Why I don't dance with you more

An acquaintance of mine would like me to dance with her more.  Her tactic is complaining to me that she never gets asked to dance.  She bugs me about not asking her more in a kidding/not kidding kind of way.  She also says things like "I don't know why I come out no one ever asks me to dance" and "I only danced two tandas, that's $5 per tanda " (milonga cover charge was $10).  She complains a lot - about the music, and the men, and the venue, and even her health.

I always dance one tanda with her since she's been friendly to me and was kind enough to help get me out of my introverted shell a bit, so I feel like I owe her one tanda.  But only one.

There's a lot of things that I can't say charitably, so I keep my mouth shut.  But here's what I'm thinking, more or less from worst to best:

The fact is that you drink a bit, and even when sober you lean on your partner a lot.  Now if you were an older woman who is just physically unable to maintain your axis, that would be one thing, but I don't believe that to be the case.  I don't know if you're unaware that you're not on your axis (I wasn't, for a frightfully long time), but the result is that your partner is going to be severely limited in what he can attempt, and he's going to be physically taxed by holding you up more or less continuously for 10 minutes.  Dancing with you is more work than joy, and men's choices of partner will reflect that.

You complained that the very, very good dancer at the milonga didn't hold you like he was holding his current partner (at the time you were complaining).  First of all, if I were a woman, I'd be flattered and happy just to dance with the man in question, because he's creative and moves wonderfully and even though he's very, very good (can you tell I'm a fan?) he dances with everybody.  But never mind that.  First of all, his current partner is a slender woman who is completely on her axis and is in control of her body at all times, and is a very, very good dancer in her own right.  He holds her accordingly.  If you want him to hold you like he's holding her, then lose some weight and get on your axis, and practice.

We spent about 10 minutes dancing, and you spent at least 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after complaining about your lot.  I'm seeking to minimize my interactions with you.

I'm an open embrace dancer, because I'm shy and It's what I'm used to.  You'll dance open embrace grudgingly (and complainingly), but you obviously prefer close embrace.  I don't have anything against close embrace, it's just not what I prefer to do.  Perhaps as I become more skilled and experienced (and less shy) I will be able to do either, but I have a very difficult time leading in close embrace and so in that regard we're just not the best match for each other.

This is America, and women are alleged to be empowered here, we have equality, etc etc.  Ask someone to dance.  I know it's daunting - I'm shy and I find asking strangers and even acquaintances uncomfortable.  Even if they accept (which they mostly do).  But that's one way you can get more dances.

There are a lot of women who want to dance at the milonga, and usually more women than men.  This means that you are going to have to play nice and share, and it also means that you have to compete to be the most pleasant option compared to your peers.  I may have mentioned some ways you can improve your odds above.  But even then, you're not going to dance every song.

I watched two particular women you were competing with that same night.  One is a young (mid twenties) enthusiastic intermediate dancer and improving rapidly (because she works at it).  She's in control of her axis most of the time, and she's also trim and pretty and she laughs a lot and is always having and sharing a good time.

The other is a woman in her late forties, who's an incredibly skilled and amazing dancer (because she has dedicated decades to practice), and she is trim and fit and beautiful and makes a point to do more than her fair share of what it takes to make a beautiful dance.

The younger woman danced about five or six tandas.  She probably could have danced more but she was spending a lot of time being a social butterfly.  I've interacted with her when she was doing so, and I can tell you she's charming and happy and pleasant to be around.

The older, more skilled woman only danced three or four tandas.  She wasn't asked.  I personally didn't ask her because she intimidates me (it's not her, it's me).  I don't know why others don't ask her more, but the fact is that no one dances every song.

You seem to think that paying your admission to the milonga guarantees you lots of dances.  The nerds would say that's "necessary but not sufficient".  You must do much much more than that (and frankly, less of what you're doing now).

Good luck.

Why I keep coming back to Tango

There are no mistakes in tango.  This has meaning on so many levels.  The simplest is that without set figures and steps, nothing is off the table - you can

attempt anything, and hopefully you can make it beautiful (some movements make this easier than others of course).

