Reading The Tea

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?

(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?

Last night was one of those nights… Got to class, brushed the cat fur off my shoes (How? How do they get their fur on my tango shoes?) and couldn’t dance at all. Couldn’t follow. Couldn’t embellish. Couldn’t keep a good posture. Nada.

That aside, the classes were interesting. First I took Robin and Marika’s Tango 2 class. Usually I do a Tango 2 then a Tango 3 class at Empire, but with how I was dancing, I opted for Adam and Chico’s Tango Musicality class.

In Robin and Marika’s class we worked on ocho technique in close embrace, with embellishments. We were transformed into dancing cheese sandwhiches, with a piece of yellow paper between each couple. Marika talked about how the hip in close embrace ochos needs to take up the space in the embrace, rather than leaving a gaping void of space. (What most other teachers I’ve head refer to as “sticking your butt out.) Somehow that clicked for me more than it has in the past. We also discussed embellishments, and how the follower needs to take time, or she won’t be given it by the leader. For some reason that was really hard for me. For those who know me, I’m a fairly assertive dancer. Maybe that’s why I work hard at really listening to the lead, and feel weird taking time I don’t feel that I’m given? Marika pointed out that until your hips are in the right place, he can’t lead you to the next step. Robin also said that you can think of leads as a to-do list — you check off one thing before you go on to the next, even though you know that there are other things on your list. Another thought about ochos in close embrace: the embrace is like opening and closing a book. The bodies stay together, but the connection shifts.

In the musicality class we worked on different ways to listen to the music, and accent beats w/ movement, and different ways to time the cross/ embellishments to compliment it, particularly on the two. The hard thing with embellishing on the two is not rushing the next step, or giving it a false urgency, but feeling the underlying beat. It was a nice small class, so I lead Chico a bit, too. I still have a tendancy to overlead the cross a bit — should be more subtle. As with everything, I have a problem with tension in tango. (My clarinet teacher once told me “I can’t believe I’m saying this to a student, but don’t work so hard!”) Adam gave me an interesting mental image to loosen my walk a bit without making it seem artificial — practice walking with my arms swinging like I’m throwing something underhand. Then I don’t overdo the shoulders, but everything else loosens.

“Don’t put your follow where you want her [or him], open up space that you invite her to fill.” 

Last night D & I took Tango 2 from Adam Hoopengardner at Empire Dance. Even though I alread knew how to lead the steps themselves (ocho cortado and variations), Adam brought some really interesting thoughts about leading it to the class, ways of making it an advanced step. When first learning it, you can step with your partner, taking each bit as it comes, in traditional timing. Later on, you can start to play with the rhythm, hearing the music. To really make the step advanced, you play with the dynamics, and give the follow room to have a voice. To me dynamics are different than timing. Timing is long or short, 1 count or 2. Dynamics are feeling — stacatto, legato, playful, melancholic, nostolgic. Then you are really dancing. Someone once said to me (referring to ballroom) that beginning dancers want to dance intermediate steps, intermediate dancers want to dance advanced steps, and advanced dancers want to practice the basics. I would take it a bit further and say that there are no advanced steps — just advanced performance of steps.