Pensamientos del Tango
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December 24, 2009. Christmas Eve My goodness, how time has flown. Many a song has been spun since my last blog entry, many a dance has been done. Hedy and I wish you one and all a very Merry Christmas, a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year, and we express our gratitude for the good fortune of your company on the dance floor in 2009. May 24, 2009. The Melancholy Blogger's Great Bands Series: Carlos di Sarli The bandleader associated most often with the elegance and romance of tango is Carlos di Sarli, known as El Senor del Tango and also as Don Carlos as a sign of the courtly-tradition respect shown him. 
Di Sarli's father accidentally shot him in his workshop when the boy was 13, leaving a scar around his eye, which he covered all his life with his trademark sunglasses.Cayetano di Sarli Russomano was born in 1903 in Bahia Blanca, a port city of about 300,000 south of Buenos Aires on the coast. The trip to Buenos Aires was an overnight journey north by train. Bahia Blanca, founded as a fort to protect its immigrants from aboriginal horsemen and the Portuguese of Brazil, is another good example of the strong European influence in Argentina and on the tango. In addition to Spanish immigration, there was an especially large immigration to Bahia Blanca from France. Carlos Gardel's past is associated with France also, one story having him born there. Di Sarli studied at the Williams Conservatory in Bahia Blanca. His instrument was the piano, from which eventually as a band leader he conducted. He left home at 13 to tour with a folklore group. When he left for Buenos Aires at 17, he played piano in a movie theatre. He joined Osvaldo Fresedo's orquesta tipica before forming his own sextet in 1927, and he'd already begun composing. His heyday came when he formed his own orchestra in 1939 and particularly when the singer Roberto Rufino joined him.  It was then that he developed his distinctive sound to perfection. Dancers cherish di Sarli, for his compositions and orchestrations celebrate something noble even as they respect dancers' need for a powerful steady beat. It is a sound that invites dancers onto the floor to encounter their better selves in movement, a grand rhythmic excitement from which emerges a nuanced sweetness of romance and the not altogether frequent opportunity in salon-style tango to perform those embellishments achievable in crowded milongas. 
To my ear, di Sarli is a master of dynamics, pieces like A La Gran Muneca (which alludes in the lunfardo argot to another Buenos Aires tradition of betting all at the horse track) and Bahia Blanca surging inspiringly at the outset and then exploring, often in the violins, the delightful and tender nuances of what resides after grand entrances. Royal Pigall, Nido Guacho, and Porteno y Bailerin are other excellent examples of classic di Sarli.A nice video of music and interpretation of di Sarli is El Amanecer danced by the elegant and precise Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne at last year's Nora's Tango Week in San Francisco, an event coming again with the Naveiras, including their offspring, this July. May 12, 2009. The Melancholy Blogger's Great Bands Series: Juan D'Arienzo Called El Rey del Compas (the king of the beat), band leader Juan D'Arienzo was a man with a mission in the 1930s and 40s, indeed all his life. He died in 1975. 
Like the writer Borges, D'Arienzo believed the tango had lost its way. It had become too dreamy, too melancholy, too spongy, it was giving itself over too much to the singer and had lost its foundation in the orchestra, it was forgetting the dancer and the music was being sacrificed to concepts. And so he delivered his manifesto. "Rhythm, nerve, strength, character" were words he used to describe his effort to give "masculine strength" back to the tango. He shifted tango from the 4/4 time signature to 2/4 as the means of underpinning tango with a powerful compelling rhythm before all else. Dancers were delighted and responded in droves and made him a huge star. D'Arienzo loved a big band, the bigger the better. Ten violins, a field of bandoneons - the energy in the room must have been astonishing. I got a little taste of that a couple of years ago when the elderly but hugely energetic Los Reyes del Tango took the stage to do a late set at the Confiteria Ideal in Buenos Aires. I was near the back of the room and looking away when they began to play. I had a sensation of being hit by a hurricane - I could feel my hair moving horizontally and I felt like grabbing a floor column, a door, a piece of furniture, anything to prevent my being blown right out onto the street. The room erupted in a kind of frenzy in response. Los Reyes play in "el estilo Juan D'Arienzo." They are a small ensemble but they manage to deliver the D'Arienzo energy and when you hear it live with all the harmonic and acoustic reverberation, you must dance, you must dance or lift right off into space. D'Arienzo was a violin player. He was born in 1900 and began playing in small theatres with people like D'Agostino on the piano. D'Arienzo loved the piano and spoke of building his orchestras around that instrument. Biagi played piano in his first band before going on to form his own. 
