Dynamic roles

At the picnic in the park after class I remarked to Cacu, thinking aloud really, how hard it would be for such a free spirit to go to the traditional milongas - someone whose idea of connection in movement was so different. He said yes, that when he wanted, in the milonga, to be himself, to take off his shoes and socks for example, people would look at him strangely.  At first he got angry, now he lets them be.

This is of course, the right approach. As far back as Epictetus, there has been a philosophy that says there are many things we cannot control and that will perturb us if we let them. It is better to focus on the things we can control, which, largely, is our own attitude. This is very similar to the view that Victor Frankl (previously mentioned), psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, wrote about in 'Man's Search for Meaning'. We feel loss, sadness, regret, envy, anger and we suffer. All these things are towards things outside ourselves said Epictetus We should recognise that we cannot control things outside ourselves. But Stoicism is not an easy path, least of all for this society today. Yet Cacu's approach of dealing with feeling angry and frustrated at the way things were was to forge a different way. His choice was practical and refocuses the mind on something helpful, positive and constructive.

But all this I thought later. In the park, I said:

- At least in the milongas you go as a man 

- But I'm not a man. This, I should add, was said to anyone in the circle within earshot.

It drew me up and yet if I was surprised, it was less at the statement, but at the refreshing frankness.

- OK, but to the people in the milongas you present as a man.

That seemed to be the issue and also a point not to pursue. Perhaps it still rancoured. I had sensed though in the workshops - an ambiguity of role, a sensitivity that accompanied it.

I had wanted to say - the men have it better, meaning because they are not prey, the way women so often are but I had lost the thread.  Instead this new point struck me: that in his role, swapping roles seemed as important and binary divisions as having much less import as was so in mine.

That sensitivity was openly stated when he asked if a different friend I wanted to bring to the practica was "sensitive" - could he slot in to the group that was already established? Things were starting to connect.

I had come expecting a class, worried about alternative music, “free” exploration, not understanding but had encountered similarities in our approaches that bridged those apparently insurmountable gaps. Strangest of all was the correctness of the intuition about the importance of this event, despite, on the surface, appearing to be everything I don't believe in. People asked, and I asked myself, why go to dance class when I don't believe in it? Why dance to music I never dance to? Why associate with people I wouldn't normally? It was a counter-intuitive intuition yet it was correct.

Correspondence to an Argentinian friend: If you are looking for a tango teacher, I would start there and I have never recommended a teacher before.  I regret we did not dance because you can get a good sense of who someone is that way but I did not put myself forward nor look for an approach.  

Everything I saw is along the same lines of responding to a dance partner that I believe in and that we don't usually find in traditional classes: listening, respect, permission, no force, exploration, the fluidity of roles and a constant dynamism in roles and in initiating and receiving movement.  It is not about moves, the ocho, the cross, still less the horror of the "eight step basic" but about a way of relating to people in movement through guided activities. 

Cacu Lucero

Arriving at the event we saw people had taken off their shoes, and most of them their socks.  I didn’t fancy that and indeed later saw someone with a verucca.  Besides, my shoes are specially chosen for their slippiness which helps my dodgy knee/hip/back.

People were moving, mostly in pairs and my heart sank. There's no music! I whispered, shocked, to B. I can’t do this... Diplomatically, he did not say, Wasn't it your idea...?

But the teacher, Cacu, came over, warm and friendly and said hello.  I recognised a local teacher who had run a class with the visitor, plus her partner. There was a travelling free spirit (not that free spirit) I knew from Edinburgh and a young student I recognised who has joined the scene recently.  There was no-one else I recognised from the milongas, which at least quashed the worry of being hijacked by men.

Most of the other participants came from contact improvisation or salsa / bachata backgrounds or were simply there to try something new. In case you are wondering what contact improvisation is, here’s a

video, albeit no-one in this group was doing anything so sophisticated.  One or two people wandered around, taking in the atmosphere, lost in their own reflection, others moved in pairs or threes or fours. Then everyone sat in a circle and gave feedback on the session. Someone said really they enjoyed looking in to another person’s eyes, which sounded…hardcore.  Usually, we avoid eye contact dancing with our tango partners apart from during invitation and in the pause between tracks when we chat briefly.  

To start the free practica part of the afternoon we all sat on the floor back to back in a circle and alternative music played.  People started rolling their backs, arms, legs, against their neighbours, then rolling on the floor.  Despite B's encouragement I balked and backed out, sat in a corner, isolated, with my legs pulled up defensively in front of me and my arms around them and watched my friend roll on the floor, as though he’d been there all day. He grinned at me.  I knew this wasn't his thing either but at least he could do it. I wasn't sure if he was pretending or not but faking isn't my thing. I realised later he was going along with it more than being into it. He has ten years on me though you wouldn't know and I am regularly startled by how open he is to new things.

