Woodland Tribe

 

2017:

I'd already heard from Woodland Tribe when they visited Edinburgh that Copenhagen has many of these true adventure playgrounds:  

£7/child for as long as you like. They get hammer, nails, use of saws and a kind of drill and help if they want from the staff. 

The staff put up 2 main towers but over a few days children coming and going made most of the rest: other (high!) structures, ladders, handrails, a wooden wigwam, a two level shack. An amazing project.

Recycling artist Thomas Dambo did something similar.

Tigh - na - Og

Finding mentors

Longhofer

Based on a draft about mentors: 25.1.19

Unless you are resourceful and resilient enough to learn something new entirely alone, and perhaps those people might want to question their relationship skills, the mentor  - mentee relationship is the best path to independence, compared, to say, a class. A mentor is the same as a guide but mentor I think suggests more commitment.  Guides are maybe more free.

I guess you are either allocated a mentor, you sign up to one you see advertised or maybe one is recommended.  I can't imagine that I would pay for a mentor except out of curiosity.  It smacks of prostitution.  I don't think you can buy a good mentor.

Corporate mentorship is a curious animal.  I knew, briefly, a guy who was a corporate mentor.  We hit it off straight away.  I liked him, respected him.  He was interesting.  He admitted he boned up on a topic in order to respond to what a client wanted.  I understood, but that ain't wisdom. I suppose corporate wisdom is very different to traditional sense of the word. He seemed to me like the kid standing in the middle of a seesaw, trying to keep the balance.  He wasn't glib but I sometimes wondered if his profession was.  He was deep and light hearted, fun-loving, serious, observant, patient, a learner and a teacher. 

I once tried to discuss the integrity of 'buying a mentor'.  How can that really work? I understood, to an extent, but there has always to be an element of self-interest, of sales potentially at the expense of, well, something else.  It was a difficult topic and he skated right off it.  

He was also, I came to discover, serially unreliable in our meetings, being busy and not so organised. We had begun in roles of reciprocity, learning from each other.  Soon, he invited me to be hired by him to deliver a service.  I wasn't sure.  I liked the way things were and suggested a professional I knew instead but he wanted me.  I was new to that role and eventually, after being messed around for the nth time put in clear boundaries. He understood, responded well and respected these but the relationship faded away and not on bad terms. The whole experience was interesting and instructive.

In terms of finding a real, personal mentor, the other way is you come across them by accident, occasionally you are thrown together by circumstance or your shared interests bring you together. You discover that they have more knowledge, experience, skills or some combination of these and they are willing to help and to share.

Perhaps you sense them out in a way, although this, in my case, has been an unconscious process. It's not that you sniff one out and set them up as your mentor. That isn't how it works. You just  come to realise that this person you have connected with now seems to be your mentor.  The realisation, at least for me, is later, after the fact.  The luck involved in finding a good mentor is phenomenal.  If society were differently organised, these relationships would be at the heart of it and gratitude to the universe would feature strongly.

I think mentors tend to be older than mentees, perhaps by at least ten years. In my case, all my mentors have been men. I have chatted to many new people in the milongas but a mentor isn't quite chat and is there over time, there is an endurance to it. 

In my mid twenties I knew someone from whom I learned a lot. But love was involved. That isn't a mentor.  A love affair on its own is complicated enough. Something between the two is bound to end in shipwreck.

Also in my twenties, I had one of those rare creatures, a relaxed, intelligent boss who let you get on with the job. He assigned an experienced laid back and good-natured colleague as a mentor at work. This man helped me, with infinite patience, even inviting me to dinner at his house to meet his wife and child.

At another job a more experienced colleague evolved, unspoken into my mentor and became an invaluable support, defending me at a politically motivated internal trial, but he was primarily a free spirit in all senses - and he had his own work to do.

Later again I came to know a neighbour with many talents who was kind and anarchic and helpful and from whom I have learned many things mostly to do power and politics. I saw him in the street the other day and introduced him to my mum.  This is my neighbour, P_____, I said. 