Pieces like his versions of El Flete, El Recodo, and Piensalo Bien are quintessential D'Arienzo. Their rhythm is irresistable, their orchestration is straightforward and absolutely convincing, their passion and sweetness are authentic and deeply moving. His waltzes and milongas are sublime. Whenever the tango is in danger of becoming a cliche or when it grows tired in the emotional realm, sinking into the soggy bottom of loss, rejection and longing, reach for D'Arienzo. He'll give you a brotherly slug on the shoulder and with a big embracing smile, send you out on the dance floor to live life fully for another night. No milonga is complete without D'Arienzo. Some YouTube videos of the great Juan D'Arienzo still supremely energetic in his later years: La Cumparsita April 23, 2009. The Great Bands Dancing Argentine tango begins and ends with the music. There's no tango without it. The dance's movement vocabulary is so interconnected with tango's musical tradition that one cannot be imagined without the other: they are one organism, one body. The tradition began in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th Century and has had an extraordinarily long run, still going strong there and joined by other simpatico voices around the world. 
Today in milongas everywhere, people dance mostly to music from the tango's golden age: the later thirties through to the early fifties. This music has endured - although largely unheard by mainstream listeners - just as great classical music, Strauss waltzes, jazz, blues, sambas, spiritual music like chants and ragas, and all kinds of folk music endure. It is music not only for a particular time but for all time. Tangos from other eras, including our own, and some non-tango music that resonates in the tango emotional universe are also played at milongas. Even so, dancers hunger most for the golden age great orchestras and singers. Why? Why does this music endure, why do dancers enter a kind of trance state when moving to it? It's not the lyrics. The lyrics range from good poetry that is witty and profound to bathetic. Tango lyricists are often artists. Certainly the lyrics overall are much more interesting than a lot of popular music's words, the Cole Porters excepted. But nonetheless it is not the lyrics that account for tango's staying power. The tremendous talent and skill of the musicians brings a solution closer. These composers, band leaders, instrumentalists, and singers of the golden age were astonishingly good.  Masters of their instruments, steeped in the European tradition, especially the Italian, highly disciplined, driven to succeed in an era when not playing well could mean starving, passionate, supremely creative, charismatic in a culture that cherished expressive talent - they all were marvels.The bands were often quite large - four or more bandoneons, a string section, piano, guitar, singers - and yet were extraordinarily tight.  They played as one, just as their dancers became one. They had a tribal identity even as they were virtuosos individually. Their rhythmic precision cannot be matched. Their interplay between rhythm and melody displays an inventive and soulful mastery.I love the golden age singers. They are truly underappreciated on the world stage, notwithstanding the brief global fame of Carlos Gardel. The golden age singers restrained their passion, emitting it like a laser with a hot penetrating force. They do not pretend the emotion or wallow in it - their phrasing and soulfullness is authentic and completely persuasive. In more recent times, in my opinion, women singers have retained this heritage better whereas male singers have tended to descend into bathos with bad tuning, too wide a vibrato and too much air time within songs - the songs have become about them and their personal angst instead of about the music. To return to my question, why does this music endure. I tend to surrender to the idea that there was a magic in the mix of European and local South American Spanish and black influences in the melting pot that was Buenos Aires early in the last century. Much of what is of value from the past and enduring in the present, perhaps most, perhaps all, is not the result of conscious calculation, as our more commercial age sometimes leads us to believe. It is the result of happy coincidence, then passionate pursuit of what people have been surprised by, and creative competition to do it better, find a paradise on earth, a camelot for its brief shining moment. I'd like to focus on a few of the major bands next blogs, whenever happy coincidence presents. In the meantime, sweet dancing to all, wherever you dance. March 18, 2009. Musicality Musicality in learning to dance tango often comes late to the party. In the early learning days, the mind is preoccupied with steps and posture and the challenges of working with partners. As the learning curve continues, it's still those things, now newly layered with the challenge of navigating in harmony with the community on the dance floor. 
