Slim pickings

Slim Pickings by _Veit_

The comments on the last post were really interesting & thought-provoking and I hope to come back to them.  Today I'm going to pick up on one that quoted 

"I see the quality of dancing within 100 miles of me and I see a problem."

...and deal with the second line of the comment in another post.

Yes, most of the dancing is problematic (for me).  More accurately I could say, most of the male dancing. I still dance with women. There are plenty of women who dance mechanistically in a typical, traditional dance class style and I avoid them. But it is the men who are the real issue. Or rather, actually, I am the issue. They find lots of women willing to dance with them. I just don't find guys I want to dance with. Apart from the automated, predictable steps, the forcefulness, the lack of appreciation of the music, they are a world away from what the famous social dancer, Ricardo Vidort describes:

"To be a milonguero, first, you have the feeling of the music, rhythm, cadence and your own style to dance; and when you do it, the music invades your body and mind and it begins the chemistry that makes you transmit to your partner"

There is no cadence in the dancing of nearly all the men I see locally. There are only two men in Scotland, one really, with whom I deeply enjoy dancing and never see or dance with, partly thanks to that harm then and later. There are another few with whom I occasionally dance mostly from some combination of friendship, longevity and because it's fun. But there is rarely that sense of the music invading them. When I say to a partner, usually a woman, and usually when I am guiding, that I cannot dance this track because I don't know it, or like it, that it is though a motor or fire or power source has been turned off, women can be surprised but are almost always understanding. Most men seem to have no idea what this is but then most men learned in class focused on dance steps. But I know what it is for music to invade you because without that I can't dance and I have no desire to dance. I have said before, it is like an on/off switch.

A guy came to class who had already danced for a few years.  It felt awkward but I couldn't quite put my finger on it, so I suggested we dance again in the practica.  Apart from the fact that I could hear him thinking dance moves, it was mostly fine, nice embrace etc.  But where is the music in you? But where is your passion for the music? Do you know this next piece? He didn't.  So dance the pieces you know and love and then you will feel the music move you.  When you have that feeling, let's dance again.

The other way is you lead them, and transmit your music to them but I didn't suggest it because I didn't like the track that had started.  Sometimes the music is shared both ways and that is wonderful, though I can't think of men with whom I have been able to fully do this.  It needs a sense of equality I more often find with women. 

A salsa teacher I remet recently, permeated with the culture, history and tradition of the country of her particular dance had the same issues regarding guys.  She too nearly always guides now, for the same reasons. It's fun, but it isn't the same, she said.  You could sense a deep disappointment.

So, socially we dance with women and beginners. But actually, I think I am stopping, and not for the first time, going to the milongas.  Despite good music at the last two milongas I went to, and one of them having over eighty people, I left early, barely danced. The wannabes hanging around the DJ and the VIP table of the current visiting "star" is also offputting. So there is rarely joy in the milongas for me there now, because of this lack and it is a long way to go just for the chat. Besides which, that unquiet ghoul is back in the milongas, needy, simpering, cosying up to men, monopolising them, like beads counted off on a string, even stealing the guys I am in conversation with, with an audacity, lack of tact and courtesy that is so disgraceful as to make one snort with the appalling hilarity of it. Most men are ultimately led by the cock and of course cannot resist the charms of a girl thirty or fourty years younger who looks practically a child. They are pushovers. She has nothing if not the ambition of a Lady Macbeth. 

But this aside there just aren't the people with whom one enters that deep sense of fun and flow and joy.  One could leaves the milongas depressed, frustrated and with a sense of time wasted if one did not know better how to counter these things. So I am exploring other dances, and not on the doorstep where that ghost haunts those local scenes too.  

- I really like dancing with the beginners. I mentioned to another woman who also dances various styles and who guides.

Really?

Yes, because at least you feel there's some hope. You can shape them.

Yes, she said, laughing. Exactly that!

She guessed immediately who the good dancer was. It might have been odd that she could home in like that, no preamble, but then she seems that kind of dancer.

- I love dancing with the beginners, I said to a nice man who already dances tango.

- Well, but it's nice to dance with old friends, he said.

- The beginners are my thing, really, have been for years.

It seemed like a different twist on something I remember my tango guide saying years ago, along the lines of, in his experience women start guiding when there isn't enough good guy dancing around. This is true, although I would never now give up dancing both roles. Perhaps I've been focused on the beginners for a long time because there isn't enough good dancing around full stop. One hopes they will become the good dancing, like Colin but with more longevity.

- Oh, I don't know, said the nice man.

- What do you mean?

- Well, beginners are all very well, but I prefer dancing with the people who can already dance.

- I was shocked.  And confused, because I remembered later that this man does dance with beginners.

- But if we don't dance with them, how will they learn?

- Well, youngsters are flighty, he said. If they stay it's a different thing.

- But if we don't dance with them, why should they stay?

He smiled and shrugged.