"The basics" and "technique"

Ladies at the practica I ran in Dundee

At the tango  /salsa / bachata night, a couple of times people who had danced very well said Yes, but I have to go to class to get  - that old chestnut - the basics. The basics I said, are listen to the music, listen to the partner. There is nothing more fundamental.  But many people have a mindset that "the way to learn is to pay someone to teach you else it isn't worthwhile".  It is so ingrained in some people it is as though they believe If I'm not consciously thinking, I'm not learning.

I lost count of the number of times, that, having just danced with someone their next question was whether there were classes in Dundee.  The salsa dance class teacher, who was picking it up quickly, was keen to learn.  That is the obvious road ahead. 

If they are not talking about "the basics" people often go on about technique.  There are a few things guys commonly do that are not pleasant for the girl but you don't need class for them.  If a new guy starts waddling or bobbing, twisting my hand or poking me in the back, I simply,  as Silk does, swap roles and do the same to him. It is always funny for both of us and you usually only need to do it once. 

Besides, guys all do different things, because everyone is different, so learning should be personalised, not the standardised "one size fits all" of class.  Unless you dance with people, you don't know what it is like to be their partner.  And even if you are their partner, what you like in them may not suit anyone else.  Teachers on the whole simply teach their own preferences and prejudices just as many DJs who are dancers play what they like more than what the dancers they are playing for like. But when dancers don't discriminate and learners don't question, they are anyone's gulls.

Personalised learning

New salsa dancer dancing socially with an experienced dancer / teacher

This post continues a theme (see links below) of individuality & uniqueness. Being individual, not in the sense of selfish, but in the sense of unique, is about exploring and expressing identity and finding points of connection with the uniqueness of others.  That exploration means it is also about freedom.   

At the tango / salsa / bachata event we ran I danced with many new dancers and was asked often if I teach.  Smidgens of historical guiding and lecturing, teaching French, English and environmental surveying is doing nothing close to bringing home the bacon.  So, still needing more employment after having to leave my course, perhaps I should have said "only privately".  Instead I said, as had once been suggested: It's against my religion.   If you were to say to me, What is wrong with dance class?, ordinarily one of the first reasons I might give is It teaches people to think dance, instead of feel it or People learn steps and ignore the music and the partner or It promotes controlling and hierarchical behaviours.

But last night I relearned with emphasis that the reason dance class often doesn't work is because everyone is different.  This is true for many things we learn and why class in school can be such an inefficient, even harmful way of learning.  Everyone I danced with was entirely unique in how they danced and in what they needed from the partner.  Some new guys who trying guiding need you to transmit confidence to them.  Others need the beat.  Total beginners often need something: even the tiniest murmured suggestion of reassurance, encouragement, praise. Mostly people just need confidence which comes from reassurance, practice or both.  

Recently, a beginner kept hollowing his chest when guiding. Obviously, he felt nervous because guiding when you are new is not easy.   I need your chest, I said, swapping to show him what it was like to dance without connection in the chest.  Ah yes, he said, standing taller.  It is all connected: standing taller immediately helps with confidence, with breathing and hence relaxation and  provides the connection in the chest the person being guided usually wants. 

Everyone new though needs you to adapt to them, to some extent, to their feelings, essentially, in some way and that you cannot do in a class. 

Even with twelve years experience dancing tango, and dancing with beginners nearly every time I go out, it still surprised me that the best dancers were without a doubt two older women.  I will not have been alone in this surprise, showing we still have a long way to go to break down prejudice about age. They had a focus, connection and lack of self consciousness and nerves that usually takes longer and that was not yet present in the younger women.  

Gratifying was that all the new guys wanted to be guided, often closing their eyes.  Being dancers they probably understood that is the way to understand the dance or maybe they had seen those of us who already dance doing it. I was impressed the salsa teacher was willing to try dancing vals and tango in front of all his students, as a beginner. He had a dancers sensibility, musicality and sense of connection  and will pick it up quickly. He danced socially with new salsa dancers too which was lovely to see.

  

29.5.24:

Life's is largely a solo flight. Family, friends, partners come and go. The way education is assessed in the UK is by individual exams.  When you go to dance in the milonga, your choices, your dance ares yours.  We are not a hive mind, we do not live as one. So why is learning done as a group?  While there is some focus on collaboration, it is primarily for perceived efficiency, especially cost efficiency and the convenience and of the organisers and instructors.  

Personalised learning produces the best results.  One on one guidance, with space to explore and time to collaborate is invaluable.

---

Individuality revisited (April 2023)

Authenticity (April 2023)

The frog and the nightingale: a cautionary tale (March 2019) 

Standardisation and individuality (April 2016)

Being unique: learning from children (December 2015

And there are pieces on the antithesis of individuality e.g.

How class dancers dance

Elbow whacking automata

Self improvement

Casa: my local salsa bar

At salsa, I danced again with a friendly, local guy, one of those who didn’t patronise, or tell me what steps we were doing, or ask me how many classes I’d done. He just danced with me. I wonder if I’m getting better, I thought, as the dance ended.

But what a European style thought that is. Isn’t the question rather: Are you still having fun?

And the answer was: Yes!

Competition

By: Alberto G

I have begun going out occasionally, to dance salsa, learning as I go. Some friends from the milonga went so I joined them. Over the last year, through Conversation Exchange I have become interested in other parts of Latin America. Salsa seems to be important in some parts of some of those cultures.

Through chat with a Colombian musician friend and through interest, partly from tango, in the historical-cultural roots of music, the music itself became, if anything, more interesting than the dance. Exploring its origins led me to Puerto Rico, New York and especially Cuba.