Somewhere in the background music has been playing, but what the heck it is and what it means to dance to it have pretty much been abstractions for the student, not deeply lived experience in the body.Be assured that with perseverence this joy will come. It's not that the music has not been communicating - at least to those whose antennae are tuned to receive this particular music (and not everyone's is). But eventually students reach a point where they can turn their attention to it in earnest and become true channels for it, this glorious rich unique tradition of Argentine tango music that started in the last part of the 19th century and continues expanding today. That point for students when they connect with the music through their bodies is usually during the later part of what I think of as phase three of the learning curve, the conscious competence phase where dancers are using their conscious minds to direct their bodies and are succeeding. Arrival of connection to the music in the body is a sign that a transition is underway to the last phase of development. (Phase one is unconscious incompetence, where everyone starts and lives for awhile in happy ignorance; then comes conscious incompetence, where it starts to hurt. The final, fourth phase is unconscious competence, where the dancer becomes the dance and it is enough just to feel for successful movement to occur. Note that life-long learners of the dance revisit these phases from time to time.) I've spoken before of the three connections: with the music, with one's partner, and with the community on the dance floor. The connection with the music - experiencing and expressing the music fully with one's body - gives powerful richness to the other two. And even though the leader is initiating movement as he interprets the music, the leader/follower conversation of equals means that both of the partners are experiencing the music deeply, being inspired by it and inspiring each other. First requirement to moving well to music is opening the heart and body to it. The heart's portals are not wide open in everyone - for some of us, the doors need a bit of a push. Hedy and I were helped, for example, by seeing dancers weeping on the dance floors in Buenos Aires. They lived the music un-ironically. They put no firewall around their feelings. They did not protect their egos, at least while they were in the tango trance. Watching great tango musicians has the same effect. Take a look at D'Arienzo in our Tango Video Corner on this website, or watch Piazzolla on YouTube. Hearts open to feeling. Another door to open is the body portal. D'Arienzo's body is moving everywhere as he conducts his marvelous orchestra. He lifts off the earth. He lets his body go where it dearly desires to go. Of course the great dancers have this gift. You too can give yourself permission to move. Again, some of us have done that all our lives, some of us jumped around merrily as toddlers, but later we seized up as the worries of the world wrapped like chains around us. It's a box to bust out of and you'll never be sorry. Start with moving around alone at home to music. Become aware of your own embarrassment. Just being aware without judging is a good habit to acquire for anything. Allow yourself to move in spirit with the great dancers; watch them as much as you can. Appreciate not so much their steps but how they take their steps, how the music takes steps through them. Recognize that even when they move fast they are moving slowly, luxuriating in the sensual pleasure of having a body on this sweet earth. Recognize the joy. On the dance floor, take your time. A good recipe for developing musicality in movement is going slow, savouring the beat, savouring the arc of a melodic line, pausing, beginning again when you feel excited about moving again.  You shouldn't move just because you feel you have to (acknowledging that in the line of dance one has to move foward when it's appropriate so as not to block dancers behind). You should try to move only when the movement has an emotional meaning for you.I speak as a leader here, and I know followers appreciate a slower pace, a pace with room to live and breath, and to create. Leaders, you will be enriching the leader/follower connection and the follower's experience as you enrich your own. Another avenue for musicality exploration is syncopation. Here what is most fun is small moves, especially in close embrace. Little playful traspies and rebounds, rock or check steps, or just syncopations with the upper body, no steps at all. It's all allowed once you give yourself permission to be playful. Remembering there is no moment but the present moment, the living now, is the fundamental principle. People don't go to milongas to forget, to escape from life. We go to remember how to live, to be re-acquainted with what it means to be alive right now even as we carry our life's experiences around with us in the line of dance, just as children and other animals without those burdens can live so much in the moment that they teach and inspire us. March 8, 2009. Tango Etiquette Many commentators have weighed in about the etiquette codes of tango, sometimes rather fiercely. But the subject is a necessary one for all dancers, and newcomers appreciate advice early to help them enter this new world of tango. Like anything worth doing, tango has its codes that smooth the way to a good experience on the dance floor. The tango codes exist for the benefit of dancers, and like the rule of law in the larger society, they are not for the self-aggrandizement of enforcement agencies or a thing unto themselves. They have a purpose. While there's always a risk that codes can bring out our inner police officer and tempt us to ticket metaphorically other offending dancers and feed our egos and thereby cast an oppressive pall over the dance floor, codes should be guides and applied by oneself only to oneself in the hope that by example others will do the same to maintain a respectful community where the maximum pleasure can be had by all. A tango community's maturity can be measured by its adherence to the codes. And of course maturity has nothing to do with how long a community has existed, just as it has very little to do with a person's chronological age or length of time dancing. The