And friend, he said, pointedly, gently.      

Choosing your own teacher

From years ago, maybe 2015

Many teachers can dance and well.  I like to see them in the ronda. You see then if they can really dance and, much less commonly, how many dance unconsciously without thinking who is watching. 

Fascinatingly, some people who cannot dance at all, whose dancing is somewhere between embarrassingly atrocious and just mediocre set themselves up for reasons of income, pocket money, status or who  knows why and astonishingly, persuade people not only that they can dance but that they are well qualified to show someone else how to dance. What cocky self-aggrandisement on the one hand, what credulousness on the other. 

Women just pick up dance by dancing with good dancers and some of these dance superbly. But they are less common for guys because they don't currently, typically get to pick up dance the same way.

When I wonder, will, if understandably scared of just hanging out in less-than-welcoming milongas and practicas more people choose their own teachers? When will those who, seeing good dancers and hoping to be noticed, go up to someone they don't know or barely know and say: I love how you dance, could you show me sometime how to dance like that? I have never heard of that. Not once. Why is that? What are we so scared of?  What might come of it?

Or at least, I hadn't until I decided to ask one of the most experienced dancers I know, one of that small group who give real dances.  From the the way they dance guys like this seem to just understand women, and what we like.

- I want to ask, did anyone ever say to you, along the lines of: I love how you dance, could you show me sometime how to dance like that? Or did you ever hear of that?

- Yes. :-)

- A guy or a girl? 

- Both. 

- And then what happened?

- I usually would answer e.g. I show you only by dancing with you. Some take the offer, some don't.

- That's what I guessed. Thanks. 

Is it common?

- No.

- So what do you do if they ask questions?

- About how they should dance? Usually I just smile :-)

It made perfect sense. What else would you do? Tell them to dance like you, like a teacher, to enact some figure, to twist your body this way or that, to put your hand here, your foot there, to think about your posture, to stop listening to the music?  That doesn't sound like much of a dance to me.  If you find someone you like to dance with and listen to what their body tells you, why would you break that spell?

Besides, people who can really dance can't, I notice actually tell you what they do. They can show you, that's all and then you find your own way.

New experiences

Atrevida, my Spanish friend called me, years ago.  I am recently back from five days sharing a gite with three strangers and for someone protective of personal space perhaps it's true.  I don't know how it is that a cautiously inclined person is known as adventurous but I enjoy trying new things.  

The photo is of a hike I had never done before through some local tunnels.  Trying to get to them was fraught, someone brought too many children, they were not properly equipped, on a bakingly hot day we had insufficient water for our numbers, we lost the route, eventually had to turn back and to this day I think I saw a ghost.  But it was a memorable day.  New experiences often don't feel that fun at the time and are better at a distance.

For years I have said that tango dance class actually inhibits them from dancing. Also, that dancing tango movements to alternative or non tango music feels somehow wrong. I didn't feel that though until someone told me.

In some ways I had a very strict tango “upbringing” that indelibly marked me, maybe that trammelled me in some ways and yet that might be unfair because no-one forced me. Then again, when we are new we are malleable. This is why I like to dance with beginners, to get them before anyone else does, before they are ruined by dance class. I remember my mum saying that was why she liked teaching the youngest in primary school.

It is also true that most of the lovely dancers I know have come through tango dance class. But I have said before my belief that they have become good dancers through a lot of social dancing, so, despite class, not because of it.

Perhaps then it was a teenage rebellion phase, ten years later that took me to a tango - contact workshop, in my imagination, a free movement, let-it-all hang-out sort of thing, with alternative music.  Though actually, the impulse to go was more an intuition, something that kept bugging me for weeks, right up to the day itself. Dance class, alternative music, free movement that isn't dancing tango, that might not involve partners, why would you do that? The prospect worried me, so much so that I couldn’t face going in cold to a whole afternoon.  I sent the guy a voice message saying that I was nervous, that classes stressed me out and that I was worried about being forced to dance with people in a class.  I said I didn’t mind dancing with women so much, but I absolutely didn't want to dance with guys where the choice wasn't mutual.  I was worried that guys I see in the milonga and don’t dance with, which is most of them, might see me as cornered and fair game.  

