Reading The Tea

This first video is really not very tango-like, but has amazing athleticism. (Core strength, anyone?)

This piece successfully fuses modern aerial dance with Argentine tango. I want some bungee cords to play with now!

When I saw the announcement that Daniel Trenner was teaching a fundamentals class at Friday Night Blues, I was excited and a bit confused. Isn’t he an argentine tango dancer? Why is he teaching at blues? As it turns out, he taught an excellent introduction to partner dance. As a teacher he is charismatic and memorable.
My notes from the class (geared to people new to dance):
1.) Everyone started in a circle, facing in. He had us pick out someone (at random) from the circle to remember. Our task was then to walk around the room, cutting through space without letting “your” person get behind you. Back in the circle, we picked a second person, and this time didn’t let either of them get behind. “Staying to the outside of the room is cheating,” we were admonished. “If you make a mistake, pretend you didn’t.”
Great ice-breaker, everyone milled around the room and took up space. Conversation followed about eye contact with other drivers.
2.) Try to press your front against the back of the first person you picked. Next, the second person. This resulted in everyone running, milling about the room. Lots of giggles. I think this exercise is especially good for breaking the “I don’t want to touch another human” barrier.
3.) Circle again. Pick a point across the room and traverse the space. Now do it by walking forward and backward (still towards a point). Again, awareness of others. If you bump someone, make it soft. adjust the length of your line if the middle is getting too clogged. Traversing again, this time picking a point to turn. (I kept thinking… Improv score!)
4.) His approach to the introduction of leading and following was quite different from others I’ve encountered. We circled up again, and he asked for a volunteer. Any volunteer. A teen-age girl bounced into the center. He made her the lead in much of the demonstration. They stood side-by-side and he demonstrated two ways to go along with her — pulling her behind him or the “gentlemanly” way, offering her the space ahead of them for her to step into. “Which is easier?” Several people guessed the gentlemanly way — he said it’s actually harder, but better. He showed how when she is leading him, she has to keep leading as he steps, then step with him. (The were still standing side-by-side.) We all tried it with partners. Because of the circle before this exercise, genders were mixed up and people weren’t self-conscious about it. (Mental note: remember this…) We then switched to facing each other and leading side steps. (Both partners took turns leading and following.) With music, we did it again, listening to the music. There was discussion of riding horses. When you have a beginning rider, what kind of horse does he ride? An older, plodding, gentle one. As you’re more advanced, what kind of horse do you want to ride? A more spirited one. Plodding through a dance is not great following. However, it is good to do with beginners. Also: if a beginning lead says “You’re not doing this right,” it’s a desperate cry for help. In discussion after, several new follows said that they felt freed by this concept, since that gave them permission to not self-judge so harshly.

I think a lot of dancers forget that the head is a part of the body, especially in partner dance. I see people at milongas, and even in performances with their heads held stiffly, heavy spheres tacked onto the beautifully moving body. Often amazing (even “famous”) leaders make my neck hurt just looking at their necks craning forward. The skull is heavy, but should seem to float above, like a helium balloon. Your neck (the string) is the only thing that keeps it attached. To me one of the most interesting things about the helium balloon imagery is that a balloon is never stiff. (Tango dancers!) The head can “float” high, without collecting tension. At the same time, it is a continuation of the spine, the vertebra. If doing a stomach contraction (using the spine) or body ripples, consider continuing the line through your skull (Blues dancers!).
Thinking about how the head relates to the rest of the body is interesting when watching these robots dancing. A lot of early non-human dance looked so “robotic” precisely because the body parts performed in isolation from each other. This one is pretty amazing.

Yesterday was a good day for tango. In the morning (briiiiight and early) I did a tango photoshoot with Max Johnson (a great photographer). We ended up mostly on the Stanford campus. There were tons of good shots, so it was hard to choose, but here are two:

Heather and I’s feet. (Do you like my lovely new burgundy shoes?)