primary code is that of obeying the line of dance  and navigating with respect. In tango, the rule is one couple does not overtake the couple ahead or block the couple behind. When milongas are crowded, lanes are formed, usually about two to three feet wide and travelling parallel to each other in the line of dance (counterclockwise around the floor) and the rule then applies to all couples in the same lane.Usually the experienced dancers move to the outside lanes and beginner dancers move close to the center. Couples should not change lanes during a song or ideally during a tanda. And if you're not one of the dancers on the floor, never walk across the floor once the music starts. High figures, lifts or extreme dips should not be attempted in traditional milongas. Dancers may get a little more playful in this regard if the floor is clear, usually late in the evening. Even if high flyers don't hit someone with a sharp heel or a body part, they distract other dancers. Talking during songs in milongas is discouraged because tango is a deep internal experience that is not achieveable if the surface of the mind is engaged in jammering. Save the chatter for the sidelines or for the first thirty seconds of the song when dancers socialize a bit before the community on the floor begins to move and enter the tango trance. Leaders should not teach during milongas. It's regarded as bad form, a patriarchal invasion at best, usually a humiliation of followers that can destroy their evening, perhaps discourage them from returning to the milonga. If followers ask, that's another thing, but even so, leaders should not seize the opportunity to teach a lesson in the middle of a song - it interrupts the line of dance and, again, is a distraction and robs other dancers of their tango trance experience.Teaching is for classes and practicas, period. Other codes involve hygiene, which needs no explanation; the cabeceo, explained recently in this space; respect for all dancers of all levels of experience; ensuring everyone present gets a chance to dance during an evening; respecting the DJ and dance hall management; and so on. Women can always say no to an invitation to dance, whatever form it arrives in - cabaceo or North American voice invitation or arm grab. Followers dictate the nature of the embrace, its openness or closeness and leaders must respect that. In Buenos Aires, it is the rule that couples dance a whole tanda together, unless the follower wishes to leave the floor. Leaders should show followers the courtesy of dancing the whole tanda or no fewer than two songs with their followers, as to leave earlier is disrepectful and hurtful. Respect is the operative word in all these suggestions. The tango grew up in a bad neighbourhood. Respect reflected the old Castilliano code of courtly behaviour, and that code was mirrored even more rigorously among the underclasses. Neglecting to show respect in those days could be fatal. In our time and place, the fatal is metaphorical but deadly in its own way. To foster creativity not fear, flip all the "should nots" around and express them positively. In other words, if "you should not teach on the milonga floor" becomes "you should give your partner the opportunity to express himself or herself free of censure" and "you should always give your follower or leader the best possible experience during your short time together on the floor because life is short," then all will be well. February 15, 2009. Tango Grammar and Being Led by the Nose In wrapping up our first beginners tango series for the Victoria Ballroom Dance society on Saturday, we worked on a practice sequence that helps students build the grammar or links between pieces of vocabulary - steps - in tango movement. Since tango is so improvisational, learning options for linking movements in the living moment is essential. We also said more about leading tango with the chest - or in a way with the nose. The leader begins a turn, for example, by slightly turning his nose and head in the direction of the turn.  His chest turns next, then his feet follow his chest. He is in effect leading his own feet with his chest even before he leads the follower. The follower's chest follows the leader's chest, then her feet follow her chest. Chest, or rather nose (not arm) is leading.We emphasized the geometry of tango - why it is necessary to take steps precisely, moving the feet from tight collection directly to the side when a side step in intended, for example, not along diagonals. The elegance of tango arises from this precision of technique. Again, it is a reminder that elegance and passion can only be expressed through mastery of technique in dance. Feeling is not enough. In fact, the feeling as one learns tango truly emerges only later as the technique through long practice becomes unconscious. We aligned posture again - leader and follower needing to lean a little over the balls of their feet towards each other, leaders' and followers' chests giving equal weight and energy to the other for the leading signals and conversation to be clear and immediate, the chests in counterbody motion always turning towards each other to be together, the bodies leaning straight, not bending at the waist, followers reaching their legs well back. We honed the rhythmic exploration of syncopation, without which there is no tango, particularly social tango where in crowded halls and close embrace and little opportunity to move in long forward strides the joy of the dance is experienced in rhythmic subtlety, especially in turning. We explained that in Buenos Aires and everywhere else in the world now, it is the close embrace style of tango one must master to be at home on global dancefloors. The more open salon style is useful for practice and the play of larger figures but it is now merely a historical relic for social dance - just not seen except in rare milongas identified as such. The nuevo style relies on close embrace also, opening at times in new interesting ways, but its most open and playful form can be used only near the end of the evening in traditional milongas when the crowd is thinning, or in special new milongas and practicas where the age of dancers is lower and everyone knows the ground rules.  