The reply came back:

Te entiendo y comparto lo que decis. De hecho una parte de la clase es acerca del consentimiento, de saber poner límites y poder elegir!! Todo el tiempo estar eligiendo, y que nadie se lo tome personal. Me parecen muy bien tus reflexiones.. que te escuches y respetes! Tambien, está la posibilidad de venir con alguien a la clase y no cambiar de pareja... esas cosas obviamente están permitidas

[I understand and share what you say.  In fact, part of the class is about consent, on recognising limitations and on choice.  We choose all the time and no-one takes it personally.  I like your thoughts, I hear and respect you.  There is also the option of coming to the class with someone and not changing partner - that’s obviously allowed.]

So far, so good. I inveigled an hour from a friend, away from his dogs, and we walked there together to join the open practica which was short, maybe half an hour. It was immediately obvious that I was very far from my comfort zone, as indeed I had expected, but it is one thing to imagine a different reality and another to be confronted with it. 

"Do you do classes?"

 

I looked for a photo of dance class but I just don't have any so here's a photo of people applauding a show by a local teacher. I always find it interesting to see people's reactions to shows which are essentially adverts for dance class.

Some of the people I danced with at our tango / salsa / bachata night loved discovering tango.  People in their 50s and 60s looked rejuvenated, like teenagers, or giddy with insight. 

When people dance with someone experienced, the first time they dance, if they enjoy it, it is common that they will then ask about class.  Why do they grab at the idea of class so immediately and insistently after their first, phenomenally successful time dancing tango, in say, a practica, milonga or unusual social like ours?  

You try to point out the dangers of the class route ahead.  Nowadays I even say that I rarely dance with people who do classes, which is true - there is no point. I can sense every time they start thinking their technique and their moves. But they can't seem to let go of the idea they think they'll be the exception. You try to point out how well they have danced and how unnecessary - and expensive - class can be.  But they are thinking intently What next? How can I get this experience again? How can I get good enough to dance with other people?

 They don't want to be so forward as to ask you again but it was plain to see in some eyes.  I had no milonga or practica right then to offer them so, resourcefully, they start looking for solutions themselves.  I said, I am sure we will run something similar again soon, we can dance again, you can come with us to milongas, but it was probably too vague, too loose, too improvised. 

 The way forward is actually simple.  Go to practicas and milongas, where people you know, ideally your friends are going.  Find someone you trust to talk to. Get tips of which experienced people are good dancers. Try them.  Take in the atmosphere, watch, listen to the music, chat, trust your instincts.  Don't take any shit from pedagogic or controlling guys.  Take the long view of your dance journey.  It's that simple.  

Oh, and if you're a guy, dance in the woman's role first.  Admittedly, finding people to do that with can be tricky and if that's the case, pay someone to do it with you.

A response to "Why do men learn to dance tango from each other in some cultures but not others?"

Palestinian Dabke: Sarah Canbel via Wikimedia Commons

A: There's a question that's been puzzling me. Why some male tango dancers up until the 1960s at least, and even today, will dance with each other to learn the dance, but men from the eastern side of the Mediterranean seem much more reluctant. It strikes me there are so many shared elements in the cultures and yet there is this difference. Do you have any dances where men dance together?

B: Oh yes, totally, the traditional dances in the area like 'Dabkeh' are danced by men together

I think the Argentinian and Middle Eastern cultures may seem alike but not really, I'd say the culture in Argentina is closer to Italy or Greece more than the Middle East

I think it's because tango is an intimate dance and for us sharing an intimate dance with another dude is not a very comfortable. I believe this applies to all men actually (straight ones at least). From what I remember reading once is that men used to dance tango together not because they liked it , but in order to improve their skills so that when they have the chance to dance with a lady they'd be able to impress her. Because back in the day there were more women than men in Buenos Aires as it was an up and coming industrial area.