Tango is sexy and passionate and intimate and filled with longing and strife and anger and tenderness and beauty.

It's uniquely challenging and difficult.  I like difficult things, it turns out.

It demands a level of balance and awareness and body control that I didn't experience in other dances.  Not that other dances lack that, I just think that it comes later in the learning sequence.  With Tango it begins on day 1.  I danced ballroom styles for over a year and didn't realize that I was essentially falling onto every step the whole time.  Once I started tango, I figured it out in about a week, and started correcting it in the first month.  And this vastly improved all my other dancing.

The music is beautiful.  And various.  You can dance tango to nearly anything, because it's so improvisational and flexible.  You can tango to classic tangos (Bahia Blanca is a favorite of mine, along with "Por una Cabeza" (Scent of a Woman" and "True Lies"), or modern tangos ("Whatever Lola Wants", "Roxanne") or waltzes ("valz" in spanish), to pop music.  I've tangoed to Adele "Make you Feel my Love", to Elvis Costello "Watching the Detectives", to Lorde "Royals" and Amy Winehouse " I'm no good" - a wonderful fit for tango.

The Gallantry and old school chivalry of dancing in general holds very much in tango, and that appeals to me as well.  The man leads, and the woman follows, but the goal is to provide a pleasant and fulfilling experience for the woman.  She should be intrigued, happy, and feel like she is dancing beautifully and that all are looking on her with amazement and envy.

I'm most familiar with the leader's role and responsibilities, but the woman's is no less daunting.  I've tried to follow, and being on your axis and prepared to move in any direction requires an alertness and a kind of a zen mind that I found supremely challenging.  Another factor (shared with other dances) is the fact that when something is led, the woman must aggressively pursue and execute the step or move.  A combination of stillness and motion, of waiting peacefully, and moving confidently, and a willingness to essentially trade the lead with the man as the music inspires is required.

The man must quickly learn and dance to his partner's level of experience and vocuabulary, and his lead must be authoritative and unmistakeable while still being gentle and considerate of however long her response may take.  If any signals get crossed (either through a vague lead or difficulty following), the man must seamlessly accommodate whatever has actually happened, ideally without ever letting on to his partner or observers that anything unexpected has occurred.  The woman should always feel that she knows what is being asked of her, and should never feel like she performed anything less than perfectly.  The man must be able and willing to give her time to dance as the music inspires her, and there will be times when she is inspired to change her pace or include embellishments or even perform something that was not explicitly led.  A leader must always have a plan, but when the lady requests time or even takes the lead, he must smoothly and elegantly accommodate that.  At all times the man must dance with confidence.  There are no mistakes in tango, and the man must ensure that.

What's the point?

"My Methodist Grandmother Said" by Mary Mackey, from Breaking the Fever



My Methodist Grandmother Said

My Methodist
grandmother said
dancing
was adultery
set to music

how right she was

in that sweet sway
breast to breast and
leg to leg
sin comes into its own

[...]


Read the whole thing...

Leading

I've gotten compliments on my clear lead, and that makes me happy.

I've been thinking about my dancing and some recent classes, and a friend was kind enough to provide me some video.

Now that I have a clear lead, I want it to be compelling.  I want it to have drive and momentum.

I also need to keep improving my posture....


Addendum - during a private lesson I was told that my lead was too light.  Granted, the woman who said that needs only the lightest of leads, some followers seem only to respond to a very heavy lead and a lot of waiting....

How I started with Argentine Tango

Don't know these folks, but a hell of a pic!

For the last several months, I've been spending the majority of my time dancing Argentine Tango.  This was kind of unexpected, but has been an amazing experience.

When I started dancing, my motivations were Tango (American tango, that is - hey, "Scent of a Woman" was an amazing movie...), and Waltz (actually, Viennese waltz).  Tango seemed so passionate and dramatic and sexy, and Waltz so flowing and graceful.  Plus I'm a sucker for a waltz, musically.  Those of you who have danced a bit will realize that both of these these are difficult dances.  You don't generally even start learning Viennese waltz until your slow waltz is pretty decent, and Tango is called "The dancers' dance".  So my first problem is two difficult dances tied for "most favorite".