Tolga and I, posing.

I’ll probably post more later.

Sunday evening we went to Brad’s tango house party. It was the most fun dancing environment I’ve been in for a while. I am trying to figure out precisely what made it so great — perhaps it was that everyone really wanted to be there, and seemed relaxed and agenda-less? Maybe it was just Brad’s enthusiasm caught by everyone else? Whatever caused the mood, it was great. In Project Learn to Lead (PLtL) news, I lead a tanda with a follow who I’ve never danced with before, and it felt like it was actually dance! I need to practice my lead more… trying to decide the best classes to take for that.

I dance because I love dancing. This might seem like an absurdly obvious observation, but it’s a concept that’s easy to loose. To me, dancing is not a sport, where I’m trying to make the better team, or like a video game, where I get to “level up” and thus face new and better leaders. Dancing is an experience. Each moment, each person.

I mention this, because I had to reaffirm this to myself recently. I’m an obsessive perfectionist who likes to improve. I spend a lot of time working on my skill and technique in dance. In turn, as I get better, I often feel like I “deserve” to dance with better leaders. I had to take out this feeling and inspect it recently, as I was feeling irritated while dancing with a beginner who cornered me into dancing. Here’s what I concluded: if I agree to dance with someone, I want to put everything into that dance, whether it is a “Tango God” dancing with me, or someone who is dancing for the first time. I want to be fully present (not scoping out my next partner) and I want the tanda to feel great for them — I want my partner to feel like he or she is a great dancer, when dancing with me. A couple weeks later, I decided to add to this. I also want to make it a great tanda for me — this goes partially with the “being present” concept. Full confession: yes, there are some people who are much more enjoyable to dance with than others. But each moment can be good.

This sounds great in theory, but breaks down with one type of dancer: dancers who try to lead more than what they really can. I have had some lovely tandas with beginners who simply walked. I have had some horrible tandas with people trying all sorts of boleos and sacadas and I’m-not-really-sure-whats-because-it’s-not-clear. Practicas and classes are a great time to work on new vocabulary. Milongas are NOT. There are also people who decide that they can jump past elementary things like “frame” and “connection” and jump right into fancy legwork. As a result, I had one leader actually loose his balance and need to steady himself on me while he had me on one leg doing a boleo. I think that leaders feel a lot of pressure to not bore a follow, but from my perspective, I’m not bored if you focus on what you can do, communicating with me, feeling the music. The fancy stuff can wait. At a milonga recently, someone I had never danced with asked me to dance, and proceded to take a very tight close-embrace. I like dancing close embrace (my preferred frame), but this lead didn’t lead from his chest. He led from his legs. You can guess the result. I tried to gently slip out to open embrace, but he held me firmly close. After flung off my axis to the point I thought that I was going to land on the floor, I put a hand on his shoulder and forced an open embrace (something I never do). “Did I almost push you over?” he demanded. “Yes,” I replied. The rest of the tanda became a game for me: he tries to push my over through poor attempts at flashy moves, I try to stay upright. I contemplated thanking him after one song, but didn’t want to embarress him, so decided to see it through. At the end of the second song, he thanked me abruptly in the middle of the floor, turned, and stalked off the floor. [For those readers who don't dance tango, it's generally insulting not to dance an entire tanda -- 3-4 songs -- with a partner. The way to end dancing with someone is to thank them.] I felt a mixture of relief and resentment at the dismissal. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to deal with this type of dancer. Would it help if someone said something to him?

 Touching animation… Necessary disclaimer that Tango Fantasia isn’t my cup of tea, but this is quite worth watching.  

