Navigation, fellows, seriously

You guys were the only two couples on the dance floor and you still managed to lead your partners to crash into each other? Even granting that it's a pretty small floor there, I--just ...

Sigh...

El Abrazo

One thing that really bugs me, in close-embrace tango, is when the leader has his weight back on his heels, rather than meeting the follower halfway to create the shared axis that makes it all work. It's a beginner's mistake, I think, but some leaders never seem to grow out of it. It's hard to follow a man who does this, and it makes me feel--and, in fact, look--like a heavy bag of groceries he's schlepping along, propped on his belly or hips for support. Quite the opposite of how one would want to feel in tango.

So one of the things I noticed at my first milonga in Buenos Aires was how the milogueros never did that. You could tell from looking at them: Each man that I looked at held the women not as if he were a drudge hefting a sack of potatoes but as if, in the fullest senses of these words, he were a man embracing a woman.

In a good embrace, there is respect for the partner and for oneself. There is communication of each partner's desires (or, to put it in more clinical terms, intentions), abilities, and current status. There is giving, attentive response to the partner. There is compromise as you literally each meet the other halfway. There is strength and power (on both sides; though it seems like a macho, patriarchal dance, the woman must be strong in herself too), there is vulnerability (yes, for men as well), and there is trust. There is the desire for mutual pleasure.

All of this and probably more--yet there are no words.

Last night, my teachers started again from the basics--standing, walking (I often forget how hard it can be just to walk, simply and slowly, with no change of direction or fancy steps to hide behind, and no way to hurry to mask sloppiness), embracing.

As they stood for a moment in the embrace, I saw it all. The gentle reach of each body to the other, while still able to stand on their own. His arm wrapped completely around her shoulders, and hers around his, their cheeks lightly touching. The ease and enjoyment of old friends or longtime lovers. Her eyes gently closed and the little smile hovering on her lips as she savored the moment...

They held each other as though they were important to each other.

And maybe, despite all my words, that's all it is.

Tango glossary

This is just one of a number on the Web:

http://www.tejastango.com/terminology.html#C

So far, I've found it a reliable resource.

Advice from way back

He smiles at me. "Sometimes your progress will be like a spiral. You'll have some difficulty, you'll work through it and appear to move away from it, but that same thing will resurface again later, in a new form. But you'll be coming at it from a higher point."

(This was back when I was first realizing that tango is secretly about life.)

Gambling at the milonga

Dear Internet,

Here is more than you probably wanted to know about me: I have a funny way of knowing that I've been sitting out more than I'd usually prefer, at a milonga. (Other than my back getting stiff, my butt getting sore, my skirt making marks on the backs of my thighs, actually, um, having an objective sense of the amount of time I've spent dancing vs. sitting, and other ordinary and sensible indicators that are reasonably suitable for public discussion.)

I know I've been sitting out too much when I have to pee a lot over the course of an evening.

It makes sense, you know? Whether I'm sitting more or dancing more, I sip or gulp water all evening long. When you're exercising, your body uses more water. It's a sign of dehydration when you're hot but not sweating or you've been drinking water but don't have to urinate. So if I have to use the restroom several times in an evening (not just once; once probably just means I'm more or less properly hydrated), I know I haven't been getting enough exercise to use up the amount of water I've consumed.

Last night I went to the restroom several times, is what I'm saying, and I was unhappy about that.

But sometimes there is just no pleasing me...

Tango etiquette link roundup

First of all, The Basics
http://www.inscenes.com/etiquette.htm
http://www.tangoconcepts.com/etiquette.html

More like an article on basic technique, really--but containing some excellent points
http://sftango.com/Tango_Dance_Etiquette.html

Ney Melo's article on inviting and accepting--or declining
http://www.close-embrace.com/invitingetiquette.html

TinaTangoes: various tales of milonga manners (or lack thereof) in action
http://tinatangos.com/blog/category/etiquette-at-milongas/

La Planchadora tells it like it is
http://laplanchadora.blogspot.com/search/label/no%20seriously

(Actually, she always told it like it is. I really wish she were still writing, but at least her archives make for a very rich and entertaining mine of oh-God-so-true snark.)

On and on...

I just noticed how long both of my first two posts are. Clearly, keeping things to a more reasonable length should be something I work on. I don't want to perpetually go on for M i l e s, the way some tango-bloggers do!

Maybe it'll come more easily as I start to feel like I've established my identity here and figured out my purpose a bit more clearly.

At the tango bar

It hasn't been my best night. There aren't usually many men I can dance with at these tango nights at a local bar; the regular group here dances open embrace, and I'm not very good at that. I've stuck with the milonguero style in close embrace nearly exclusively, because I'd rather be very good at one thing than less good at two.

(Not to say that everyone who switch-hits does so with diminished quality--just that I feel like I would.)

One of my semi-regular partners cabeceos me almost as soon as I get my shoes on; he seems pleased to see me. The floor is sticky--new varnish, I later learn; I had thought it was people tracking in snow--and the navigation is perilous, as it often is with this group, and still more so on this tiny floor. But we dance fairly well anyway.

I sit out a long time; I'm used to that here. Over the time that I've been coming here, I've found that I'd rather have fewer dances but really enjoy them, than have many that make me unhappy for one reason or another. (I detect a trend in my thinking...)

I try to cabeceo the DJ when he passes by after starting a traditional tanda. He plays a mix of classic tango and newer things. Too many non-tango songs for my taste--again, mostly because I'm not very good at dancing to them--but lots of the regulars here like it. He sees me, smiles, but rejects the attempt. He's on his way to meet someone else. That's okay; I know we'll dance some other night, when we have more time.

I sit back and wait, watching the swirl on the dance floor.

The beginning

I stumbled into tango about four years ago. Like most great things in life, or so I've heard, it began more or less by accident. After graduating college and entering the working world, I found myself with obscene amounts of time on my hands in the evenings. (What do people do when they're not plowing through piles of literary criticism and frantically writing papers the night before they're due?) I'd always wanted to learn to dance--something, anything, it was all the same to me and my two left feet, my repressed Anglo-Catholic hips, my hopeless inability to memorize choreography, and my mild case of directional dyslexia. Still, I'd always wanted to learn to dance.

(I'd probably seen too many movies in which the class wallflower, supposedly unrecognizably beautiful now that she's taken off her glasses and gotten a decent dress, steps onto the dance floor and dazzles everyone at the prom; something like that. I still dream of that for myself, secretly. Well, not very secretly at all, now...)

So one evening, I decided to look up dance classes in my hometown, where I was once again living. There was a ballroom class, but it met on a night when I already had a firm commitment. Further down the list was a milonguero-style Argentine tango class (whatever that meant).

"Tango," I mused, as visions flashed through my mind of sinuous women in fishnet stockings with roses in their hair, twining their legs around their partners--broad-shouldered toughs in pinstriped trousers and fedoras--each staring into the other's eyes with a smoldering look of mingled hatred and desire. "That sounds sexy interesting... And maybe I'll meet some nice guys there."

Never mind that I don't have the type of body that can make that sort of movie-tango thing look good (there is nothing sinuous about me), or that I'd feel like a fool trying. The class would only be once a week for about a month, and it wasn't expensive. If I didn't like it, no big deal; I'd try something else later.

It turned out very different than I expected.