I “observed”, as they say in meditation, my sense of otherness. When something difficult is familiar to you, this becomes, over time, less stressful as you observe the sensation, but a sadness can linger.

Later I mentioned to Cacu that joint problems and flexibility (not to mention fear and lack of trust) would prevent me from doing some of the things I saw him and others doing. He said, of course, that it wasn't about what you could do in comparison to others but only what you yourself could do and felt happy doing, today. It felt like a philosophy straight out of yoga, meditation and similar spiritual practice.

So that was the first track.  The second was the cover of a famous Caló number. I almost never dance cover tracks because I always ache for the better original. Although dancing a cover felt odd, and something like a betrayal of my values of the last 12 years, the music was not unfamiliar. I had to remind myself my former guide wasn't there and couldn't see.

I looked to B and saw the familiar divided look on his face when faced with a dilemma - possibly he fancied one of the new young things. But we did dance. B and I have switched roles and embrace dynamically for years. We began in a traditional embrace but suddenly it didn’t seem appropriate. We seemed to be trying too hard, trying to fit in. I was trying to focus only on us, but was faintly aware that people around me did not seem to be dancing in ways familiar when people dance, or even just walk, to tango music. Later I realised that was because most of them did not dance tango.

Afterwards, a friendly girl with blue hair approached from the other side of the room. She remarked I’d looked shell-shocked - about the size of it.  She explained what they had been doing. I wasn't sure if she wanted to partner me or B. Had I been less new to it all perhaps this would have been the cue for all three of us to dance, per the radical style of the day. Dancing to non-traditional music I didn’t know already felt like being thrown in the deep end but I had to reciprocate her kind gesture. Invitation, the way we understand it in the milongas I discovered, isn’t really a thing in that environment but since we were chatting I did ask her if she wanted to dance. What I saw more generally was that dancing just sort of seemed to happen, as the moment takes you. During the weekend I never did initiate dance without some kind of more or less explicit invitation. 

And yet, such clear codes and markers were not common. After the third track, everyone stood up, formed a circle, arms around one another and looked at the teacher.  He shrugged and said “Don’t look at me”.  I realised then that he was more a facilitating presence and guide than a teacher with diktat, that the activities he proposed were suggestions through which we might explore. It wasn’t as transactional as traditional classes: Pay me this money and I will teach you this move. It wasn’t the response of a “leading”, bossy, domineering teacher with a huge ego and something to prove.  The guy appeared to be the antithesis of that.

Then the circle, very gradually, very naturally, started swaying and then I found myself, like everyone else, swaying in a mini circle inside the main backwards forward rhythm of the whole circle.  It was a surprising, pleasant experience. It was another key moment because it just emerged, which I realised was not coincidence.  Emergence, facilitation rather than teaching, the juxtaposition of things of this sort was not random. 

The organiser to my immediate right was young but a strong, calm, grounded presence, something one appreciates when new.  The swaying came to a gradual conclusion and then we all went out, bought snacks for a shared picnic and the teacher made mate, the traditional drink in Argentina and other countries in the area. I wrote to a friend recommending the teacher and telling him about the day:

- I didn't have any because just as in the group contact impro movements, I'm not into sharing a straw with 20 strangers, especially after Covid...

- Lo entiendo, pero para la gran mayoría de las personas, aquí, es totalmente normal compartir un mate, incluso con desconocidos. Ni siquiera el covid ha podido frenar esa costumbre 😂

Los españoles, en tiempos coloniales, cuando se adueñaron de estas tierras, lo prohibieron bajo pena de severísimos castigos físicos, que efectuaban, y amenazas, y no pudieron romper esa costumbre 🤷🏽‍♂️

[I understand, but for the grand majority of people here, sharing a mate is completely normal, even with strangers. Not even COVID put a stop to that custom. In colonial times, the Spanish, when they took possession of these lands, prohibited it on pain of extreme physical punishment which they carried out and it still didn't put an end to this custom]

A few of us danced salsa. The more trusting and adventurous practised balancing their torso on each others raised feet lefts before eventually forming a human pyramid. 

It was like no class or after-class event I had ever been to. In fact, I had never been to any after-class event.

In contact improvisation seemingly anything goes but in tango, as the teacher said "we take care of one another".  It is a good summary of what that short experience was about: freedom and care.