Giveaways - Tanguero/Tanguera

Draft piece I forgot to post from 2016 and was just reminded to go look for.

Here's an example from 2013:

"As you know we are tirelessly working hard to raise the profile and general awareness of Tango in [readacted] and always trying to give local Tangueros every opportunity to experience this beautiful dance."

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A:  I don't like people who are tangueros before they are human beings.
B:  Nicely put. Me neither.
A:  What I could have done without was one or two experienced tangueras using the point to ram home the gap between us in terms of years of experience.
B:  By the way, the Argentine word "tanguera" does not mean dancer. Most tangueras are not dancers and tanguera as opposed to baliarin therefore implies non-dancer.

That's in general. If from an encuentro type "tanguera" means woman tango dancer, then only in their own made-up language :)

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Tejastango

Tanguero — (feminine; Tanguera) Refers to anyone who is deeply and seriously  passionate about any part of tango, such as its history, music, lyrics, etc.  In Argentina most tangueros are scholars of lunfardo, music, orchestrations, Gardel, etc.  One can be a tanguero without being a milonguero and a milonguero without being a tanguero (very few milongueros would be referred to as tangueros).  And of course, one can be an extremely good tango dancer without being either, such as stage dancers, who are quite disdained by real milongueros and tangueros, unless they go the extra distance and become milongueros by going to the milongas, and/or tangueros as well.  An aficionado.

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I never heard an Argentinian dancer in a traditional milonga in Buenos Aires refer to themselves or anyone else as a tanguero.  It was always bailarin.  I specifically remember DJs of whom I asked questions talking about "los bailarines"

The way tanguero/a is used in Britain has sounded pretty suspect to me, a bit like a poncy Spanish version of "social dancer".  A tanguero for me is that guy with the fancy, stripy baggy tango trousers and the shoes. 

Sometimes, though, "tanguera" does seem perfectly apt:  Sh*t Tangueras Say,

On the grapevine

I heard a few things lately - they seem to have a Nordic slant whereas I am looking south this time of year! Reportedly:

Harrogate tango festival had a good turn-out of about 100 people on the main night. They were mostly people who attended the classes. The DJs were unadvertised, the request on Facebook about who the DJs were was ignored. The DJs were actually the teachers.  Things were reportedly traditional including invitation, as was music with a few alternative tracks.

The Great Yarmouth milonga weekend looked nice pic but completely different to the room size that was advertised pic. Be sure to check the hotel's TripAdvisor reviews. Graham Harrad and Rob Barba reportedly played nice sets.

The Ramsbottom milonga weekend was to my knowledge the first milonga weekend in the north. Good foodie destination! Numbers were tops about 30 on the Saturday night, and disappointingly low for the other milongas despite good turn out for a class-heavy festival by the same organisers using the same venue the previous year. Moral and sad hypothesis (?): dancers in the north currently prefer classes to milongas. Northern dancers who don’t might do well to get some decent class and show-free milongas going up there.

Leamington spa festival weekend had a poor room layout and a difficult ronda with a big mix of ages and abilities.

As for the marathons and encuentros, reportedly:

Krakow was not good - poor venue, layout and not great dancing.

Lodz  - a guy who went said it was great.  A girl who went said there were too many girls!

I asked someone who travels why there are so few milonga weekends in UK. The person said people can go abroad for them and was not alone in remarking how cheap Poland is. It is a question of value for money: Poland: £150 for 5 day in a flat in the city centre. 12 DJs, good breakfast on site, soup in the evening, 90 euros for 3 days + inexpensive travel to get there with far better dancers than the general UK standard. Compare to Bristol: a more expensive encuentro, no food, and no change on £150 for three nights accommodation. I could see the compelling side but also the conflation of milonga weekends with marathons.

Mallorca was great. 

It has to be said that when you're stuck in some local UK tango scenes where classes tend to rule, you don't necesarily tend to quibble about the things you go to outside it.

Bergen tango marathon was very good. Disastrous and very confused registration process for couples - you can register as a couple, you can’t, you might be able to, we don’t know, we’re not saying, OK then (no apology). But once through all that there were no do's and don'ts list but good etiquette, very good dancing and relaxed atmosphere.