With the perspicacity of a lifetime’s experience of this music and an awareness of how some “gringos” might tend to hear this music, Kami Rey Vegas wrote:

I recognised something delightful in Point 4.  Yes, people dance socially for fun, for that "expression of community life and the joy of seeing and meeting people spending time together, and sharing common spaces and traditions".  I do see that in the Latin Americans dancing salsa at our local club in a way in which their relaxation and ease sets them apart and makes them recognisable.  I don't see it in the locals uptight and concentrated in class, on getting it "right" and not "wrong" be it tango or salsa. I don't feel it when I feel "classeros", to borrow a term, concentrating on implementing their bought-and-paid-for steps or techniques in the social dance, or, god forbid, talking to me about their dance "homework".

Many Europeans, and now, sadly, even many younger Argentinians see tango, and I am sure, from what I see online, salsa, as  something to be attained, conquered, dominated. For many living in Latin America, those words will have a particular resonance and maybe that is in part, why learning socially still happens there and why dancing socially, is apparently a more relaxed affair. 

In the light of all that ambition, the gathering of people that Kami mentions, to simply dance together may seem quaint compared to the drama of exhibition dancing, or of the kind of "social" dancing where the intention is to be seen, to draw attention to yourself and to what you can do, to "get", and to "have" (power, status, attention) more than to enjoy the music and company of others.

Months before, Kami had described salsa in his country compared to in the Netherlands:

Tango teachers at any rate, will tell you, specifically, not to learn socially, because of the “bad habits” you will pick up. If people are so keen to pay for dance perhaps they should go, not to a self-styled teacher, most of whom I have not enjoyed dancing with, but to a social dancer they like dancing with, or who is recommended by other social dancers. I began dancing tango in 2012. Since then I have never seen a social dancer charge for help. It goes against the definition of a social dancer. If they did, we would call them something else: taxi dancers.  These exist, as volunteers, in the UK Ceroc world, but as professionals, in the milongas, even in Buenos Aires which is the only location I have ever seen them, they seemed a rare and private breed. The taxi dancers I have seen, dance, socially, much better than teachers, because their job and reputation rely not on selling steps and technique but on making the girl look good and more importantly, feel good, in the social dance.

So how did I find myself in a salsa class? I went at the suggestion of, ironically, a competitive dancer. While the initial, solo dancing bit was unpleasant, the part where the guys circulate round the women to practice the things learned was not, or rather, the bit where the DJ and teacher dance with you, was not.  I had, long minutes before, given up learning the steps and decided to just try to follow the guys. I had done the same in tango dance class years before until I realised it was ridiculous paying to be the prop of critical, stressed out guys I didn't want to be near anyway.  

I say I enjoyed this circulation, despite everything I know about the paramount importance of free partner choice in social dancing. When you are still learning a dance, people who can already dance (in this case, the teacher and DJ), dancing with you, sometimes trump things like mandatory changing of partners. There is a sensory overload of music, new partners, the excitement of participating in something new with someone who knows what they are doing, to guide you. That is a heady combination, especially when later, you also have a great time with your friends.

Those two guys could dance and that is why I went back to the second class. I figured at my age I wouldn't necessarily pick up the dance as a beginner, socially, because guys who can dance want to dance with women who can, particularly younger women.  But actually I know that's not wholly true.  Plenty of younger guys dance with much older women, for good reason.  At many different social dances I have seen countless women not in youth's first flush, dance with guys of all ages. Despite knowing this, at the time I believed what I really needed was dance time with guys who could dance so that I could quickly get dancing socially.  I wrote to the DJ about paying for that. He said yes that could be arranged and we would talk about it.

When I turned up he encouraged me to go to the city where they organised bigger events with plenty of good leaders, with workshops beforehand.  I was puzzled because I'd explained I was not good in class. He also said he could organise private dancing locally with the teacher and that he himself would dance with me within the constraints of DJing. None of this, in fact, came to pass. I joined the class that day and found it instantly stressful. I knew we were learning steps that almost none of the guys would do in the social dancing, as is common in many dance lessons supposedly intended for dancing socially. I hate solo dancing and have no experience with it. The less I believed I could do it, the more anxious I became and nothing hinders dance more.  I had hidden myself at the back of several rows and couldn’t see the guy's feet, even if I could have kept up. I felt stress building up inexorably like liquid approaching the top of a container. Within 15 minutes I squeezed, desperately, through the gyrating bodies and manic feet, hurtled blindly up the stairs, lunged at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic…and then another. I tried to think of a word to describe how I felt.  It was "traumatised". 

I marvelled that something I was purportedly doing for fun had had so much the opposite effect, simultaneously wondering why I was surprised.   "Sign of a healthy immune system, I'd say" said the imaginary voice of the guy I'd learned much from about tango and life, years before. I decided to go back down to the chilly basement with the bad seating and a floor so tacky you could practically walk out of your shoes, because my friends were coming for the social. I still wasn't feeling myself and didn't expect to dance. But I did, and it was a huge relief, relaxing, laid back and fun. People were nice, friendly. They didn’t care that I was a beginner. I knew I was somehow losing the rhythm on turns or when we changed position but they didn’t criticise me or even mention it.

But not all social dances are the same.  I had been recently to another social salsa event and described it to a Latin American friend afterwards:

- "Went from a poor milonga to, briefly, a hypnotically, embarrassingly bad salsa/bachata/ kizomba night. I told the guys who invited me to dance I was a beginner, whereupon the Scots among them would, on the way to the floor, ask, I kid you not, how many lessons I'd had & during the track, would reel off the names of the moves we were doing as though this were fun, normal or interesting!"