A: Thank you! So dancing Dabkeh with guys is ok because it's a "all guys together" dance about being manly & not a couple dance normally between members of the opposite sex?

B: Something like that, but it's [?not] about manliness, it's just the local traditional dance that is danced in celebrations like weddings and stuff , and sometime women participate but the members hold hands but nothing more

A: So now guys don't have to find ways of dancing better because they can usually get dances as there's often more women than men; basically less competition & women are easy to get?

B: Well it's not about competition, not anymore at least , but yes, guys don't have to dance with each other to learn or improve their skills, you just go to classes and/or milongas and dance with women, who are also learning and improving their skills. I think it's just how things evolved to be , it's not sexist or anything if you are worried about that 😄 a least not for most guys.

A: No, I'm just curious why guys there danced together but guys on your side of the Mediterranean, plus another friend with a more traditional cultural background seem to be really against it. And plenty of European guys to be fair, but probably proportionally fewer.

So if there was that same imbalance there was back in the day in Argentina do you think more guys might dance together to get better?

B: Oh yes, absolutely, I think that imbalance was the main reason why guys danced tango together, otherwise why would they?

Also I don't know if you know this information , that back in the day if a guy wanted to learn tango they had to follow for a couple of years before being taught to lead, which eventually lead to young men being discouraged and driven away from tango into other forms of dancing where they can meet girls

A: I'd heard the first part but not the second. So if there was that imbalance today what do you think would happen?

B: I think guys would dance with each other again 😆 I think it's a simple matter of necessity and trying to find solutions

[

A: How logical!

Machismo IV: Why do men learn to dance tango from each other in some cultures but not others?

Rural workers, Argentina: Alejandro Witcomb (1835-1905), via Wikimedia Commons

In pictures like this, of gauchos [Argentinian cattle herders], payadores¹ and rural workers there is often a guy with a guitar.  Music was part of the working rural lifestyle in Argentina in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

 You can hear on the Practimilonguero videos, testimony from Argentinian men who learned to dance from other men. So why didn't Argentinian guys, within living memory, have a problem learning that way, but guys from some cultures today (Punjabi, Levantine), where there is still similar male dominance and machismo, do? 

Argentinian culture is more tactile than ours.  Men kiss and hug each other, as in Italy but this is also true in Arab cultures. Social learning, learning from each other was more probably common before learning became more professionalised and commercialised. Now, with less tight-knit communities classes with strangers, run by strangers have  appeared. In a society harbouring, valuing, machismo, men were unlikely to learn to dance from women, although there are stories of men in the early days of tango paying to dance with women.  But learning from men in the barrio was the main option and the desire to dance with and embrace women was the spur. 

These elements might explain why men in the culture where tango evolved, danced with other men, but not why men from the Levant do not do so. The religion is different, but someone  irreligious, who had had a  religious upbringing defined by traditional male role models had said that of course one is shaped by that.  I was referring to someone from the Levant in the last sentence but the same sentence could refer to an Argentinian from the time tango was born. Catholicism there was the norm.

Argentina had displaced populations of economic migrants, mostly men, from Europe.   In a population where women were in the minority, to stand a chance of dancing with them, how else were men to learn but with their friends and compañeros. Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan today host about 5 million displaced Syrians, with Syrians making up about 22% of Lebanon's population but the circumstances are very different. 

Argentina already had an established gaucho culture, where the activities of a cattle herding and horsemanship, were considered masculine and that culture was associated with chacarera, milonga and zamba. 

In Argentina, some combination of these elements, the values of compadrismo together with the proud loneliness and desire for companionship that Geraldo spoke of within the immigrant life trumped any qualms, religious or otherwise that men may have had and and led them to dance together and to learn from each other.  

