Games and Players

Photo by and (c)2008 Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man)
and the Chanticleer Garden via Wikipedia. [CC BY-SA 3.0]

The dance teacher, from Italy, was preoccupied with the holiday and with teaching but occasionally we chatted. He was intelligent and interesting. I forget exactly the question I asked but it was something like: what did he enjoy most about the milongas or about dancing tango?  He smiled and said it was when he was in the ronda and he spotted a girl, sitting, watching, who also noticed him. Perhaps she looked away but when he came round again he would see her once more and they would play that silent game of recognition between a man and a woman. It wasn't quite that brutal game with daisies: ‘he loves me / he loves me not’, but: ‘he wants me / he wants me not’.  I have heard it called the look, look away game. And then he gets her, maybe not always, and not straight away, but sometimes. I could see the attraction, but I was callow then.

Recounting the story to my teachers when I got back, the female teacher looked disapproving.

- What's wrong?

- What he said - it isn't done.

What the Italian had said made sense in a guy-girl way, but not in a way that I understood or practised in dance. I was still dancing steps in class trying to mesh the woman's step with the man's step. Whether someone looked at you was neither here nor there - and no-one did because they were all being directed.

It wasn't until much later that I realised my teacher had disapproved because when one truly dances tango, the attention, the focus is wholly on the partner. To go looking at other girls when you already have one in your arms...I wondered if the Argentinians had a word for it.

That brief chat was a useful lesson, much more so than the ones I paid for to learn moves and technique. Later, in Buenos Aires, I saw how blatantly some guys played that game and how studiously others avoided it. When I danced with the game-players I realised they didn't dance well. But José and Roberto were among those wholly absorbed in their partner and they danced superbly. 

In Buenos Aires, it was always about that game; it permeated the atmosphere in place of the cigarette smoke there used to be. In Europe and in some of the milongas for younger people in Buenos Aires the atmosphere is different. Especially where the dancers are younger, it is more about the guys who pose and dance in a detached, flashier style, and the guys who don't.

Possibly disreputable

A:  I danced with a lovely dancer but he kept hold of my hands between tracks and conversation was personal questions not the music etc.

B:  Single girls rarely allow that in a BA milonga

A:  I know that! I'm just obviously very bad at or out of practice (or both) at extricating myself when guys don't play by the rules.

B:  Rules??? :) You're a long way from classes :)

A:  I'm sorry but it's wrong for a guy to do that.

B:  I don't doubt it. But that's different.

A:  It's not just wrong, it's wrong and in public where everyone can see. A respectable guy doesn't do it.

B:  Very few Argentine guys are respectable.

A:  Why make it the girl's job not to allow it?

B:  Because he's not respectable! :)

A:  God I'm an idiot. It's not that I don't understand it,  I find the exercise of it so difficult. I don't know why. I should be cross. But I am cross. When he's hanging on to my hands I feel half rabbit in the headlights & half  just terribly uncomfortable.  Something in me wants to save him, us - me, actually - face yet while I may just be trying to pretend it's all fine really, my tolerating it means I lose face publicly with every second.

In any case, possibly disreputable guys can be very nice to dance with I find.

B:  There's the problem...

A:  I thought you didn't believe in dancing with disrespectful guys.

But there was no answer to that. It was much later I realised that that might be because disrespectful and not respectable and disreputable are not all the same thing and 'B' will only point things out so far.

A:  I was confused. I thought maybe I was mistaken about the cultural differences. Besides, when guys don't behave appropriately sometimes I freeze and am just terribly embarrassed. I just wanted to get back in to the dance where things were different.   I will try to be a bit less mortified British. All my clear convictions seem to have abandoned me here. 

I would never have let this happen in the UK.

B:  There you go. I suspect all you need to overcome now is a language barrier.

"And your husband?"

The only frustrating thing I found about this way of doing thing is that it can be hard to get the guy’s perspective on things to do with the milongas - but maybe I was in the minority in wanting that. I spoke a lot to women about those things but I did not know the guys, sat separately from them, was not staying in a tango house where such things might have been easier to find out and I was there for a short time so I spoke comparatively little to the men.

In the Buenos Aires milongas I went to most, chat between men and women sitting separately was on the floor, between tracks. Chat at this time is not my default tendency. If the music is great and my partner can dance then after a pause to breathe and go back into myself for a moment, all I want to do is dance and soon, to make the most of the music. Chat between tracks can continue quite a while.  Even so (very traditional) convention is to talk only about music.  Given the way guys can be over there, this I knew to be a wholly safe topic, one I was comfortable with.  

Otherwise things might start with the (relatively) innocuous:  What do you do? although even that when it happened to me felt fairly personal compared to the things most guys say.  And no sooner that then:  And your husband - what does he do?  Within seconds you are on wholly different ground.  That guy was clearly wise to those of us who, though married, do not wear a ring.  But then some of the guys there believe - or perhaps they know - that once they know they have you in dance they may have more success in pressing an advantage.

But the opening question is nearly always De dondé sos?  In the great cacophony of chat that erupts in the room and if you are softly spoken it could easily take until into the next track for your partner to understand where you are from.   The standard questions which follow are:  Hablas castellano?  Pero entiendes castellano?  Te gusta Buenos Aires? And after that, though you may not have had the conversation you might have liked you have at least survived the basic small talk. They could well ask Es la primera vez acá? - whereupon you realise they sussed you long ago...

Enough said?

Someone told me once that the dance is made of feelings.  I think what happens in the dance is some kind of indescribable, nuanced thing that is to do with the couple and the music.   But at the same time I often feel that the tanda is self contained - a clear beginning and an end  - to everything. Nothing needs to be said because things are said, wordlessly and understood in the dance.  

The tanda ends and despite that we may have been deep inside the music and the embrace, moving as one, it is easy to walk away.  Metaphorically, I mean, even if sometimes I feel a bit rocked from, well, I’m not sure what from, the whole thing.  At the end of a tanda with a great guy dancer my occasional silent disorientation must be evident because guys usually seem to understand and unsurprisingly are pleased.  At least I take it that’s why I see them grinning as they take me back to my seat.   Besides, they seem to know it’s not just good manners, but that I need the escort ‘til I come to.