Head screwed on wrong

You know when you have your head set for the wrong thing? I was all set for a quiet afternoon at the Letchmore Heath tea dance, a bit of nice dancing, a bit of sitting and catching up, working on some friendships, a little trivial gossip about people I long to talk about with sympathetic people who will talk about them without pointing that out, perhaps a few ill-advised confidences, maybe indulge in some minor histrionics, and then all these really lovely unexpected people turn up and I do nothing but dance and drink tea. It was great, but it wasn't what I had my head set for, and I ended up wanting more of everything, both thrilled and inexplicably disappointed and having a totally confusing afternoon before ending up eating an orange in bed.

Screw up early and often

When you dance with a new person, I think it's a good thing if your first mistake happens early. A missed lead, a moment of leader indecision, some interruption to the flow, whatever. Some followers are lighter than others and react more or less strongly to movements which may or may not be fully intentional. Some people's leads are softer or firmer or bigger or smaller or faster or slower or more or less complicated, and no matter how good they are, they are all different. The follower has to tune in. Once you've done something that felt like a mistake, and got out of it gracefully without making anyone feel bad, you can dance together with a lot more confidence, because you know now that mistakes don't matter with this person. You've proved that there's a working two-way connection there.

It's particularly good to get the mistakes in early if you're dancing with someone who other people want to watch, because the sensation of being watched, especially when you're not used to it, is horribly distracting and you don't need the extra stress of worrying about what will happen if you make a mistake. Better to get it over with.

I cannot, however, recommend announcing to your partner between tracks that "Part of tango is covering mistakes!" - especially not if you've just severely failed at that. If they lack confidence they will feel crushed, if they don't, they will just think you're a twit. Even if you did not fail, you throw your success away by drawing attention to it.

And if you're so vain you think that part of this post is about you, don't worry, I'm sure you're good enough to fix it.

Dance is not necessarily Art

When people dance at parties or in nightclubs, they are not making art. People dance to celebrate good luck, or to encourage their team, or for religious purposes, or because it's what they do, like the round dance they do in Catalonia on Sundays. I don't think any of that is art. But all these things are timeless and common and part of daily life.

Sometimes I enjoy watching good dancers dance, but that doesn't mean they have any artistic intent, and it doesn't mean that I am doing the same thing as someone consuming art.

There's nothing wrong with artistic dance. Lots of dance is certainly art. But it is wrong to talk as though dance is necessarily performance, and that non-artistic, non-performance dance is some sort of inferior 'just-for-fun' offshoot, defined as low-quality, because high-quality dance would be art. This belief does real harm to people who would enjoy non-art dance and be good at it, and real harm to dance communities.

The concerns, priorities and purposes of art are totally different from my concerns, priorities and purposes when I'm dancing, and they're mostly incompatible. This is a problem that non-art dancers have to solve when they are asked to give a demonstration to satisify other people's (totally reasonable) curiosity - a problem tackled by Elizabeth here and by Melina here. I like performances that solve this problem well and inform the curious without without misinforming them. It's not easy to do, it requires thought and self-awareness as well as empathy with the audience.

You see this unexamined assumption, that dance is a subset of art, in virtually all mainstream-media references to dance. It irritates me how non-art dance - surely the majority of all dance, considered worldwide - is either presupposed out of existence, or horribly deformed by a totally imaginary requirement that it make sense as a performance.

There should be more people dancing, more commonly, than there are, without being obliged to feel all artistic about it. And without feeling that if they ever get good, they'll automatically be artists and expected to teach or perform. Those are all totally different vocations and have no necessary connection with each other, or with just dancing. They're not needed to validate the quality of anyone's dance. (And they don't, incidentally).

Being an excellent social (or indeed solo, or religious, or football-terrace) dancer is a valid and possible goal, and it's always nice to have more of them.

Embrace (dialogues) part 2

Interior, Practica

Hedgie
Ok, I just want to try this because if I understand what it is, I'll be able to do it or not do it on purpose instead of accidentally. I'm going to do it normally first.

- Dance -

Mr. Hu

Yep - ok - this is what you normally feel like.

Hedgie

Right, now I'm not going to move anything, but I'm going to try doing it another way.

- Dance -

Mr. Hu

Oh!

Hedgie

Is that the kind of thing we were asking about? It might be a bit exaggerated.

Mr. Hu

Yes, that's it. Change it back!

Hedgie
Ok, just a sec.

- Dance -

Mr. Hu

... yes, that's back to normal. Wow. That's totally different. Show me again?

- Dance -

That's quite disturbing. You feel like a totally different person.

Hedgie

I was still following you, though. I wasn't not following, I mean, I wasn't having any problems following, that I was aware of.

Mr. Hu

Yes - you were - you were doing everything, but, in comparison, it felt totally disconnected. What are you actually doing? I can't see any difference at all.

Hedgie

Ok, we're standing like this. And the way I think of it in my head is ... my arms and head are the same, whatever is comfortable and seems to work for the partner, it doesn't really matter.