(This is from a follow’s perspective, but I suspect much of it is relevant to leaders.)
    In beginning Argentine Tango classes, instructors like to remind students that it’s just walking. Everyone knows how to walk. I think that this may be necessary to prevent complete overload for people starting out. Recently though, I’ve been thinking a lot about walking. When you’re walking “normally” — out of a dance context — are you really stable?
   Stand up for a second and try something. Walk. Just your normal walk. Are you on your own axis with each step, or are you catching yourself? Isn’t walking really just a series of small falls? Now try walking again, but this time, put all of your weight directly over the supporting leg. The leg you’re on is the trunk of a tree, with roots going deep into the ground. When you’ve taken a step, you are so stable that even if someone gives you a shove, you’re able to keep standing. Grounded. On your axis. Ready to do boleos or change direction quickly.
    Here’s the paradox though: You must be fully stable, while at the same time maintaining lightness, mobility. Another visualization: your core (torso) is suspended firmly in the air by ropes around your torso. You are fully supported, so you don’t need to wobble or lean. Your shoulders are loaded on top of your rib cage with no responsibility — just along for the ride. Your legs dangle on strings from your hip sockets, like a marionette. 
   Now combine the two sensations, and you have a combination of stability and mobility. In modern dance we used to talk about finding stability through mobility, and vice versa.
     Of course, the above ignores that sometimes it’s important to have a distribution of weight on both legs, etc., etc… So many complications. But that’s what keeps it fascinating, right?

I haven’t posted for quite some time, so this is just going to be jumble of things that I’ve intended to write full posts about, but somehow haven’t found the time.

First, sympathy to everyone affected by the Virginia Tech shootings yesterday. There’s a lot to say about that, but my fingers won’t type the right things, so I’ll leave it at that.

Did the Yale Tango Festival weekend-before-last. It was my very first tango festival (Awww…)! Now I’m afraid that I’m going to become an addict. One of the highlights for me was Robin & Jennifer’s gaucho class. Now I (likely) embarress anyone with the misfortune to wait on a subway platform or elevator bank with me by practicing letting my leg have it’s own weight while swinging. Brigetta and Tomas’ milonga musicality class may just have changed my feeling about that dance forever. After a couple of classes from the school of thought where you have to keep. going. on. every. beat. sometimes. go twice. but. always. fast. I was sure that I’d never really enjoy it. They introduced the revolutionary idea of actually listening to the music, and varying speed of step accordingly (twice in a beat, every beat, every other beat, long pauses…). I lead Carlos and Tova’s turns class, but actually took away an interesting exercise that mostly pertains to follows — put all of your weight on one foot, twist your upper body 90 degrees on one directions, and let your lower body catch up. Repeat. Good obliques workout, different way of thinking about ochos.

In other tango news, I took a follower’s technique over at Dance Manhattan from Valeria. She puts so much musicality and expression into just an ocho, just a step. Tempo/ emphasis can be effective embellishments.

Since I didn’t get around to posting last Friday, the 13th, I’ll mention now that some people suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia.

Last night I went to the  church of craft meeting in the East Village, at the lovely new Rapture Cafe. Lovely people, lovely projects, lovely cafe.

Last Friday night/ Saturday morning Dustin & I went to the last big party at 3rd Ward. As the danger parties tend to be, it was eclectic, bleary, pillowy, flashing, with lots of new friends.

Other things going on in life, decisions being made. How’s that for nice & vague? Almost a flashback to my early LJ days…

At milongas, some people dance beautifully, oblivious to all but the music and the person they are dancing with. Sometimes the music/ partnership calls for fancy embellishments, sometimes simplicity and control. And then there’s the person who dances with a completely outside focus. His/her eyes dart around, making sure people are watching. He goes through every trick in his book, blithely oblivious to the music. Front side of the beat? Forget it! He’s already on the next beat! At a milonga the other night, I watched one of these dancers for a while. He’s actually a good lead, decent posture. With the right partner he sometimes seemed to hear the music a bit, but with some partners he danced as if it was a race. I’m by no means an tango traditionalist — I like experimentation and innovation — but he wasn’t doing that, he was just out of control. There was never a resting point, even when the music screamed for a moment of stillness.