Performance fantasia style tango, whether choreographed or not, with its jumps and lifts and dips, its narrative and its creativity, is only for performance - it is a danger and an embarassment in the social dance setting.In most milongas in Buenos Aires, there will be a performance during the evening. The lights will come up and tango stars will demonstrate the artistic reaches of the dance, to inspire with their technique and their passion. Victorians can see some fiery performance tango soon with the stage show Tango Fire coming to town on Feb. 27 at the McPherson Theatre. The same night and over the weekend, North American stars Homer and Cristina will perform and teach at the Cafe Casablanca. Close embrace tango on the social dance floor is deeply rewarding emotionally and esthetically. It takes practice of course to move gracefully when the bodies are so close but it is better to do sooner than later, however awkward the feeling at first, because the rewards therefore come sooner. It is remarkable how much one can do in the close embrace, how much can be expressed and with what intensity, as the dancer's experience with this style increases. The most famous and revered performance tango artists dance close embrace in milongas when they are social dancing. Performance figures are regarded as unseemly in that context. Furthermore, as Forever Tango star Oscar Mandagaran (pictured with partner Georgina Vargas) explained to us awhile ago, performance stars must have had a long and thorough grounding in social dance close embrace tango - they must be steeped in social milonga culture and movement - to express themselves successfully in performance. We're starting a new series for VBDS Saturday, March 7 - Beginners Two - suitable for anyone with some tango experience or intermediate level achievement in the ballroom world or another dance form. See the society's website for details. February 7, 2009. Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower The great poem of Dylan Thomas speaks of the "force that through the green fuse drives the flower." This same force drives the tango. Students learn first to acknowledge this force, the life energy - give themselves permission to release it -- and then they learn to guide it. In Saturday's VBDS class, the fourth in our current five part series, we explored syncopation, the rhythmic gold of tango.  In the early learning days, it is enough to walk on the main beat. It is another initial joy to discover that tango is as much about pauses as about movement, just as music is as much about silence as sound. The tango's insistent 4/4, aligned with our pulsing hearts, becomes even more fascinating when we play with it by improvising pauses and choices about which of the four beats we shall move with. (Photo: Astor Piazzolla with bandoneon)This rhythmic pleasure is hugely advanced by syncopation, which is a more intricate playing with the beat, reaching into the infinite realm between and across beats - with quick and slow steps as directed by the deity of music. Delightful rhythmic play is the essence of the social tango. The sometimes large but usually little inspired movements in the close embrace characterize the couple's authentic life together during that single song when they create their unique dance that has never been danced before and will never be danced again. Syncopating well is a challenge to leader and follower. Because the tango is improvised and not a repetition of patterns, the follower will never know, at least not consciously, what the leader will initiate next. Suddenly the follower is being invited into a corrida, or a little run, two or more quick steps along the line of dance or turning. As quickly as it begins, it is over. This requires an intuitive nimbleness in the follower that takes lots of practice. For leaders, it is the challenge of energy, that force through the green fuse. Leaders first have to give themselves permission to go deeply inside the music, feel it and live in it. Fortunately, tango music is so rich, it rewards deep exploration. When leaders are down deep in there, a limitless force will arise, the force of hurricanes and the tides, whose elemental reality sets them their next task, that of guiding the force for the benefit of the follower and the two of them together as one. If leaders do not constrain the force as it drives through their body, they will give messages that overwhelm their followers. The signals will be too large. So much of learning to lead is reducing the signal, making it ever subtler and ever clearer, and allowing time for the follower to receive it and respond. The heart is the fuse for tango energy, and indeed the leader's chest, when the hurricane is blowing, is a mighty source of it. Beginning dancers often use their arms to lead their partners but the true source is the chest and the arms are only a light and comforting frame as well as cuddle devices. It is useful for leaders to practice with their arms dropped to the sides, to ensure they do not develop this bad habit of arm leading and to help followers take their instructions only from the leader's chest. To syncopate, leaders learn to calibrate the energy that flows from their chest to their follower: short precise bursts to begin a syncopation, careful snipping off of the energy to signal the syncopation's conclusion. It is useful, especially in the early days, to pause ever so slightly before initiating a syncopation. This tells the follower that what is about to come is different from what has been recently happening. For example, we are no longer walking on the main beat, we are about to take a corrida on divisions of that main beat; or we are no longer walking forward, we are syncopating to the side. Clear simple messaging timed to allow the follower to read it, which usually means the leader needs to go slower than he might think to enhance the follower's comfort. It helps to take short steps when they are to be quick. Leaders must lean over the balls of their feet and lead with their chests and followers lean their chest with equal energy back towards the leader for the syncopation communication to be successful. Followers need to remember to reach well back in their strides so their feet are well out of the leader's way in these rapid movements. As experience increases, the tango enters the realm of effortless physics, where the energy is almost visible, as least to the inner eye, and to paraphrase what was said of Wayne Gretzky on the hockey ice, leaders - and indeed the couple together as one - know well in advance where the dance is going, not because they are planning sequences but because they "see" or feel the flows of energy and are themselves invited to follow them. In short, tango, like all art, is about channeling fundamental energy. The art of the sonnet is a ratio of the force through the green fuse and the sonnet form. We spoke this time of another code from Buenos Aires: the cabaceo. The cabaceo is a leader's invitation to a follower to dance. But it is an invitation only with the eyes from a distance.  