My next problem was that my second favorite dance was "everything".  Rumba is so intimate and sexy.  Swing is so much peppy fun.  Cha cha is a blast and there's so much great  cha cha  music.  Salsa is so spicy and sexy and social.  So I spent a lot of time jumping around, which is not the most efficient way for me to learn, personally....

The dance I learned quickest, and that seemed most natural to me was swing - starting at jitterbug, and then moving on to East Coast.  Now I know what you're thinking - what does this all have to do with Tango?  Well, as it turns out my introduction to Argentine tango wasn't through American tango as you'd expect, it was via East Coast Swing.  Strange but true.

After I'd been dancing about a year, I decided to do a showcase performance at my studio, mostly to overcome my shyness.  My East Coast Swing seemed like it was coming along pretty well and there was a song I liked that would work, so I asked a fellow student to prepare and perform with me.  We had about four months to get ready, and it turned out well, but the whole time we were working on the routine, my partner was going on and on about Tango.  Argentine Tango, which apparently was different than "Tango" I was learning.  My partner was a trouper and put in a lot of extra time and work, so I definitely owed her.

Once the performance was in the bag, I finally had no excuse to keep her focused on East Coast Swing, and it was finally time to see what this Argentine Tango thing was all about.  Man was I in for a shock.

First we went to a Milonga, which I still think of as the Spanish word for "sock hop", mostly because it amuses me.  But initially it was more confusing than amusing.  The prevalent style of Argentine Tango at this event involved dancing in a very close embrace.  I was way, way too shy for that.  Secondly, I could tell that the relationship between the beat and the steps was way, way looser in Argentine than in any other partner dance I'd seen.    I could see that the dancers' movement was informed by the music, but not in a "one, two, cha cha cha" sort of way.  Both of these were way outside my comfort zone.

Next we went to a class.  We had to go to a different, funky little studio because the one we were studying at was focused on mainstream ballroom and didn't do much Argentine Tango.  So we head over to the new studio and were watching the previous class that was just finishing up.  I was relieved to learn that I didn't HAVE to dance in close embrace, there's an open embrace alternative.

But when we started learning the basic figure "La Salida", it started with the leader's right foot - which is to say, the wrong foot from a ballroom perspective.  Every ballroom dance in the world starts with the leader's left foot, the ladies right ("Ladies are always right, Men are left.").  Worse, it didn't always start with that foot.  In fact, Argentine tango is so improvisational that every step is a whole new world, anything can happen at any time.  There are figures, both for the purpose of categorization and teaching, and just because certain sequences make beautiful dance phrases, but nothing is set in stone - you can improvise anything at any time.  Which means, if you're a leader, that you HAVE TO improvise things all the time.

Another consequence of the fact that Argentine tango is so improvisational and unpredictable, and can start on any foot at any time, is that the leader has to either know what foot the lady is on, or be able to lead her onto the other foot (often without taking a step), or both.  This really blew my mind,  I could barely ensure that I was on the right foot, now I'm supposed to keep track of what foot she's on?  Inconceivable! There was also a lot of attention paid to whether you collected your feet, or collected your feet and changed weight to the other foot.  No other dance does this as early and as much as Argentine Tango (well, the last step in the American tango's "Tango close" does it, because, of course, it was stolen from Argentine.  But other than that...)  There was also a lot of stepping outside partner, which I had basically never done in other dances at the time.  And, just in case there was a corner of my mind unblown, my partner helpfully added another detail as we were practicing:

Her:  "Actually, you're supposed to touch my foot with yours right there..."
Me:    "Wait, what???"
Her:   "Touch the side of my foot with the side of yours"
Me:     "Are you kidding?  I'm supposed to look down, find your foot and touch it with mine?  We'll run into the other dancers!"
Her:  "No, without looking down"
Me:   "Well, then you're going to lose some toes....."