Friend: "Wow. Well, not necessarily surprising I guess... " 

I think his view of both the attitude and at the mix of salsa / bachata / kizomba was equally dim.  

The people had been friendly and well-meaning but I doubted Latinos would have done that. In fact, they didn't. Some Peruvian musicians I had met elsewhere turned up and one of them danced with me, in exactly the way that seemed normal - just dancing and adapting to what you can do.

It was surprising that the better social had the class beforehand, but in that social, the guys, no matter where they were from, didn’t name the moves as we did them or ask me about classes, they just danced with me. The atmosphere is always good there but that evening there was live percussion which took everything to another level - this time mesmerisingly good. I noticed a Colombian dancer who'd picked up the güiro for that song, smiling, watching us dance. It wasn't a smile of pity at a newbie because judgemental attitudes like that are maybe more European. I was in the zone created by that percussion, dancing with an experienced friend, and having a great time. Social dancing has nothing at all to do with steps but everything to do with music and connection with other people - the partner you are dancing with and those around you and that doesn't matter whether it's tango or salsa.

The next time we went out I asked my friend what was happening on the turns. "You just keep dancing", he said, simply, showing me. He'd never mentioned it on the three or four other times we'd been out.  I appreciated, not for the first time, his discretion.  "Just keep the rhythm going while you turn." I tried and it worked. “There you go” said his grin.  I beamed, delighted. It was so simple and I learnt this essential point in 5 seconds, with him. That’s learning socially. That’s social dancing and I will never do another salsa class.

Healthy environment, healthy growth and practicas

 

Saughton gardens, Edinburgh (and my mum)

Years ago, I was taught the metaphor of growing, not building a tango scene.  A healthy environment, just like a healthy, tended garden, leads to growth, flourishing, and diversity in harmony.  

Someone remarked to me last week that the Edinburgh milonga scene had no new people coming through.  This was not altogether true - I have seen new people but then I haven't danced there since 2019, and barely then, so 'new' is a matter of perception.   I was pleased that they noted specifically that dancers were not coming through the local tango classes.  This has always been true.  Beginners are the most lucrative market for tango teachers so it pays to keep beginners as beginners in class.  You do not want to lose them to the milonga where they will get ideas of independence, discover the pleasures of social dancing and forsake class. Once someone has been a beginner for a year or three they can graduate to Intermediate and learn more to keep them out of the milonga, thence Advanced etc.

Now, if native teachers were to teach classes about Argentine culture, history, the stories of the tangos, that I might pay for. But I suppose that market is too niche.

New people in the Edinburgh tango scene tend to come through the university and occasionally through people who move here for work.  Young and youngish people from university are incredibly important.  They keep the scene fresh, with an energy.  They are often popular dancers.  They can be open-minded  - there are young women learning both roles just now - an initiative of the Edinburgh Tango Society.  I think the idea is to broaden the offering possibly in the hope that this attracts more people, but I am not quite sure of the logic at this point.  

It is a truism that class seldom leads to social dancing, certainly not good social dancing.  I reckon it takes a guy about ten years, and often closer to twenty to undo the harm of class and start to dance well.  It can also take women a long time, depending on how long it is for them to stop "thinking dance".  I have tried to make this point about classes and social dancing many times over the years.  It is fair to say it is an unpopular theory.  It's unpopular among classgoers, who think that to learn things you need to go to class.  It's very unpopular among people who have spent years in class, because they have invested so much time and money there.  Most of all it is unpopular with those who make their living from or have their sideline in tango classes. 

The university did run tango classes although when I went years ago they were significantly less of a class than most classes.  There was much more "find your own way", which I notice students are quite good at and, key, there was partner choice.  It's only now though, after two years, that the university is starting back again.  

The best way for people to learn to dance socially, is with each other; not beginner on beginner. Even many beginners realise this is a terrible idea. No, beginners with experienced dancers. Seeing which experienced dancers will do this is usefully clarifying in itself.

Teaching is probably suited to choreography for shows or competition.  That requires athletic style training and memorising routines.  

Often learning to dance (without explicit teaching) is fine, in the milonga, only a lot of people can't help but teach.  Learning to dance in the milonga is especially fine when it is women learning with experienced men or women in the guiding role.  Most guys, if they learned the woman's role first, would then find the guiding role much easier. But a practica - a place to practice and dance without interrupting more experienced dancers - is a good and relaxed environment for new people.

There used to be a sort of unofficial hour of practica between 7-8PM at the Edinburgh Counting House milonga, before the milonga proper.  But that early hour seems to be taken over by teaching now. Both times I went to the milonga recently, there was teaching going on.  Because I live far away I like to go early and leave early.  But it is really frustrating when an hour of your dancing is knocked off by teaching or dirge-like "early hour" music.  The first time, the teacher, to my shock, 'recommended' a guy for me to dance with. I already knew him well but we do not dance, with good reason.  It was a flashback to that hilariously awful afternoon at Tango Fabrik El Sur, in Antwerp when the teacher tried to set me up with a wholly inappropriate guy.

The informal practica in the Counting House used to be great.  It is a relaxed and tolerant environment.  From 7PM, some people did come to practice with a partner, quietly, always low key.  Around 8PM when more people started to arrive, this faded unobtrusively into the background, giving way to social dancing proper.  

The idea with a practica is social learning:  less experienced people learn from more experienced people.  This is the traditional way people learnt in Argentina, but it has never been particularly popular here perhaps because of the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant view of "working hard" at things in a certified "hard work environment", like class. So the grip of the class mentality has been too strong.  Surprisingly few people ask others if they will show them how to dance and I wonder why that this.  Whenever I have asked though, I have never been turned down.  