Mr. Hu

Ok

Hedgie

The way I do it is - I go fuzzy - I want to blur the boundary between your nervous system and mine. And then - I want to to be really, really curious about what's going to happen next. So I go curious and I go fuzzy-fuzzy ... I want my point of concentration, where my mind is, to be in there, about where your centre is. Now, I'm guessing that what happens is, people dance like it makes sense to dance in classes, which mostly isn't like that.

Mr. Hu

Hang on a second. Let me try doing that too.

Hedgie
 ... okay.

- Dance -

Mr. Hu

Oooh, that's really interesting. I like that, a lot. I'll try that next time I'm following. But I really like it when we both do it.

Hedgie

I'm not sure if I can tell the difference yet, let's stick with it and see how it goes.

Mr. Hu

If you do that and somebody is trying to wrestle you ... it'd be a disaster. So, you turned it off ...

Hedgie

I hardened the embrace a bit, hardened the surface, brought back the boundary, and concentrated sort of more behind myself. Doesn't prove anything general, but at least I feel like I understand what's working for me now. I hate it when stuff just changes randomly for no reason.

Mr Hu

Don't do it again.

Mr V [a visiting acquaintance interested in the discussion]
My girlfriend used to be like that, everybody would tell her how beautiful her feet were, and I was, "your feet? What about ME? Oi! I'm over here!". And she, like, she'd totally missed the point. And then I got her to try [some exercise or other, can't remember what] and she got it, and she went, "Oh!! ...  I'm not sure I'm OK with you feeling like that with all these other women." But then she got over it and she danced a lot better, she feels really nice now.

Hedgie
Fair-minded woman, obviously.

Embrace (dialogues) part 1

This is a subject that's been intriguing and puzzling me for a while. I'm finding a lot of friends and acquaintances who have various problems, experiences and solutions. This is one conversation, slightly edited but not substantially. Don't be freaked out by my friend's apparently bizarre martial arts analogy. It's normal for him.

Virtual Interior (Facebook Chat) slightly edited, but not substantially.

Hedgie
... I am trying to work out what his problem is. He was complaining about the women, that he can't dance with them because they have "zero embrace" and I can't see why it doesn't work.

Mr. Hu
After Friday i think I know what he means

Hedgie
Like, he tried dancing with X because he said she looked like she could dance, and then it was a disaster, he said there was very little following going on - and I don't understand that becuase it just can't be the case that she doesn't follow. So I have no idea what he means.
So what's your theory? (What do you mean, Friday?)

Mr. Hu
:collects thoughts:
Loosely speaking, being "plugged in" is a massive simplification of what it can be

Hedgie
okay
I mean, he seems to do okay with me, he even quite likes dancing with me
and I don't understand how what she is doing can be THAT different from what I do, it looks the same to me.

Mr. Hu
To use martial arts as an analogy, imagine two olympic fencers going at it full speed

Hedgie
okay

Mr. Hu
So there's imppecable technique, posture, rhythm etc

Hedgie
okay

Mr. Hu
Now imagine two samurai, facign each other standing completely motionless, swords undrawn

Hedgie
okay ...

Mr. Hu
trying to feel for want of a better word, each other's spirit / inner calm / experience

Hedgie
observing each other

Mr. Hu
very deeply

Hedgie
okay

Mr. Hu
but here's the twist
After a while one of them will bow deeply, turn and walk away. No swords are drawn
But the one who walked away lost

Hedgie
Right, fair enough, I suppose they know what they're doing.

Mr. Hu
So imagine the differnece between thinking you can beat this guy (fencing) and knowing deep down you can beat this guy (samurai)

Hedgie
okay ...
Not sure how this applies, but conceptually willing to go with it

Mr. Hu
cool
No go back to tango embrace
Imagine the difference between focussing on your technique as you dance and focussing on him as you dance

Hedgie
That's okay, it makes sense, but I still seem to manage just about (although it's tough) even after a 3-hour workshop

Mr. Hu
hee hee

Hedgie
So there must be a fair amount of leeway there
For potential follower distraction
And I would have thought it would be enough to accommodate her easily
It feels like a reasonable explanation but it doesn't seem enough

Mr. Hu
There's a difference between knowing that it's possible, being interested in doing it but being distracted , and not knowing it's possible at all

Hedgie
Oh. Okay
Maybe it's that then
That's tough to solve

Mr. Hu
Or I guess more simply, I can drive and talk and still get you home. If all I could do was talk...

Hedgie
We'd go nowhere

Mr. Hu
Yup

Hedgie
And if all you could do was drive we'd still get there

Mr. Hu
Yup

Hedgie
just less interestingly

Mr. Hu
Which is probably you in the above example

Hedgie
Yeah, okay
Above, when you said you thought you understood it since Friday
I don't know what happened on Friday, or which Friday
i.e.that you might know what he was on about

Mr. Hu
Last Friday had a ephiphany dancing with someone at Negracha

Hedgie
Oh right
What was the epiphany

Mr. Hu
that there's a lot more to plugging in than meets the eye

Hedgie
Was the dance working, or not working?

