by no means will it be the great classics, because that "gets boring" apparently.  Amazing that dance numbers can be well-loved for nearly a hundred years and yet some people find them boring.  Would that those people would take themselves off to, or open, a "neolonga".    

'Old' music does not mean 'good' music or even 'traditional' music. 'Traditional' means  the music has been loved and danced for decades, mostly in Buenos Aires.  The classics we hear, that are danced in cities all over the world are loved because they are good for dancing! They have not become classics randomly and there was no committee that sat to decide the 100 best tandas.    

When I was there in 2016, Dany Borelli played traditional music.  A more self-effacing guy  - who doesn't dance tango - you couldn't hope to meet.  Other traditional DJs were Vivi La Falce (who was trained by Dany), and Mario Orlando in Salon Canning (as was).  As I recall, Mario doesn't dance either.  They are of the rock generation I remember one of them saying. I remember asking Mario if he played Troilo with the singer Marino.  He said something along the lines of "No. Los milongueros no les gusta. Les gusta bailar a Troilo con Fiorentino, tiene un ritmo más marcado y les gusta ese ritmo para bailar."  Mario, I recall, did play the odd "hidden gem" - long-standing readers will recall this is not a term of approbation -  but first and foremost, he didn't play what he personally liked. He played what he knew the dancers liked to dance and avoided what they didn't.  Secondly, they liked music with a beat. Numbers where the singer comes in early, where the singer dominates don't have that and are less good for dancing or at least for dancing en pareja, in a couple and in the social ronda. I have no doubt dramatic tracks are better for showing off which means dancing selfishly. 

These were the DJs, and it was primarily Dany, who were most popular with the most experienced dancers in the most traditional milongas in Buenos Aires. That music is traditional music.

Edinburgh DJs

The local milonga scene has just lost a fairly young, new DJ Ivan, to London.  Ivan was playing some of the best music in Edinburgh recently and I was disappointed to miss his last two or three sets due to illness. The other good DJ is Tareq who arrived last year in Dundee for a year's course of study. He occasionally DJs in Edinburgh.

He has changed his style since he arrived.  He initially played a lot of cover bands and more dramatic music when he arrived because that is popular in the milongas in his country.  He was delighted to make use of these setlists for ideas, restoring my faith in human intelligence and spreading better classic music locally.  So often you lead the horse to clean water it still, inexplicably, insists on drinking the brackish stuff, although actually that’s an insult to horses they don’t deserve.

The other good Edinburgh based DJ was Richard but I never hear or see him probably because I haven’t been going out much to the city and I don’t think he does either. It’s a similar story with DJ Spyros also based in Dundee/ St Andrews.

It does raise the question why some of the best DJs (and good dancers) rarely go out to dance or DJ locally.

Discretion

Temperantia (1872), by Edward Burne-Jones

Much of this piece was drafted in February 2015. It was that year or the year before that I was taught ("learned" he would say) that the milongas are places where we don't ask too much information.

It was surprisingly difficult to find an image to represent tact or discretion or even diplomacy. There are candidates from history but many are controversial or I knew too little of them. I liked the sound, though, of the goddess Eulabeia, "the spirit and personification of discretion, caution and circumspection" (Wikipedia).  Other sources combine these traits with an avoidant and religious personality. But Eulabeia seems to be virtually forgotten now and I could find no good representation of her in art.  Similarly, Sophrosyne is a Greek virtue of excellence of character and soundness of mind. There is a paucity to the English "temperance".  Greek seems so much richer in its lexicon of virtues.

At university, in the chilly north of England, for pocket money I worked for two Italian brothers who set up and ran restaurants. They were energetic, clever and furbo although you may recall I am not a fan of this trait to say the least. In Italy it seems to be somewhat admired, not unlike the way Spanish seem to regard picardía.

 We were setting up in the restaurant one winter’s day when some young women walked past, clearly on their way out for the evening. They wore short dresses, high heels, no coats. The thing about this country, said the younger brother, who was clever, a Master of Wine who spoke English with almost no trace of an accent but whose Italian culture pulsated through him, ...is you can tell so much about someone by the way they dress, or if not, then as soon as they open their mouth.