Recently, I was chatting with a more experienced dancer about the practica concept.  He agreed it was important and noted we see it even less now than we did previously.  At this point a teacher was teaching very overtly during the milonga.  The more experienced dancer asked if I would lead him and of course, I agreed.  With tact and subtlety, he offered to show me something that did not come as smoothly to me as I would like.  I was delighted and we moved outside the room. He was helpful, very patient and adapted to the way I needed to learn.  Then the teacher came along and that was the end of that.

Codes

I love the costumes at Halloween. Enlivened by gore-spattered limbs and ghastly faces the tat drops away, giving place to other-worldliness, creativity and transformation. Dropping off my son at the school Halloween disco I was awed by the artistry of the delicate Dia de los Muertos design on a beautiful clown in a wig of multicoloured curls.

For the children, the main event of Halloween is trick-or-treating. Their enthusiasm never wanes. No matter his confidence and desire for independence I don’t care to leave my now nine-year-old, of still unpredictable road sense, wandering about, in a dark costume, his mind on treats, with heedless drivers blitzing down residential streets. So for years I too have trudged these hilly streets in the dark, the cold, the dreich and once in an icy downpour. Nothing though deters the children. Next to Christmas, Halloween is best. It is the dressing up, the friends, the promise of sweets with the delicious uncertainty of what and when and where and how much and what kind of reception from these strangers we visit.

Each lit house has its own message. One has gone to town: the whole front festooned with spider web and danger cordon, bugs, rats, goo and gore. Another transforms its lawn into a graveyard through which the children pick their way, past a skeleton with arms and legs protruding from the ground. Some will have only a jack-a-lantern outside. Another just a milk bottle with a tealight balanced on a gatepost. But this part of the game - spotting the signal, finding the one welcoming house in an otherwise darkened street. Later, walking back we remember the best one: the man with the neat house and garden, the decorations and the welcoming stained glass around the door. But it was the man himself who made it memorable: how, after the knock at the door and the werewolf howl, a clawed hand poked itself alarmingly outwards through the letterbox towards the five poised children. The man groaned loudly at the dreadful jokes, and despite the late hour on a weeknight, play-acted his way into the spirit of it all.

This year I enjoyed the silent codes around Halloween, of what to do and what not, codes figured out, passed around, passed on, tried out, explained to little ones or people who have never been before. Mistakes were made, laughed at in company and learned from. It was so natural, so human, such an antidote to our often overly-analytical, political, defensive, hide-bound, society.

It started before we went out. Social codes start in the home. My boy’s friend and his mother came for tea. These codes are even in the way we set the table, how we wait for each other to be ready to eat, the way our young visitor brought a gift and said, so politely, how good the simple food smelled, enquired what it was and where I had found the idea, said how much he was looking forward to it and offered his compliments at the table. The delightful manners of this child, and his straightforward, open, honest face means he will always be welcome. These are a sort of code; partly taught, shown, demonstrated by example to children by parents and family and partly just understood. They are the codes by which we identify others with whom we will or will not likely be socially compatible. To learn them and make them one's own requires awareness and confidence and trust. Equipping ourselves with them shows our development. To compliment a host is a time-hounoured way of showing appreciation of the effort to welcome a guest in the home. It demonstrates awareness and gratitude, social skills of a high order. It is a sort of ritual around which we hang our conversation, a trellis upon which our friendships grow.

Sometimes there may not quite be parity in our codes. Thirty years ago I learnt in France that hot chocolate may be drunk from bowls in the morning, that young friends even accompanied by parents and family may go topless at each other's swimming pools and that many homes will not use side plates for bread. If, in youth, one imports a foreign custom and make it one’s own one may, later in life, unthinkingly faze guests. There may follow silent clamour to calm our host or guest’s embarrassment, restore the momentarily broken ritual. More simply there may just be quiet adaptation and a memory, carefully filed. Such moments test our resourcefulness and grace.

So the children put on their costumes and try out their jokes on one another. The notion of trying to trick or treat without a joke to share is so obviously unsuitable it doesn't even arise. It is part of the very definition of the activity. This apart, the main code is so simple even pre-schoolers pick it up: only knock at decorated houses. What then does it mean if a house is decorated but dark? Or lit and decorated but doesn’t reply? Must we adapt our reasoning if a rival group tells us they have been cruelly sabotaging lanterns? If we are too late the hosts may be having their tea or have gone to bed, or had enough or run out of sweets.

“How often do we knock?” asks one.

“Once of course, only ever once” replies another.

“How many sweets can we take?”

“One unless offered more”.

“But Henry took three and the rest of us only got one”.

“She offered me three so it was OK!” says the straggler.

“No we can’t knock now. It’s too late” urges a ghost of pre-teen height.

Through the unwritten rules we learn we enjoy free interaction between stranger child and stranger adult, a concept otherwise almost unheard-of today. We learn that different rules apply in different contexts, the constraints here: symbols, company, costume, exchange and timing. Thus through fun, pleasure, enjoyment and reward and while hardly realising it, we learn implicitly social lessons of independence, observation, confidence, safety, mechanisms of exchange, negotiation, respect, gratitude. Social learning: long may it live.

Frankie Manning

It was just on Saturday night I felt again how we are often our best selves in dance and how wonderful it would be if learning to dance could, in other parts of life, be seen as the valuable thing that it is. Great then to stumble a day or two later over this quotation by Frankie Manning. I found it here after someone kindly sent me both the Dawn Hampton video I posted yesterday as well as this short podcast about how Frankie Manning got into dance. 