So let's see what's on the scorecard so far:

1.  Likely to involve an intimidatingly close embrace
2.  Starts on the wrong foot.  Often.
3.  Doesn't ALWAYS start on the wrong foot.
4.  Closing feet often DOESN'T include changing weight
5.  I've got to lead a totally improvisational dance
6.  I have to step outside partner.  A lot.  But not always...
7.  I've got to know what foot she's on
8.  I've got to know where her feet are at all times because
9.  I have to be able to touch her foot with mine without looking.  And without maiming her

All this while leading, navigating the line of dance (which, fortunately, was the same direction I was used to), and avoiding other dancers doing unpredictable, improvisational things, sometimes on purpose.  And not falling over, getting my own frame, steps, spacing right, etc, etc.  The usual.

Another factor that I haven't mentioned yet is that it's quite common in Argentine tango to cross your ankles as a step - way more common than it is in other dances, and this may or may not involve a weight change (of course).  Fortunately for me, this is much more prevalent for the ladies than the men, especially at the introductory levels.  There are other difficulties that fall more heavily or uniquely on the women, like being prepared to FOLLOW a totally improvisational dance, but at the time I had my hands full dealing with my own problems.

There were more challenges to come, but at the time, the list above was plenty.

Initially I planned to go just a few times to humor my partner (she really had been a trouper) and then fade on back into my comfort zone, but it didn't work out that way.  The funky little studio offered a discount for pre-purchasing 10 classes so I did that.  By the time I'd done 10 classes, I was adapting to most of the challenges, and it was starting to be fun.  I was starting to correctly guess which foot she was on at least 50% of the time (Yes, it seems like you'd do that well by purely random chance, but believe me, it's easy to do much, much worse than random, particularly at the beginning).  I was starting to get the hang of controlling my weight changes, starting to learn the basic figures, and the infinite variations on them, and kind of enjoying the freedom and creativity involved in that level of improvisation.  And it didn't hurt that one of my favorite and deepest practice partners was simply obsessed with Argentine tango.  So I ended up going more than I thought I would.


So that's how I got started.  Soon I'll talk about why I kept going back, and what it taught me that I didn't know I needed, and how that helped me in all my other dancing.

Two Leaders - Argentine Tango

I've been spending a lot of time dancing Argentine Tango lately, and at a recent milonga, I witnessed a vision of two leaders.

The first was dancing with what I suspect was his girlfriend, she danced with him several times, though not every dance.  She also danced with other men but he didn't dance with other women.  She was definitely the better dancer, I suspect that she was introducing him to Tango.

He wasn't a total beginner, he knew salida and a few other moves.  But what  drove me crazy (and I suspect, his dance partner as well) was his tentativeness.  He didn't keep a rhythm, he was hesitant when he moved, and when he wasn't moving he was nervous and twitchy.  I kept seeing what looked like false starts and indecision. His partner seemed nervous and hyper-alert, she realized she had no idea what was coming next, and neither did he, and it could happen at any instant, without warning.  It looked as though he was second guessing himself until he figured out the right thing - he'd have been better off doing the wrong thing calmly, definitively and rhythmically.

The second was  a young man, but obviously experienced.  He was calm and rhythmic and deliberate.  His dancing was simple and unadorned, but very clear and patient.  I saw him dance with a woman I know who's had about six months of ballroom dancing and basically an hour or so of Argentine Tango, and he made her look beautiful and graceful and elegant.  When she did something different than he led, he just handled it without lifting an eyebrow.  When things got tricky, he just slowed everything down - he would just be still for a few beats, and then he would start moving again in half time.  And when he was still, he was so beautifully still.  He wasn't just static and frozen either, he'd move or sway or change his embrace but he was able to do it in a way that told his partner "we're just being still right now".  When he moved she knew it just enough in advance.  Everything he did looked (and I imagine felt) inevitable.

I so badly want to be guy number 2.

So here's my plan.

Work on frame and lead and clarity first.  Figures and moves come later.

Be willing to just be still.  Learn what movements say "we're staying here" vs "we're moving now".  Learn to eliminate anything that's twitchy or indeterminate.  Decide to be still, and communicate that.