The first entry on Machismo is here

¹The payada, is improvised verses sung to the accompaniment of a guitar. The verses are often in the form of a competition between two or more payadores.

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.

Conversation

Some new guys seemed to have had tough experiences in dance class. They can have an air as though they think they’ve failed something. The obvious thing is to be gentle. One of them later joked about how I'd cracked the whip regarding his manhandling of me, so I guess there's gentle and there's protecting yourself. 

We walk to the music, sometimes I guide them, or vice versa, depending on the personality they arrive with and whether that changes.  They get that the dance comes from the music, that it has pauses and that walking with the music and the partner in the ronda is more than enough. When they lead their partners that can be stressful for them when they don’t know the music and when they haven’t had much time in the dance, in milongas and prácticas.

One guy had a partner who said she thought she anticipated. The other guy had tension that was transferring to me and I felt too controlled.  This is far from uncommon. In both cases I wanted to show that women have a voice and that that is when it is fun. If we are walking and tension in a guy's hand or arm is transferring to me, I can move my arm gently to remind him but sometimes it's better to just do something else

In turn, with each guy and in the woman's role I took a step in a direction other than what he had intended, just played around. Separately, they were both foxed, looked, questioningly. Well, what are your options? And from there emerged, so easily, so naturally, those tango moves that my son had discovered in play - ochos, giros and the ones I never like to do when guys haul them out of their tango toolbox: barridas and mordidas. They surprised us both and it was fun.

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. (from: "Play")

But I have found, much sooner than I expected, you don’t need all those criteria for those moves to emerge by themselves. You need interplay, you need an element of challenge, or at least of voice in the woman’s role.  

Walking to the music and pausing, learning what you can do when there isn’t much space, looking after the partner are all necessary, but the fun is where there is mutuality, exploration, conversation. It isn't actually about the moves.  They are almost a by-product - what can happen when you do this other stuff. 

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.

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. 

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.

Levels and labels

A friend wrote recently about 'levels' in dance. I have written a bit about it in other posts, especially in Notoriously Unfriendly and in "Why we are often confused about what it means to be “social”" - a different view but perhaps not explicitly.

My friend was referring to 

"the pernicious stratification and segregation by 'level' inflicted by class teachers. 'Level' being of course which level of class level you are in, as a decision of the teacher, not anything to do with your level of accomplishment in dancing. This isn't just to put the advanced material on the other side of a paywall, Scientology stye, but also do the same to past joiners. It monetises past teaching 'successes' by turning intermediate and advanced classgoers into product for which newcomers must pay.

I once heard a teacher refer to her 'class ladder'. Unintentionally apt, I think, given a key characteristic of a ladder is that once you're on it, the only way off is at the top ... or bottom."

See also: Learning naturally: most people won't. So the idea is that thinking of dancing tango, for instance, as something where people are assigned to levels: beginners, improvers, advanced -  is not helpful, is pernicious even. It doesn't just apply to learning to dance tango, it's anything. 

Putting you in a level is usually a teacher's decision. We can't assume that the teacher has your best interests at heart, especially not where money is involved. Just look at Trust me: You need me:  it is a transparent business strategy.

It is fine if you know and trust your teacher. It is the same again, with doctors. But I don't know anything about my doctors at all. Why should I trust someone I don't know? Just because of their qualifications? Yes, I trust a doctor over Joe in the street but what does that say? Not much. And in fact, I don't trust my doctors much and some I trust far less than others because I've known them on my account and my children's for well over ten years and have often found reason not to trust them. So it's not as though I started off not trusting them. I am not particularly inclined to be distrustful but I should mention that ours is a practice with the worst reviews in town.

So if we can't even trust a doctor that much on what basis should we trust a dance class teacher who can set up with no qualifications whatsoever? Doctors are at least regulated. 