It's hard not to like Frankie even in video - his relaxed, easy-going manner, how he looks, how he sounds. He said he had no plans to be a professional, or a teacher or a choreographer, he just wanted to dance. He reminds of Ricardo Vidort or Tete that way.  They were social dancers who just happened to become teachers and they seemed to have transmitted the key things about social dancing rather than the things most teachers tell you about today.

In Buenos Aires I asked a lot of people - not everybody, but people I liked or thought had some insight - what a milonguero was, because it seemed it was a hard thing to pin down. Frankie seems to capture it when he says "Dancing was just a way of life."  This is not what someone says for whom dance is primarily work, business or a livelihood.  Frankie became a postal worker later on when the music changed.  The milongueros in Buenos Aires are like that. A lot of them I was told have very ordinary jobs.  They are plumbers and taxi drivers or they live off rent. Some of them - apparently - live off women. They live for the milonga - but inside the milonga, one  porteña told me, they are kings.

Listen to what Frankie says here and it sounds so familiar - hearing great music as you walk up the stairs, walking into a place where everyone is having a great time.  What dancer doesn't identify with, understand what that feels like?

He talks about the dancing feeling, how the music seeps into you, makes you want to move. That's dancing. That's what it is for me. People get up all the time to what I think of as "indifferent music".  It does nothing for me and that's why poor music drives me nuts.  In swing at least you aren't committed to a partner for three or four tracks.  DJing for tango is not hard but you have to get those three or four tracks all right or you screw up the whole tanda.   

Even in that inconvenient and ambiguous catch-all that people often misname "traditional tango" when sometimes what they just mean is "old tango" having different tastes is one thing.  I'm not a great fan of Poliya.  The drum annoys me.  But I understand why people play it in a particular tanda and it has some saving graces.  Canaro in tango goes right off for me after about 1941 but not everyone feels that.  Fresedo's Alas, makes me feel irrepressibly happy in a dance way; but it's a definite "no" for my friend.  He seems to tolerate Carillon de la Merced whereas I don't. But some music you hear in some milongas goes beyond different tastes, it's just indifferently bad or not for dancing.   It would be fine if dancing were thinking your way through moves to indifferent music.  But you can't call that dancing, that's like being a zombie. The kind of music made for dancing, the best music just makes you move.  Or it doesn't.  Music I have always felt is like a switch for dance:  off or on.  Good music is the energy, the motor, the fire.  Without it, there's nothing. 

No surprise then when Frankie says "The music is what made me fashion my style of dancing." The dance comes from the music. He's not saying learn, get the steps and insert them into the music which is what happens in pretty much every class I've ever seen or attended.   It's the other way around - the steps emerged because of the music. 

Notice he said "my style" of dancing because dance is not a one size fits all.  Dance is not ready-made clothes you put on for a while.  Social dance is individual; it is movements that fit your body, your energy, your personality - and in the case of partner dancing, that of your partner too.  Frankie developed his own style, which was low down with long reaching arms and legs and the famous "air" steps.  

Frankie didn't go to dance class and do what he was told by a teacher like a biddable sheep.   He watched, he listened, he copied, he explored, he asked, he tried things out.  It didn't always go smoothly, but he learnt from his mistakes. That's learning. It's a more independent, self-guided way of learning.

The clips tell you how he did this. Frankie lived with his mother in New York.  Here's a summary, because if someone was to say, "How do I learn to dance tango socially", aside from replying;  "Go to the milonga, watch, listen, feel your way..." I might say:  See how Frankie Manning learned to dance swing.  That's how people learn.  The way Frankie Manning learned to dance socially feels so plausible as an individual exploring what works, what doesn't, improvising and using the resources around him.  

As a child his mother used to take him along with her to rent parties where she went dancing.  After a while he got to stay up and watch.  Later, he practised dance at home with a chair or broom. Criticism from his mother that he would never be a dancer, that he was too stiff to dance "lit him up" and got him really interested.  I guess it could have gone the other way!  He started going along to ballrooms which were more social affairs with more formal dancing but also to private parties where the same people danced a wilder, freer style.  He practised in the basement with his friend Herman where they danced both roles since they didn't have a girl to dance with. Then they went to a dance for teenagers at the Alhambra - but (probably wisely) only watching, not dancing, not for four weeks.  Eventually, he asked a girl before he had heard what the track was going to be. What a lesson that was!  It turned out to be a waltz he couldn't do so he copied the guy next to him - just as I've seen my son do at ceilidhs - not an easy way to learn.  Then he and Herman took along a girl who was a neighbour to the dances and from there they started asking others.  Thereafter they began going to the adult dances at the Alhambra and to the  Renaissance for older teens.  At both of these they found better dancers.  The programme says:

"Frankie Manning learned the Lindy Hop exactly the same way he learned other dances: by watching other dancers and dancing with them. 

He started going to the Savoy in Harlem, one of the first racially integrated social spaces in the US.  He was watching these experienced dancers and it seems like this was a great learning period for him.  Pretty soon he was invited to join their dance troupe and from there it seems his rise to top amateur dancer and then to top professional dancer was swift. 

Today we seem to think that way of learning a bit hokey, that people learnt that way in another era. They say:  oh, guys learning from each other, dancing both roles, it's not practical, we're past all that.  But I think that's an excuse plied by people who are fearful or who just like things handed to them on a plate.  If they have to pay for it it just means nearly all become too invested in class to try another way.  Quite a lot of people understand it, seem to feel its rightness but can't seem to find whatever it is to pull themselves out of the well-worn easy rut of class and workshop. 