Oslo’s Thursday night regular milonga is very nice in a gorgeous venue. The night can change to Fri/Sat which is deliberate to allow people with fixed weekly commitments the chance to come, but it is always in the same venue. Very pleasant people. Tall men :)

La Mirada encuentro in Tenerife was one I looked into for the space between Christmas and over the New Year, the chance of sun and warmer temperatures weakening my customary fussiness about DJs and resolve against events requiring pre-registration. Last week there was a website note saying - typical of these things - you have to book as a couple or a single guy because they want to gender balance and they’d run out of single women places. My irritation at these things inclines me at these moments to claim a gender-blurred identity. I think it’s a real thing but I forget the proper name. I’d claim minority rights and wrongful discrimination only I think they might push me off to a Queer Tango group where I might not feel queer enough to fit in but I’m pretty sure they’d be more welcoming. On the strength of that, maybe I really am gender-confused. Any chance of an encuentro for that?

Roll on the day when they do show-free, class-free, no pre-registration milongas in different venues between Christmas and New Year on one of the Canary islands. Sun, sea, good seafood and, good music & venue permitting - maybe even some dancing too. What’s not to like? Best of all, no need to beg single guys who don’t need single girls to get in with. I don’t think I’d like to go with the kind of single guy that was happy to register with a girl as a security blanket - which is probably why I don’t know any.. 

Apparently, most encuentros seem to want you to open up your friends section on Facebook (if locked down) so they can poke about your friends. I even heard one guy had to get a (presumably friendless) facebook account to apply for an encuentro. 

La Colmena in Denmark even wants you to say who your top 5 milongueros are, Milongueros on Youtube? Oh no, ones you’ve danced with apparently...

These sorts of places vet you with such flagrant indignity that it reminds me of the intrusive medical checks to which an elderly female Italian friend told me she was subjected to upon application for a job here, post-war. And then although they vet you, they still list their rules, as if to say “we well and truly checked you out, only our process of sniffing round your friends isn't really enough or we're not very good at doing it so you’re only here on sufferance...." 

It's important to keep calm and recall like attracts like, in dance, life, thought process and this is a helpful thing:

"In case in your general "tanguero" life you somehow missed that encuentros are Not For Everyone and you missed it also in the application an vetting process.... let us remind you There Are Rules” (usually on the website)  

The Embrace photos from Riga were nice. Standard gender balanced stuff, encuentro standard creepy “we investigate who you are to keep out the riff raff”. The funny thing about these sorts of events is that even if you register as a couple, there can be rules to keep you apart.. 

A: When will one of these things resist the rules section? Too bad about "don't dance several tandas in a row with one person".

B: Wow. Never seen that as a prohibition.

A: Oh I've seen it before, more than once.

B: I'm tempted to write a spoof tragedy comic strip in which a guy and girl meet, dance, fall in love... only to be torn apart by encuentro rules.

Finally, from Stockholm based The DecaVitas, I saw this video today and thought too fun not to share!

Talk: "Special" music and applause

2014

Dancer A:  I was puzzled by the music this afternoon. I arrived towards the end of the first hour & there was nothing I recognised. 

Dancer B:   A favourite DJ of mine reported the same of DJ "X". He said he will not go again.

Dancer A:  I could recognise the orchestras for the most part but not the tracks. I danced an OTV [Orquesta Tipica Victor] tanda I didn't know with a stranger & found the music hard. But strangely everyone applauded the DJ after that tanda....

Dancer B: Unfamiliar music and hard to dance. The kind of music some people find sorely lacking in real milongas. I can understand why they applauded.

Dancer A: They also applauded DJ D's Rodriguez foxtrots. I like them but not to dance and I didn't think they needed applause.

Dancer B: I have only ever heard applause for tandas in encuentro-type events. I could not imagine it happening in city milongas such as BsAs, Berlin, Paris etc.

Dancer A:  I asked some people I knew about the applause. The partner of a DJ said that people were very appreciative of the music. Maybe they were all very experienced & it's true most people had been dancing for at least 5 years. Still, I was not generally with them on their musical views.

Dancer B: I have to say I believe it is an affectation used to demonstrate appreciation of the music by people in which genuine appreciation of the music is minimal. The feeling that the music genuinely gives does not lead one to applaud.