But let's say our teacher seems nice. They smile. They nod. They say all the things you want to hear. They are reassuring. They have years of experience. Builders who rip you off almost routinely in the UK, not to mention second car salesmen, are the same, but leaving all that aside for convenience let's say all seems good. 

Recall, the idea of dance levels is a commercial construction. It suits the teacher to have a concept of levels because it makes money. The punter want to get to 'advanced' so you stay and stay in class, 'advancing' when the teacher says you can, until they decide they probably aren't going to make much more money out of you or eventually you twig that there are better ways to learn. The idea of other more experienced dancers as 'product' (and free advertising) is insightful.

But are you "advancing"? How do you know?  It depends on what the goal is.  What are you buying?  And if you go in buying one thing, is that thing you end up staying for?  

It is difficult where you don't know the brand. With no qualification, no regulation, this is really all about trust. So what do you go on when deciding who to trust with your exchange of money for whatever you think you want from the experience? Do you just pick the local one? The one with the best reputation? The ones who travel and perform? Plenty of people say certain teachers are great. And they can be all sorts of things: charming, funny, entertaining, hospitable, great with groups.

Unless you are going to the class for these things, they are beside the point.  The punter probably thought though that they were going to learn to dance Argentine tango.  Once they realised there was social dancing and there was Strictly style dancing they probably wanted to dance socially but they do not make the connection that they are being taught watered down Strictly type moves, or at least moves more suited to performance than social dancing.  Performance dancing is suited to 'levels' in a way that social dancing is not. 

But perhaps you don't want any of that. Maybe you just do want to work your way through the levels of dance class because that's what you want to do on a Tuesday night - and why not?   Or perhaps you started class because you wanted to learn to dance tango (whatever that meant) and ended up wanting to just stick with your group because for whatever reason you enjoy it and again, who is to censure where and how you find your pleasure? Some people like Bovril. You can love tango class on a Tuesday and no one can say anything against that. Or perhaps you do start wanting to learn to dance tango in class (because that's all you know about), and then that changes because you hear about milongas and you want to learn to be someone other people want to dance with. But recall the moral of The Frog and the Nightingale: don't mimic self-styled teachers who try to woo you.

But if you want to learn to dance tango socially, the people to ask about that are the people you see dancing socially, and who you see or better still, feel, dance well.  That is an independent judgement, by you.  Most teachers are not social dancers.  They just don't dance socially, or they don't do it much.  And of those who do, even fewer dance socially, well.  They do a different thing - they may perform and they teach dance class which I can say with confidence -  having done class and danced socially and having been to many teachers - that dancing socially and dancing in class are not the same thing at all.  Not remotely similar. One does not lead to the other.  To try and say that you can learn to dance Argentine tango socially by going through the levels of dance class is like saying you can learn to climb to the high level of a diving board only to dive into an empty pool.

I went to Newcastle the weekend before last.  On the Saturday night I went to a milonga.  I was in a good mood, the community was small. I didn't want to get into an early funk from not dancing and getting hung up on things so after I'd danced one  - good - tanda with a woman across the room, I invited a woman down the row from me even though I hadn't seen her dance and we hadn't chatted.  I rarely do this with partners, and never with guys. She was surprised I think that a woman was inviting her, but enthusiastic.  We established that yes I was inviting her to dance and I double-checked: did she dance with women? Yes, yes!, she said.  But I'm a beginner, she said clearly.  Great!  I said, meaning it.  Now it isn't actually always great dancing with beginner women but it very often is; it just depends.  But this woman was lovely to dance with.  So much so that I exclaimed in surprise:  You're not a beginner! But she had been dancing for six weeks.  It turned out she hadn't heard of tandas, cortinas, cabeceo, ronda, nothing. She didn't know about by invitation by look but she had twigged anyway when I did it. People who are attuned just pick these things up. She felt lovely to dance with. And she was sixty-five! Now if that isn't an inspiration I don't know what to tell you.