Nowadays teaching dance is industrialised, commercialised and falsely in my view confused with learning, in that if they teach you must ipso facto learn.  It really doesn't follow.  We can just pay for class and be told what to do.  I've done some swing classes and workshops.  It's not much different from tango dance class except that at least you don't have to embrace and walk as one creature with guys you don't want to get that close to.  But you still have to rotate partner and learning steps, thinking dance is still fairly stressful and contrived.  Luckily, as with dancing tango, it seems to be pretty easy to get going socially with swing. We really miss something I think when we do things the sausage-factory way.  We miss the watching, the listening, the growing time, the emergent period.  And the way people try things out in dance class or try out moves in the milonga they learned in class doesn't sound at all to me like the way Frankie tried things out.  If that doesn't make sense I guess you either just get that or you don't.

The programme diverts interestingly into a couple of insights into learning and social rules in dance: At the Savoy, Frankie found he could ask people to teach him not just watch and copy and he realised he could have done this the whole time.

"He did not need to have like an official endorsement to ask somebody: Hey how did you do that step? Will you show me? I think lots of us do things exactly like that - like we assume that there's some social rule that there isn't and we could've been helping ourselves a lot the whole time. It's easy to identify with that."

Frankie became a star probably because he had a passion and a talent for the dance but also because he got in very young and during the infancy of swing in the place where it was all happening.  From childhood he was surrounded by the music, the dance and the opportunity to try it.  

But people are sceptical.  I've heard them say:  Oh but well, only the most naturally talented can just pick up dances as though they're languages.  I think music and dance are languages.  That people learn best by the immersive method of language learning is uncontroversial.  Why do we deny it then for dance?  The natural environment of the social dance is not the dance class - it is the place where people dance socially.   I have no special dance talent.  I just didn't choose the hard way.  I went (often unconvinced) to class as the woman for a year maybe and then more off than on for maybe another year after that.  I picked up dancing the guy's role socially after dancing first as the woman.  Everybody used to pick up dances like this til some got wise to selling it.  I don't mind the selling it's what they're selling I mind.

I don't think Frankie thought only really talented people could pick up dancing the way he did. He wanted the whole world to dance.

"The Gardener and the Carpenter"

Here is a simply lovely piece about a book: The Gardener and the Carpenter about social learning. I knew what it was going to be about from the title alone. There are so many parallels with the ideas some of us share about dancing tango and an approach to life generally: that it's about exploration and discovery not targeted on "levels" of development, that it's play, not work, that there is no right and wrong, simply what happens, that it's about growing, not building and that the skills that develop happen organically, in an emergent way and are thus stronger for it. Also, that we learn much by listening and observation, play and apprenticeship, which in dance terms means we can learn much just by attending a milonga and that beginners learn easily just by dancing (not being told what to do) with people who already can. No surprise that she calls the relationship between parent and child - or anyone - an interplay, "like dancing".

Disruptive?

When we arrived at El Amateur there were few people. Before we knew there was food there we had decided to dance while it was quiet then go and find something to eat. But we hadn’t factored in the music and by the time we had had our tasty soup next door and the music had changed enough that I wanted to dance it, the place was already filling up. 

I am not unfamiliar with dancing with brand new guys in places I do not know well.  I had done so in January in Letchworth, though only I think one tanda, the music being unsuitable for beginners. In mid-February I took a friend new to dance to a new milonga, La Redonda in Edinburgh.  I had done the same with another friend, also a beginner guy in La Catedral in Buenos Aires in March. We danced all evening.  You never know how it is going to go with each guy.  There are similarities dancing with beginner men in swapped roles but equally they are all different.

But in Stuttgart as time went on I felt a bit awkward.  I felt this milonga was traditional in that perhaps they did not expect or appreciate people dancing in swapped roles or more that they did not appreciate complete beginners even in the middle. Later I found my friend, a local, thought more that they were tolerant as long as we did not bump into anyone. Astonishingly, we did not.  With my eyes open I was less sure but did not encounter any apparent hostility, more perhaps surprise. I continued because this was the only chance to dance with my friend, we did not appear to risk harm to or disrupt anyone and we stayed in the middle. Besides, I cannot help but feel it is no bad thing to share, wordlessly, in public the insufficiently well known view that beginner men can - in my opinion should - dance first as women with a more experienced partner, though ideally I think they would do so with another man.

I am not sure I would do the same there again mostly because I felt in those particular circumstances it would have been better and I might have felt less disruptive to the ambience - if indeed it was felt disruptive - in a practica. Or I would wait until I knew the milonga better. The experience also taught me something about how to dance better in swapped roles with beginner men, something I have since tried in another milonga. Still, another man - also a visitor - commented that what we did was a good thing to do for my friend and for me for which I was very grateful. While seated and after I think my friend and I had danced our last tanda of the evening, the visitor gave him a useful tip.  I never would have but it was not his partner and it was from a man to a man, so it was different.   He leaned across me: "Women automatically close their legs" he said to him in his forthright English. They just do. We don’t. But when we dance as the woman we must! Then it will be easier for her, he said, indicating me. 

Certainly, there is nothing more testing than dancing with a beginner guy, especially taller than oneself in swapped roles and in an unfamiliar environment. My friend said it was his best experience dancing tango. Given three failed attempts in class it could hardly have been worse.  Besides, there is no reason to think the real - as opposed to class - conditions would not be better and his remark made it more than reason enough for me.