Around the same period, when I was about twenty one, I waitressed at a basketball summer camp near Bologna that was run by some Italian friends.  My friend and I were both six foot tall and slim.  Alongside her Masters in Economics she modelled lingerie for Versace and the world famous Italian fashion companies.  We turned heads wherever we went, especially as we were sometimes accompanied by tall, young, good-looking basketball players.  My hair was very short, white blonde.  Italian men would raucously call out “Eh, bionda!” making me blush and my friends laugh. Bionda was the second Italian word I learned.  The first was binario - I arrived by train, although several stations passed before the penny dropped that BINARIO was not the name of an Italian town, but the word for "platform".  At Bologna station, dazed by the heat, the language the general foreignness and the whirlwind of the previous week - I was supposed to be in France -  I waited for my friend to pick me up. Some young men called Bionda! across the main hall. What does that mean? I asked my friend who was several years older and recently married.  "Blonde"  she said, looking at me with a mixture of amusement and concern. Discreet the men were not.  It was part of a public game that is now roundly considered harassment. 

Once, at a restaurant, the new Italian friends handed me a mobile phone, which in the early 1990s, were still not common.  Italians, that culture of fa' vedere, of fare bella figura, of being seen, had them first, of course. Someone in on the joke, unseen, called the phone, making it vibrate.  The shock made me drop it before it was caught by one of the dexterous basketball players. I was generally wholly naive and the friends thought it hilarious that any girl, especially one so gullible and ingenuous would be allowed to travel alone in Europe at all, never mind to a country so obviously full of "wolves".  My parents wouldn't let me do that said a strapping twenty seven year old Sicilian who stood at least 6'2. 

After work one day the camp staff were chatting together in Italian. They all had other jobs when not at camp.  Playing on that same theme of unworldliness, suddenly someone asked me, Secondo te, che lavoro fa, lui? They were asking what I thought one of the coaches' day job was. Non ho la più pallida idea, I said in my new Italian.  Not the foggiest.

He’s a dustman, they replied and everyone laughed, including the guy himself. The point being, no-one would have known and in that context it was irrelevant.  I have long appreciated that sense of social anonymity.

In the milonga, there is usually at least an informal dress code at the bigger events so dress distinguishes people less frequently than at least it used to in society. And since the dance is usually wordless, accent need give nothing away either.  In the milonga, it is how you dance that counts.  

Many people come to get away from the rest of life, so the milonga is a refuge, a haven, where we don't ask too many questions and certainly not directly.  

There is another, more obvious reason.  Those who, in the milonga combine their love life with their public life, have to be at ease knowing that in that very visual, social environment, people may know about that life or guess it. Without due care and attention he may become known as a guy who at best enjoys women or at worst preys on them. She may become known either as a woman who enjoys men or as one who is gulled by them. When men and women spend a good part of their social lives in the milongas, in the embrace of the opposite sex, things can ensue. So it is also understandable that many want those arrangements kept extremely private. A country that makes no big deal of telos,

is bound to be pragmatic. Telos is a lunfardo word, Buenos Aires slang, the sound of “hotel”, reversed, meaning a “love hotel”. It is no surprise then that well understood behaviours have evolved in the bigger, busier, milongas of Buenos Aires around, for instance, not dancing more than one tanda enseguida, not holding on to her hands between tracks and around the discreet timings of separate departures by single men and women from the milonga.

I learned early, first names only - and bear in mind that it may not be their actual first name. Years later I understood the person from whom I learned this, who I had known for years, had their own good reasons for liking this habit. In the traditional Buenos Aires milongas, many people are known better by their nicknames. That anonymity gives both freedom and a sense of belonging. It gives you whatever you want it to give you and that in itself is a freedom.

Why resurrect this piece now? Because recently I chatted with a guy I had seen and who had seen me several times.  We had even, a few weeks prior, had a brief conversation about dancing.  There were only a few of us in the room on this latest evening. After chatting with a friend I went over to see introduce myself properly.  I was interested in the distant history of his country, about which I was reading at the time.

- "We've met before," I said.

- Oh, have we?

 - Yes, I said, taken aback.  With my height I am neither easily missable nor forgettable.

- I meet so many people...

Our local milonga scene is not so big.

Still, we chatted. Later, I asked him why he thought men from that country were sometimes considered macho but good dancers, not unlike what was sometimes said of Argentines. He denied this, saying there are many reasons people are good dancers, not least [that old chestnut] technique.

He invited me to dance to good music. I had heard the warning bells, but he was reckoned one of the better dancers and I was curious. We had danced one track, if that, when, on the dance floor, he asked bluntly, What is your job? The question catapulted me back to La Marshall, the gay club in Buenos Aires in 2016, to the question “And what do you do?”.  But this guy was no gauche newbie. He had danced tango for years. I stared, in shock and disbelief and then, as the pause lengthened, because I had long ago prepared answers to questions like these, I weighed the options and gave him one of them.  We regarded one another for several seconds more then began to dance the next track. I wondered if he was envisaging me in the uniform of my stated profession.