The point is, levels don't mean anything, really, not to me, anyway.  They will to some people.  You find some - usually ones who you can tell - by the way they dance - who think they are big shots.  This type thinks levels are important.  They are often teachers anyway or wannabe teachers.  They hog the floor, they get in the way of social dancers.  They dance wildly and selfishly.  They perform - usually for themselves on the social floor where it just isn't appropriate to do so.  They are very out of place. Quiet social dancers try not to end up dancing next to them. You really want them to go to the kind of milonga where people dance like them. The main thing is to suss out who thinks levels are significant and who doesn't.  And decide which of these you prefer dancing with.  

What counts is not levels, but  - I've said it many times - compatibility.  Do you feel good with the person you dance with?  Sometimes you won't feel good dancing with someone with a lot more experience.  The person with less experience is liable to think the problem lies with themselves and their inexperience but it is often just a question of incompatability.  It is like talking to someone with different values.  You click with some people and not with others.  But do we ever talk about someone being a beginner in conversation?  Not really.  Not unless they're a toddler and then we call them...a toddler because it's more meaningful! 

This lady said to me: Oh, but I've got so much work [that word again!] to do in the classes.  

- Honestly, don't think that, I said with an all-too-familiar sinking feeling, predicting the future and thinking this could be the first and last time I was to enjoy dancing with her.  

- Oh, but I do! she said.  

- Like what?  I said, not wanting to feel tired.  

- Well, my feet don't point the right way! she said, ludicrously.  But oh how many women do want their feet pointing the 'right' way. I remember wanting that, wanting to look and dance just like my teacher in all ways, never mind that she must have been a (UK) size six and close on a foot smaller than me. 

- Your feet felt fine to me!, I said laughing.  Who cares what your feet look like? I don't care.  Why would I care about your feet?  I can't even see your feet!  

- You're right, she said, laughing.  

But for some inexplicable reason, it's what the teachers say that sticks.   

Recently, while travelling, I asked a friend what an Argentine teacher who was at a milonga was like to dance with.  I had noticed he had started the evening dancing quite quietly and had gotten ever more extravagant.  She wasn't wowed, I remember.  She dances with much better social dancers by her own admission.  And yet, she pays this guy for private lessons! Tell me, please, how does that stack up?  And this is common! 

Why don't people trust their own instincts more of the time when learning to dance tango?  We go in general I think on a combination of what we think ourselves and what others tell us or what they let us know, in many things, not just dance.  We make judgements and adjustments based on this.  We do it in our social interactions all the time.  But haven't you been in a situation in life where you have learned something largely by instinct, by experience, perhaps alongside someone else who can already do it?  Perhaps it was art or cooking, or yoga, or piano, woodwork, boat-building, computers, gardening, learning languages, running, building a business, your job perhaps - the possibilities are infinite.  People do it all the time.  They start not knowing anything and get very good without ever really putting themselves into a category of beginner or intermediate or advanced. In fact we learn to talk without ever calling ourselves beginner, intermediate or advanced talkers! These categories anyway, are far too general to be of use.  I have been dancing socially for seven years but I just learnt ochos - what does that make me?  

I am learning Spanish from milongas and taxi drivers, the Duolingo stories, tango songs, parallel text  story books and videos for children and 18 rated films.  I don't know and I don't care what level I am.  What I care about is what I can do - if I can get around or read a book, or a paper, or how much of a film I can watch without referring to the subtitles. 

One of the reasons people get stuck with these beginner / intermediate / advanced (I've even heard of' maestro' (!) levels is because not just teachers but gulled students use them, often to feel better about themselves.  It is unfortunate that people sometimes say truly dreadful things in class or at the milonga.  They can put you down, run you down, make you cry.  The cruelty and tactlessness of people in social situations is endlessly variable.  I think many don't realise the effect they have.  I haven't been back to one of my local scenes for six weeks for just that reason.  One starts feeling nauseous seeing the people who have said these things and when after years the people from whom you have heard these things said, either to oneself or to others, start to add up you just stop wanting to go.  Seeing them sours the atmosphere.  But that is the risk you take going to a place where you can end up talking to random strangers or people who are nothing more than acquaintances.  Yet random people can also be kind, complimentary or interesting.  You take a chance, going there, that's all.  Sometimes you get kisses and sometimes you get knocked.  You come to notice that the crass ones start to appear fairly friendless or they ally with a similar type.  On the other hand it makes travel attractive as people tend to be on better behaviour with strangers. 