Keeping it fun for beginners

How do you judge the success of a tango dance class?  By how much fun the people say they've had right afterwards?  By how much money the teachers take?  Or by how many new dancers transition into social dancers?  Of the numbers who start trying to learn to dance in a class, precious few become social dancers, fewer still good social dancers.  Contrarily, those who start new in the milongas and who have a good time tend to come back to the real thing.  Why wouldn't they?  I have found they become good social dancers and fast.

There's something to be learned here:

From the swing crowd:

“We learned two moves,” says Greg, another of the group, “and then the teacher said, ‘OK, you’re ready for a night of dancing.’”

And were they? “It’s easy to feel anxious at first,” says Dave, “but as soon as you’re dancing that really fades.” That rings true. Out on the dancefloor, some dancers are clearly experts and others just as clearly newbies, but there’s an upbeat, open ambience that makes room for them all."

I've danced swing a little and I found all that to be true.  Just as in dancing tango when you dance with experienced social dancers with whom you really want to dance everything becomes so much easier.

Character and compatibility

I mentioned a dancer - in England - who had first shown me how powerful a quiet dance with the characteristics I described could be. As with the man in Buenos Aires, I asked him how he came to dance the way he does.  He replied in a similar way - that it was the result of a lot of social dancing, years of experience in the milonga. Neither guy mentioned classes. 

Both men share similarities beyond giving memorable dances so I wonder if these are characteristics of such dancers.  Both dress casually, are quiet, discreet, are in every way wholly unobtrusive.  Both say little, look much, start to dance unusually soon.  I was surprised at this in the Argentine because most people in Buenos Aires chat well into the track before starting to dance.  He I only ever saw dancing in the inner ronda which may be in part why it took me over three weeks to spot him. Both men dance musically and above all for the woman and to the conditions of the woman and the couple. 

The interesting thing about both these dancers is that neither of their dances are characterised by moves. I simply don't see how teaching in class can create that kind of dancing and I have never seen or heard of anyone trying to teach the kind of things that characterise it.  To try and do that in class would be absurd and grotesque because what is created between the couple is a feeling, a sense.  It is to do with the music and the couple.  I do not see how it is something that can be taught in a class.  It is something I think you learn yourself with and through other people and it does not require speech. My description is perhaps not very helpful but what it does suggest is that what some (not all) think of as good dancing is not about "dance levels”.  It is perhaps about finding compatibility of various things, including character within the dance.  In this sort of dance - I speak from the girl’s side of things - there is trust, harmony, discovery.  The words I am reaching for are nebulous, words like understanding, recognition. 

But this is one perspective. This sort of dance is not or at least does not seem to be what everyone wants.

Being unique: learning from children

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly. “ E.B. White

This gives children their due.  Children are often told to do this and be that and have all natural joy shaped and moulded into the ways others want them to be yet in a heartbeat they can spring back to an apparently boundless natural optimism and creativity with a speed and resilience not generally matched by adults.

Recently I went to help six or seven year olds with Chrismas crafts at our school.  On the table allocated to me the teacher had prepared an example of a Christmas card with a Christmas tree design and the material to make it.  Here is a similar version.  

To make the cards, there was a triangular template made from card, Christmas wrapping paper, pre-cut into strips, glue and scissors.  At the table there were spaces for six children at a time.  When they had finished they rotated on to tables with other activities. Few children asked what they had to do.  Most, must have, I suppose, glanced at the card but plunged straight in.  A few hesitated for a moment, looking to me for guidance. “Guidance” it turned out just meant in most cases, showing them where to start by pointing out the pile of coloured card so that they could choose from the selection, and sometimes passing them the tree template.  

The lovely thing was that nobody just copied the example card.  Some made their strips all one way.  Some used the card to cut out other pieces of card to make tree decorations.  Somebody decided to make a border to their card using these strips, someone else decided to use a spare cut-out star to decorate their tree’s pot, someone asked how to curl the paper like ribbon to make curly decorations for their tree like this..

All the children's cards were very creative and completely individual.  Sometimes, one of the ideas would live for a bit among the other children.  For a while a few people did borders, then there was a ribbon curling phase.  I loved how the ideas appeared and were shared, lived for a while and gave way to others.

Everyone completed a card with little assistance, more a sense of support, of being, as Tango Commuter put it recently “pointed in the right direction”.  One boy folded his card the “wrong” way and like one or two other boys seemed generally hesitant and so uncertain I thought he was going to struggle with many things.  In fact no.  We just made his card into a unique, tall card, he took his time and was happy with the result.  In this expressive activity there were no “mistakes”.  

How these children learned seemed to me so different to the overthinking that happens when adults are taught improvised social dancing in class. Simple Scottish country dancing of the kind danced in ceilidhs is different because it is a series of sequences though I and most have learnt them socially. But Argentine tango and also swing - from the little of it I have danced - is improvised and best learnt socially by dancing with experienced people as it used to be. In fact, I danced swing (of a sort) with my elder son yesterday in the kitchen and was delighted when he, who dances tango, immediately initiated entirely different swing sorts of movements that he had not seen from me.  

In the craft classroom the children obviously were not paying anyone or expecting anything in return.  The children were as focused as you see adults in dance class, but only because it is a natural state for them, not one caused by intent on an ROI. The children were relaxed and natural and happy,  brimming with creativity and experimentation, like my son when he dances who has never been to tango or swing dance class; like most children  in fact and some untrained adults when they feel moved to dance.