Later, I recounted the story to a friend.

I thought about saying "proctologist" but wasn't sure I'd be able to keep a straight face. Besides, when you're embracing a stranger in dance, it isn't necessarily the image you want to leave in their mind.   So I said "traffic warden". 

She looked at me.  I have known this woman since 2012. And are you a traffic warden? she asked.

No, I replied, 

She laughed and laughed.

Wolf in sheep's clothing

A young woman who had been dancing for seven weeks came to her first social dance, a new milonga in the country which had had limited advertising.   

- Did you hear about this milonga on Facebook?

- No, I'm not Facebook

- So how did you know about it?

- By talking to people.

She had good instincts.

You dance fine, you will dance a lot if you go to the main milonga in the city. But go with friends, it is easier that way.  

When I caught up with her, it was her second trip to the city milonga. She had already danced with one of the better, choosier guys. 

Well, there you go, dance with him and you can dance with anyone.  

There was live music that day but the ronda was a mess even during the recorded music.  It was a struggle to get behind someone who danced socially, who didn't weave or crowd their neighbour or dance distractingly. At these moments the search for peace can force you into the middle yet you are stuck between another rock and a hard place, for now you worry about bashing couples on your right or the other ronda refugees in the middle with the beginners, the wild dancers and the people who can't stick to the line of dance.

There was one guy who danced quietly, taking just enough space for himself and his partner.  I looked for his distinctive shirt.  He was right behind me.  I moved into the middle to let him pass, but the guy, perhaps politely, thought I had momentarily lost the line of dance and waited and waited for me to continue.  Maybe he just didn't want to be next to my neighbour in front but I think his was the type able to keep their composure wherever.  Eventually we circled back, took our place behind him and all was well.

Later, I chatted with the young woman, mentioning the ronda and this guy with whom I had also danced recently.  With me he had been safe, correct, no sparks but then no trouble either. 

Oh, yes, he gave me a kind of backhanded compliment.  When I told him I had only been dancing for two months...

My heart sank.

.... he said "maybe tell people you've been dancing for three".

The disconcertion and shock I registered no doubt she had also experienced.  Perhaps he meant it as a compliment but it was a deeply patronising comment.  Such is the power of someone outwardly correct; one can be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. 

And he told me I was stiff. 

My face reflected the same disbelief and dismay I had seen on the faces of my friends when they heard a guy (outside the milonga) had called me "cuadriculada" - but said it wasn't a bad thing.

Don't take that crap, I said.  Just walk away. And yet, when the guy had made the cuadriculada comment to me, I hadn't walked away but rather puzzled over it, wondered what he'd meant and so on, back and forth.

The guy in the shirt may not have been, strictly speaking, a wolf, because these types are conscious of what they are doing and I am not sure he was, but that is really no better.  

We couldn't continue this horrifying, fascinating conversation because a guy who couldn't dance, walked up, stuck his head into our conversation and suggested, verbally that they dance milonga. And off she went...

A rock and a hard place

On this day in September 2020, to reach a hidden, rocky pool, the children had to negotiate the water tumbling over boulders.  In particular, they had to navigate across these slippery rocks with a pool on either side. The long-legged older teens managed it with ease.  My younger son managed with the impulse of the thrill, the challenge and not a little bravado.  But once wet and cold from playing on the rope swing at the pool, I recall his tears and fear on the return crossing.

The boys often set themselves these challenges.

One of the hardest lessons for many in the milonga is the acceptance that desire to dance may not be mutual. The rock: they don't want to dance with you. The hard place: You don't know why. And you can get stuck there. Or you can start blaming people for being e.g. snobby. Accepting that unequal desire is a huge part of life in and out of the milongas is a difficult pill for many people to learn to swallow, but it is a necessary one.

It happens in all kinds of relationships all the time: Do I want this relationship? On what basis do I want it?

These situations, "stuck between a rock and a hard place", are difficult. Last week I remember reading about a woman whose husband of nearly fifty years divorced her when she was in her seventies.  Now in her nineties she lives happily and well. She said It's not a matter of getting over stuff, it's a matter of living through it. If you can live through the issues that you have been faced with, they become your best teachers.