So the suggestion is just really to unstick the labels on you.  It is a good time to do it.  Labelling people is not fashionable now.  The zeigeist is swirling with chatter about the variety and uniqueness of each one of us. While that does sound trite and ripe for the sorts of social media posts about 'positive living' that frankly make me beg to see parodies (there are desperately few!), it is also true.  Who wants to be a labelled by someone else who doesn't really know you and who has all kinds of vested interests whether they are a doctor, a school teacher or a tango teacher?  Let me know your other top professions for people that label you and have power over you... 

My son came back this week saying with some sadness in his voice that he wasn't in the top set for spelling.  What?! I said, astounded.  I say it as his mother but my younger son is a very good speller, all the family know it.  He can certainly spell eligible, better than the teacher who wrote 'elligible' on a note this week, or another school staff member who kept writing 'discrete' for 'discreet'.   He always has been good yet the schools have always given him words to learn that he already knows and they won't be told. I have tried. but it is like banging your head against a wall  But then they aren't teaching the individual.  They too are teaching the class.   No, I only get 26 words a week, he said, and the two people in the top group get 28.  Thus do we have to try to undo the damage of this kind of stupid segregation and labelling - and all for two words that he probably knows anyway.  Did he think it was fair, just, a good assessment by the teacher?  I asked.  Did he himself think the two others could spell better?  Not really, he said.  I told my son I'd never met a child who spells so well and that school doesn't really know a child or much care. But he knows that because if nothing else my kids get hit and no-one tells their mother, or the dinner ladies serve the burgers and chips with their bare hands....(Oh, the things that go on).  Your family knows you though, and cares about you.  Yet it is like the lady who thought she had to work on her feet.  Despite knowing what is true and what counts, the damage is done and keep listening to the ones who harm them.  That kind of hurt sticks because, foolishly, we put our trust in teachers, for whom we are nothing but a job.  They forget about us but the things they have said stick with us in life.  Despite the obvious warning signs we see in the behaviour of school staff and school life, school is responsible for so much of the limitation we put on ourselves in life - in every area.  A lot depends on what you are told by some 'teacher' who should be inspiring and motivating you but so often destroys the budding hope or just enjoyment we have naturally in so many things before we go to school.  Dance is a prime example.  It happened to me in  school in art, sport, maths, science.  I don't have talents in those areas but it might not have taken decades for me to get back the confidence to have even an interest in these things after having it knocked out of me at school from neglect or disregard or put-downs or being relegated to lower categories or just written off into no category at all.  

Know what you can do and what you want to try.  Don't limit yourself because of a label or someone telling you you're some level, like one of my tango teachers who wouldn't let me join a practica until I had done lessons for three or six months.  No one who truly believes in you would try to limit you.  Think of the films where the protagonist outstrips all expectation.  Did it happen because someone was telling her to stick to her level and plod along with everyone else and she'd be a winner?  Or was it just the opposite?  I think a sceptical and questioning outlook, of oneself and of others is healthy - in moderation.  The same is true of self-belief - we need it, in a balance.  But certainly one needs enough of the latter to counter the put-downs, those obvious and more sly from teachers and the co-learners they have succeeded in brainwashing.  People will try to control you and put you in categories because it suits them, for money, for status, for how they feel about themselves, for their targets, their bosses, their bonuses, for all sorts of reasons.  It is just another form of control.  But there is nothing more wonderful than seeing someone breaking free from the constraints of others, finding their own way, being themselves and thus thriving.