Local cafe

It was the same later in the week at the school Christmas concert which for me is when Christmas really feels like it begins.  Each class sang two Christmas songs.  There were traditional songs and party songs.  It was the variety that I enjoyed.  The ones that were nicest to watch were those where you could see those same qualities I felt in the craft class - the ones where the children were most happy, having fun and relaxed.  These tended to be the younger classes.  Even within the cohesion required for group song you could see the individuality expressed in the children’s faces, their Christmas clothes, the instrumental moments in the songs when they all danced - in all the ways in fact in which they expressed themselves.

In craft class, a cd was playing.  The children spontaneously burst into favourite Christmas songs.   How they were in themselves directly affected what they made.  They did copy an example, but it was only an example - a basis for their own ideas.  There was no forcing it on them, no exactitude, no repetition, no oppression, no right, no wrong.  The cards were all individual, very loose interpretations of the example and all the better for it.

The Scotch Hop

Linlithgow palace

Dancing tango is not I think, best learned in class.  Neither is Scottish country dancing, or at least the simpler forms of it that you usually find at ceilidhs - the simpler, party version of scottish country dancing.  Tango and ceilidh dancing are very different - one is wholly improvised, the other strictly a dance of patterns or set sequences.  You might think the way you learn both would be completely different, but I don't think so.

I took my sons to the first and last dances of the wonderful "Scotch hop" which takes place usually in the courtyard of Linlithgow Palace five times in July and August.   Video.  Would that there were more of these in other Historic Scotland or National Trust for Scotland properties.  There we met up with friends, and saw some of the local tango dancers out to ceilidh for the night.

My children and I have been going to the Scotch Hop for about four years, since my younger son was a toddler.  It is one of the highlights of our summer.  In the past they have gone happily, less for the dancing I think and more for the atmosphere of music, dance and excitement.  There is the promise of a ruined palace with dizzingly tall towers to explore up dark spiral staircases with juice and shortbread at half time.  Afternoon picnics, ice cream and adventure playground are the inevitable afternoon precursors to those long, light evenings.  In the picture below my younger son begins a happy association between sweet things and dance at the Scotch Hop.

Half time at the Scotch Hop, 2012

That association has continued on occasional trips to the much-loved Dalmeny Tango Tea Dances just north of Edinburgh with warm hosts Willie and Louise where the food is magnificent and sometimes there are even little girls to run around with outside, who may even dance (in the middle of the ronda).

Dalmeny, January 2015

It has often struck me as I ferry my children to activities in the modern manner how segregated by age these activities are. It is true of everything from tennis to art. I would rather they played football, informally, as yesterday, with a crowd of boys aged six to adult, speaking an unknown language  in the park in front of our house than they attend planned, structured and segregated activities which teaches them if anything that the kind of easy social interaction they had on the field is unusual.  

In Kaduna, Nigeria  during the late seventies my parents had an active social life at parties held in the houses of other, mostly military personnel who were there at the invitation of the Nigerian government.  Very occasionally we went as a family not to the smart Polo club but to the more imaginatively named Crocodile Club.  The crocodile is the symbol of the city.  It was a social club attended by ex-pats from all over the world most of whom were probably there because of the country's sudden oil wealth.  The adults went to drink and chat.  My father said there was a light lunch ("small chop").  I don't remember a garden as such.  More a kind of compound with plants suitably large for hide and seek, and below our feet the dusty, packed red earth.  For us children there was a sudden thrill in being outside in a new place, with other children we didn't usually see, the sense of adventure and freedom and yet with the knowledge, reachable, that our parents were around somewhere.  

Mine was perhaps the last generation of at least British children to have the freedom to roam and explore.  There were snakes and scorpions and terrifyingly large orange and black spiders with yellow webs, storm ditches with god knows what inside, mounds of rubbish with goats atop, afternoon downpours and low lightning, narrow paths through fields of tall sugar cane, mango trees that were great to climb but caused a rash, each bump, housing, we told each other with quiet horror, a little wriggling worm.  We explored it all on bikes and in small gangs and alone. 

The Scotch Hop is also wonderfully multi-generational in the way of the way of the Crocodile Club though given the palace's tall towers, open windows and the age in which we live when parents - me, I'm afraid included - are inexplicably so much less relaxed than our parents were, the children tend to have significantly less freedom to explore alone.

With granny, (left) 2012

This year was the first that my eight year old, Orry, wanted to dance all the dances with his friend Milly.  Neither of them really knew any of the dances; perhaps they had a dim recollection of the Gay Gordons from school or previous ceilidhs. The dances are "called": you walk through the simple routine once or twice before the music starts, but at age eight, I'm not sure how much that helps.  Before the dances the uncertainty, fear and resolve were written all over his face.  But provided they were in a set (group) with experienced people to help, or he could identify an experienced couple to copy, they were fine and went back time and again.  Ceilidhs are just about taking part and trying things out.  Even six year old Henry and little Charlotte wanted to try out two couple dances on their own.

She loved her first experience at the beginning of the summer - so much so that she wanted to make the last hop the focus of her fifth birthday which was on the same day.  Her mother and I, near them in a long line of dancers with partners our own height wondered how they were going to manage Orcadian Strip the Willow where you alternate between birling your partner and endless numbers of other men, women, boys and girls at speed for an exhilarating, dizzying, exhaustingly long time.  But seeing the two of them clap and stamp to the rhythm and jump up and down with sheer excitement and pleasure was one of my great memories of this summer.   Willing hands (and the superb volunteers) helped them down the line of dozens of couples. There is something wonderful about children participating, learning from others within the group especially when the learning is the by-product of the overall experience which is of music, dance, anticipation and laughter.

Thanks to Alix and Michal for permission to publish these photos and to Sue Anderson of The Scotch Hop for permission to use the photo of Linlithgow Palace.