Dancer A:  The music became more familiar later on but still a lot of stuff I didn't know. DJ "A" liked it. She said playing unusual stuff made the event more special. 

Dancer B:  Special is an excellent word to describe it. Another is "alternative".

Dancer A:  DJ "B" said apparently these organisers like DJs who play this kind of less familiar music. 

Dancer B: This is one reason why they organise such events. The number of people who like this kind of music is so low that to get enough of them in a room to dance with each other, they have to run special gatherings.

  Having said that, in Germany and the Netherlands, there are a few regular milongas like this. I would sometimes turn up at unknown milongas advertised as 'traditional', with just fingers crossed. I recall one in Germany where DJ "C" played not one single track I recognised all night. Instead, there was an endless, uninterrupted stream of third-rate music from BsAs orchestras that never made the grade. What many DJs call C-sides.

  I learned a lot by chatting to the (small number of) regulars. They told me how they really liked that DJ "C" plays refreshingly new traditional music every night, rather than the same boring classics. I watched these people dance. They don't actually dance to the music playing. Which is no surprise, since they don't know the music playing. They do a homogenised instruction-based dance that goes as well or as badly to any tango. And this is one reason why they think that DJ "C" is playing different music every night. The music played is so immemorable, and the dancing "to" it is so remote, that they can't actually recognise whether the music is a track they've already heard. They would not know if exactly the same music was played the following week. Musical amnesia.

 This is the total opposite of the relationship with the music typically enjoyed by the best guys in a traditional milonga. Such a guy knows every single piece that is played, and if he doesn't it is because the DJ has messed up. He recognises each piece from the first second or two of the sound. He knows every single beat and note of each track of the hundreds that are his personal favourites. That's essential to him giving his girl a good time. The music is like a familiar and loved garden. He's taking his girl on a walk through it.

Dancer A:  That is an excellent point. And I do feel that. I recognise tracks from the first beat or two or I don't know them. I almost never have doubt on this. I truly hate "leading" pieces I don't know. Several times in the past I have had to excuse myself mid tanda because of that. 

Dancer B: I refuse. Like you, I'll walk off the floor rather than fake it.

  Yet some only like music they don't know. I know another DJ who says she hates to dance to music she's heard before, so a trad music night was for her "a nightmare".

Dancer A:  So what happened to DJ "C"?

  She is now well-known as a promoter of their manifesto against the focus on Golden Age Greatest Hits that 'we've all heard a hundred times', and for the 'undiscovered treasures' that we have not. It is interesting reading.

Talk: "Mistakes"?

DAVID:  You don't make mistakes usually…

- Sorry. Something distracted me.

DAVID:  No, it's all great but no mistakes means I don’t really have any material to work with.

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- There are guys so insistent that they are in charge that if you make a mistake they will not follow you into it and move on.

WILL:  It is not insistence. Even guys without naturally insistent characters stop listening to the woman when they adopt, along with the leader/follower idea, the companion idea that the woman, as follower, has nothing to say. So in the dance the reason he doesn't go with your "mistake" is he doesn't actually know you've made it, until what initially wasn't actually a problem at all does become a problem, and then it is too late.

- Oh, I think they often do know there was a mistake. They just don't or can't accommodate it which is unpleasant for everyone.

WILL:  They know when it becomes a mistake. Before then it is not a mistake. It is just her saying something unexpected. Without which the dance would be as boring as hell. As it normally is with people who’ve learnt patterns.

- It's all about the mistakes!?

WILL: They are not mistakes! They are the woman saying what she feels! To call them mistakes is like calling an unexpected answer in a conversation at a cocktail party a mistake. Only if in fact this conversation was scripted for say a film, would unexpected be a mistake.

- So scripting is what in tango dance are called sequences, patterns, steps, moves. Anything where the guy has an idea and “decides“ he is going to do “this” to the woman, instead of inviting her to share a feeling?

WILL:  In the real world, the unexpected is actually what makes the conversation. If the conversation had been scripted, no-one would bother having it. It would communicate nothing... 

Photo by Duncan Hull via Creative Commons licence 2.0.