This code protects leader and follower from the risk inherent in invitations. If the follower does not meet the leader's eyes and does not signal with a nod or smile that she accepts, she can reject with security and he can be rejected without shame.In the rest of the world and at milongas of younger dancers in Buenos Aires, the cabaceo is not strictly enforced. Nonetheless, it is a graceful and effective device even in our more egalitarian North American setting. February 1, 2009. Tango Trance Lots of learning again in yesterday's third class of the Victoria Ballroom Dance Society's beginners tango series. And when all that learning is going on, it's good to surface every once and awhile to remember what the learning is for. Learning is fun for its own sake, of course. It's rewarding to challenge oneself, particularly in activities where the mind and body must work together, a type of activity that research tells us is the most valuable of all for healthy brains and bodies, especially as we age. But we are learning tango for another reward too, one that is a ways down the road for the beginner, although we can sense it when we see experienced tangueros who have the true tango passion. Tango dancers call this reward the tango trance, a soulful state of deep emotion where the improvisational movements of tango arise without conscious awareness. The feeling is like the intoxication of falling in love. The "little me" of the daytime ego falls away and movement seems to come from somewhere else than oneself: from the music, from a new entity created with one's partner, from the community on the dance floor, from some deity of dance. 
This is what is happening in Buenos Aires at crowded milongas when dancing couples are weeping on the dance floor as they move, or their faces are intense with an inward yearning concentration, followers' eyes closed, the couple in a very close embrace and moving as one but in a profound silent conversation, slowly, gracefully, lightly and in the subtlest of gradations mostly invisible to observers.This inward experience of the living moment, really a meditation, or in another sense a love affair with the dance itself, is not unique to tango, but there is probably no other social dance whose raison d'etre is so completely this experience. Meanwhile, the labours to get to that other reward. In these early encounters with the challenge of tango movement when we must be using our conscious rational brains exhaustively, the tango trance seems far away and much seems awkward, mechanical and frustrating for both followers and leaders. Followers have it tough trying to interpret leaders' movement messages and execute their own steps in response. As a leader myself, I have special sympathy for the beleagured leaders who have to acquire a mental image of a step and sequence and move their limbs not only for themselves but to send a message - an invitation - to their followers to move, and send these messages in a manner that delights. Not much tango trance at this stage; more like tango terror or tango trauma. And so it is important to be kind to ourselves and our partners and recognize that this process is properly slow, the applicable old adage being anything worth doing is worth doing well. Doing well in tango is not learning steps, steps and more steps. One must learn the steps, of course, and there are plenty of them and they aren't easy. One will learn them without being able to do them well for quite awhile. Yet in the learning, awkward as it seems, the brain is laying new track. New synapses and connections are being constructed. Muscles are being strengthened, ligature lengthened. Balance is improving. The ground is being prepared. Eventually study will focus more and more on the how steps are executed and less on accumulating new ones. Dancers return always to the fundamentals, and most vital, the tango walk, for the whole dance is there in the walk, the portal to the tango trance is precisely there. We studied the counterclockwise molinete this time and how to initiate it from back ochos, then resolve it in several ways. We focused on resolving the molinete into the cruzada or cross position, the follower's step (the leader leads it - it is not automatic - nothing is automatic in tango) that is so characteristic of the dance. The cruzada brings the follower's legs about as close together as they can be, screwed together, one might say. This is no accident, for tango is fueled by the tension between opposites. Although most of the time good follower's style dictates that her ankles and therefore her thighs are together, either in the default "collect" position where the feet are side by side or in the cruzada where the left foot is in front of the right side by side and tightly together (weight 100% on the left foot), at other times the follower's legs open and perform startling kicks and sweeps or they reveal themselves slowly and sensually, caressing the leader's legs or their own or the air. At these moments, one realizes the tango and life are a suspenseful tension between restraint and release, even explosion. Tango as a movement meditation includes in its scope the surging emotional fighting forces within us. In tango, leader and follower engage in a powerful conversation and all the dynamics between two people pulled and pushed in a net of emotions are in play. We had a glimpse of this conversation yesterday when we included a parada (a stop) in our resolution of the molinete. With the parada, leaders can stop the forward and turning motions in an interesting way and