Let go of the beat and don't try too hard to follow the music.  Remember that it's easy to dance too fast (for your partner, or your skill level, or your ability to lead), but it's nearly impossible to dance too slowly.

Dance Simply.

The UN-natural Athlete

I'm not a natural athlete, though I've known a few.  I met another just the other day.

I spent a few years kayaking and the basic skill there is the eskimo roll.  It took me months and months of pool practice to learn this, and when I tried it on the river it fell apart again and I had to rebuild it.  Now I've got one of the most reliable, versatile, powerful, dependable rolls of almost anybody I know;  I can do either side, with or without a paddle, even after bouncing over a rocky bottom on my helmet, in adverse currents, whatever.

In Colorado, I once had my paddle knocked out of my hands underwater, so I hands-rolled up, and went about an hour of class II-III water without my paddle, never worrying about getting back up on top of my boat (I even found my paddle in an eddy at the take out - it was a very good day...).  One of my paddling buddies used to joke that I was more comfortable under the water than on top of it, and my girlfriend at the time used to call me "speaker to trout".  They weren't entirely wrong.

So, awesome roll, but getting it there took a lot of learning, thinking-through, and practice.  Most of the people in my college kayaking class seemed similar, though several did learn much faster than me.  I thought that's just how it was.

One night I was teaching someone a roll at a pool session at the local whitewater club, and this dude with the weirdest collection of yard-sale boating gear you ever saw paddled up, said his name was Ed, and asked if I could show him how to roll.  I started in on my standard disclaimer how this takes a while, you gotta practice, you won't get it tonight, it takes time, blah blah blah - I didn't want him to be discouraged.  He interrupted me and said "just show me".  Well, I'm describing what to do while I'm demonstrating with my boat, paddle, body position, etc.  Halfway through that, he took a big breath and dived underneath his boat and started trying it.  He fumbled around a bit, tried once and failed, and then he just ripped off one of the nicest rolls I'd ever seen, on his second try.  Five minutes later he was rolling on the other side.  We ended up boating together for years.  Predictably, he rapidly became better than me. I watched him learning - he'd just see someone do something he wanted to learn and his eyes seemed to pour it right into his muscles without the long, distracting stop in his brain.

I know dancers like that, and they amaze me just like Ed did, but I don't seem to learn that way.  You have to point out to me that I'm not turning my foot out, and that if I do, it's more stable.  I need to have a conversation about that, I need the words to intellectualize around.  I spend some time noticing that I'm still not turning out my foot, and I have to periodically abandon all my other dancing while I focus on turning my foot out.  (ladies, if your leader goes blank, he may be having a similar challenge).  Then I need to practice that a lot while thinking about it - at first it takes nearly all my attention, then this fades to where it's only moderately consuming, and finally it's automatic and I can worry about something else.  Most of my time on the dance floor I'm like a time-sharing computer, switching my attention and the conversation in my head between body mechanics, footwork, lead, planning for future figures, navigation, seeing what's going on around me, and floorcraft.  Only after quite a bit of that does it become automatic.  Shortly thereafter, it gets boring (which means I need to start attending to my partner....)

As I build up a larger repertoire of learned tidbits in dance, I am learning faster, but I'm still going through this process, I'm just relating it back to something similar I've already learned.  I still don't seem to go straight from seeing something to doing it, I just have a shorter conversation in my head that goes something like "Remember the waltz box?  Well, same thing here in rumba, except....".

At least I figured out how I learn, and how to speed that process along:

1.  I'm verbal and language oriented.  Talk about dancing details with my dance nerd friends, read books and blogs and watch youtubes.

2.  Go ahead and have the conversation in your head.  Try not to get too wrapped up in it while you're actually dancing.

3.  Go to lots of classes and private lessons.  Once you get bored, find more challenging classes.

4.  Lots of practice.

5.  Try to focus on just a few dances for a while, so you can build rather than just skipping around.

6. Argentine Tango

7.  Ex-russian ballet dancer instructors

More about those last two soon.