give followers time to express their emotions and creativity - with caressing legs, for example. The leader has initiated this possibility but is "listening," awaiting the follower's response, which will be unique to that moment and inspiring to the leader and to them both. In tango, it's worth remembering the follower is no prop, no automaton being guided around the factory floor, just as porteno women (women born in Buenos Aires) are no shrinking violets. Tango is a dance between two strong proud people and their conversation is dynamic and equal. Woe to the leader who doesn't understand or respect that. The more experience couples acquire, the more this conversation becomes elemental, and individual daytime identities and personas give way to the mystery that has been described as the dancer becoming the dance. We spoke a bit in the class about the vast range of Argentine tango music from the 1890s to the present. I'll comment more on that in future. Suffice now to say that the tango music tradition originating from Buenos Aires and contributed to by the rest of the world is one of our planet's greatest treasures. It has only recently begun to be heard again with some frequency in our colder material-world northern hemisphere. The music drives everything. It is the first of the three tango connections: with the music, with the partner and with the community on the dance floor. Like the glance of a woman, if it enters the soul, there is no escaping from at least the dream of its embrace. Next week we'll play with syncopation, in walking and turning. Rhythmic improvisation is the promised land of the tango and entry (eventually) into the tango trance. (Photo above is of Sally Potter and Maestro Juan Carlos Copes in the movie "The Tango Lesson," directed by Potter.) January 25, 2009. Girando Second class this past Saturday in our series of beginners Argentine Tango lessons for the Victoria Ballroom Society. Once again Hedy and I were impressed with the work ethic of these friendly and accomplished dancers. We always say to people that lessons are only a small part of the dance experience. The ratio we like to suggest is one hour of lessons to five hours of practice - and the practice can be as simple as a half hour a day on the kitchen floor. First rehearsal should happen quickly. Our brain seems to absorb new movement best if it is rehearsed even briefly before bed of the night it's first learned. Students should also start trying out their moves as soon as possible in actual dances, because learning navigation takes time and it's best to begin as soon as possible, however painful initially. There's no substitute in this regard for real dance evenings. The subject of Saturday's class was girando, or turning. Turning is an essential part of tango for a number of reasons. One is practical. In crowded dance halls - milongas - in Buenos Aires or anywhere, it's not possible to keep walking forward in the line of dance for long. In fact if you can move forward more than a meter at a time you're lucky. And the code of tango says you don't pass the couple in front of you. That's considered very bad form and can result in altercations, even violence. The courtesy and skill of good floorcraft transforms a random group of people shuffling around on a patch of floor into a community of dancers whose individual experiences moving to music are immeasurably enhanced by the community working as one, respecting each other and taking inspiration, rather than offence, from each other. So if you can't pass the couple in front and you can't move forward, what the heck do you do? Fortunately tango is an improvisational dance not tied to repetitive patterns. Dancers have the option of pausing at any time and for any length of time, consistent with not impeding the couples behind in the line of dance. Besides the pause, turning is the navigator's dream answer to this challenge. Turning provides a lovely way to enjoy the moments when moving forward is impossible. The turn we explored Saturday was the clockwise molinete, the little windmill, the most characteristic tango turn. 
The molinete is a follower's grapevine step that goes in a circle around the leader, clockwise as we studied on Saturday but also counterclockwise. The joy of improvisational tango means that it can be intiated in many ways and resolved in many ways, depending on what the music says to the leader. For example, we resolved our molinetes on Saturday from the follower's forward front step, her side step, and her back step.The leader does not initiate the molinete by muscling the follower but by turning his chest to invite her into a flow of energy and join him in this little celebration of nature's miracle of the circle. The discipline for the leader is to be steady, on his "axis," staying on a single central point and being a firm earth to the follower's circling moon, turning his chest to advance the turn but always respectful of the capacity of the follower to stay connected with him. Strange that we travel to a dance floor to go around in circles for several hours, and that within the circle of the line of dance perform even more circles, sometimes whirling ecstatically. Stranger to think the universe is turning, turning eternally, and our blood turning in its circles, and the seasons. If one remains trapped in a linear style of thinking, going around in circles can seem a waste of time. But the more one thinks about time and begins to live not in the future or the past but in the present moment, then awareness dawns that there is no better representation of the present moment than the circle. Life at its best is not about getting somewhere but about delighting in each instant of the journey. January 19, 2009. Caminando Hedy and I are welcoming members of the Victoria Ballroom Dance Society to our new series of Saturday classes in beginners Argentine Tango this month and next. The classes are organized under the auspices of the society (click here for VBDS website), which has more than 800 members and a long respected history of supporting dance in our community. This is the first time the society has offered Argentine tango classes. For our students' benefit, here are a few extra thoughts each week, starting with the subject of our first lesson: caminando, or walking. 
Our ballroom dance students trying out the original Argentine tango have dance experience already, but as even anyone with experience in other dance forms discovers, this activity of walking that we have done mostly unconsciously nearly all our lives suddenly becomes difficult and strange in a dance class, as strange as those first steps when we climbed up out of infancy.It is especially awkward when one is trying to walk in an embrace with a partner, thinking of one's own feet and balance and trying to coordinate with someone else's body pressed surprisingly close. This extreme but supple closeness is the hallmark of the tango of Buenos Aires, where in the crowded dance halls known as milongas the close embrace is its own universe. The walk in Argentine tango - the suspension-loaded, leaning cat-like keeping to a single line forward, the counterbody motion, the two bodies balancing each other with proud often aggressive commensurate pressure - is much different than walking on the street and takes work to learn. Nonetheless it is the foundation of the dance and without mastering it one never really enters the emotional realm of tango. Happily, if dancers master the walk and learn no other tango movement, they can dance successfully and experience tango's essence. In Buenos Aires, there is a saying that new tango students should do nothing else but learn to walk for the first three years of their apprenticeship: no figures, no "performance" moves. This is not an easy restriction, however wise - it has the severity of a spiritual discipline, of the monastic life. And so teachers (ourselves included) usually offer other tango movements in the early days to sweeten the learning labour. Yet as students discover later along the path, the dance is indeed really all about walking, walking with intent, walking in the tango way, walking as the music says to move in connection with one's partner and the community on the dance floor. And the learning to walk never ends: one always returns to it, always finds new subtlety there. Another daunting aspect of tango is discovering the dance is improvisational, a journey into the living moment, and not a collection of patterns. For the tanguero, every step is new, there is no set sequence of steps that if one could only remember one could dance. Following patterns is not tango - it is a mechanical imitiation merely. In tango, the leader interprets the music anew each dance, inviting the follower to move and pause with him, the soul of the music becoming his and theirs as they become one. The follower never knows what the leader will initiate next, and their conversation - the leader's initiating, the follower's responding, the leader's listening to the follower's body and responding to her with a new initiation arising out of her feeling and creativity - is the ever-deepening excitement of tango. And the creativity has no end. Just as with the octave's few keys on the piano composers can devise an infinite number of melodies, so it is with tango and its repertoire of movements. To guide students into this improvisational reality as soon as possible where experiencing tango and life in the present moment is all important, we avoid "basic" patterns that can become prisons for dancers for years in their development. Instead, we begin building at the outset the student's repertoire of options, opportunities available at and from every step. This is the unique challenge leading to the ultimate reward of tango. Next week, the walk begins to turn and the linear becomes what it always really is, the circle. January 4, 2009. The Way Forward The Melancholy Blogger regularly rouses himself like a creature in an earthy den at the turn of a year to meditate in print on some aspect of time. Our designating a particular date for this revolution of the year, an arbitrary assignment a little later than the true solstice when daylight starts to increase, is an opportunity to reflect on our wetware cortex's unceasing creation of fictions, the generation of stories inside our heads. 
Indeed, a new blog page to herald a new year and this "2009," a date as arbitrary as all else we perceive - a number unrolling from a meeting of old grey men (no women) a long while back - are at best tools to provide us some comfort and perhaps utility in an existence that even the most self-confident of us must down deep know is a dark forest well beyond our cortex's capacity to navigate to any sunny meadow of absolute awareness. For nothing arrives to us unmediated, in the sense that everything we become aware of is delivered to us by way of our personal fiction maker, our cortex. There is no event outside us or inside us that we will not make part of our story. Our ultimate unknowing is worth remembering whenever leaders of groups large and small stride forward so pridefully with their certainties, and especially when their certainties volunteer the rest of us to march forward well ahead of them onto battlefields. "What are these leaders' fictions, their stories?" let us always be ready to ask ourselves. "Why do their stories so easily become our stories?" This cloud of unknowing is no cause for despair. Its lesson, I think, should be one of happy humility. No absolute we fear or crave is what we can ever imagine it to be, including that resonant unknown Death. The cocky confidence of our modern world took quite a thrashing in 2008. Pride goeth before a fall, as some expert in schadenfreude once declared. In the US, there seems to be a leader whose courage is founded on humility, someone a little less eager to embark on enterprises that stir our personal story-makers to position all evil outside ourselves, our tribe, our country, and all our beloved fictional realms. Be that as it may, your blogger resolves to carry forward into this 09 as humble a spirit as his personal story-maker will grant him even as he observes it generating its tales of triumph and victimhood. He will strive to be readier to listen to the stories of all the other cortexes in this dark forest with the same appreciation of whimsy that he listens to his own. |
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