Mr. Hu
Working very well. never experienced anything like it in tango before

Hedgie
Ace

Mr. Hu
Yup. But conversely given that your friend is a lot more expereinced than I am, if he's after that and beyond, I can see why he's getting grumpy

Hedgie
Right

Mr. Hu
In a similar vein I can totally see why you would choose to dial it back with someone who had messed up posture / musicality etc

Hedgie
As in why the follower would?

Mr. Hu
Both

Hedgie
Right

Mr. Hu
Which I think was what he was trying to tell me with a story about him dancing with someone who looked really good, but felt ugh

Hedgie
I suppose. Actually, I think I have an idea now about what it is. Let me try turning it off and on at the practica next week and you can tell me whether that's it, or not.

Mr Hu
Okay

[Part 2 to follow]

The problem with chewing gum ...

... which some people do to freshen the breath, is:

Given an appropriate height difference, it makes a revolting YhakYhakYhak noise right by your ear

AND

there's only two ways it can go:

it's oYHAKn the bYHAKeat,

OR

it's not onYHAK thYHAKe beat.

Classic 'cabeceo' errors no. 1

"I know he prefers being asked by looking, and I tried it, but I couldn't get it to work, so I went up and asked."

Noooooooo! if you can't make it work, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. You probably did it practically perfectly. It means he said no, not right now, thanks. The fact that it didn't hurt is a feature, not a bug. Put him further back in your queue and try again another time.

Knowing who really enjoys your dance is quite informative and helpful and gives you a lot of confidence over time, I recommend it.

Follower influence

There are funny things that happen with some dancers and the music.

I can can occasionally find myself dancing with people who dance to the rhythm but nothing else, especially with vals and milonga. It's on the beat, in a general way, but it feels rushed, formless, and robotic. They don't seem to hear the melody or phrasing or tension or emphasis or any of the detail, and it feels more like jogging than dancing.

It's possible to respond by dancing, taking your time and interpreting all the leads in a way that does hear the melody and phrasing, always following, but varying your swooshyness and lightness and the way you move, sending music back up through your body from the floor. I'm not talking about ornaments here, or stopping dead, or breaking the connection, or doing anything that interferes with navigation. Just stubbornly insisting on dancing rather than jogging.

If I try this, what sometimes happens is that they start to respond to to the music themselves, enough so I can tell the difference. They may not be able to sustain it because they haven't practiced, but they notice that it is possible and they start to do it.

This does not always work. I don't think it will work if they have been like that for too long. Some people are irretrievable, at least by me.

You might worry that there is a risk here, that you won't be following, that you will be back-leading or responding to the lead in an unpredictable way.

Here are my arguments for not worrying about this:

1. Someone who has this problem isn't going to be someone who wants to weight-change you a toe at a time. If he knew that was possible, he wouldn't be doing this. He's moving mechanically and with pretty low level of precision. So there is actually plenty of room for interpretation, if you have the confidence. Your toes are your own.
2. You are taking full responsibility for the quality of your own dance, and you are making him look better than he is, both of which are the Right Thing To Do.
3. And if, later in the evening, you do dance with someone who can weight change you a toe at a time, that person will almost certainly be dancing to the music, in which case it's entirely a good thing if you do too. You will not have sabotaged yourself by unplugging your ears from your brain.
4. If he's not only off the music, but wants you to be as well, there's no reason why you would want to dance with him again, anyway, so it's a win-win situation.
5. And supposing he tells all his friends you don't follow: either they already know he is a terrible dancer, in which case they won't care, or they think he is a good dancer, in which case you won't care, because they are probably worse.
6. It will feel like a bit of a fight, but it will be much more bearable than trying to ignore the music, which is bad for your dancing, stressful, and really very difficult to do.

Ganchos and sincerity

Here's the deal on me and ganchos.

My free leg technique isn't pro level.

We are never likely to be going fast enough or to have enough momentum for my foot to swing up high as a natural movement. There's always - always - a tedious moment of standing still and thinking “oh, here comes a tedious trick to make us both look silly” before it happens. I think, and I get bored, very fast under certain conditions. It loses the flow completely.

I've been taught to fake them quite well (I was taught to turn the leg slightly so the heel goes towards him, and to swing rather than kick or hold) but it's a completely voluntary movement. This, I think, is what most people do, and it's certainly what I do after the wait for positioning is over, the reveille has stopped sounding, and I get some sort of a lead.

I'll usually fake it at least once, as long as the man hasn't done too many other things to annoy me. If it's once in a tanda, the man dances with real feeling for the music (that is, having some apparent sense of the melody and phrasing and at least the most obvious emotional content, as opposed to just being on the beat), and it's in the right place, then, okay. At least then there are other reasons to do it, beyond whatever version there is of a lead.

If I don't really intend to ever dance with him again, I can fake cheerfully because it's just the once. It depends. If there's anything else so seriously wrong that I don't care if it annoys him, I probably won't fake. I'll just stand there and smile and pretend not to understand if he starts talking.

If he were a friend, I might fake for the sake of peace or the conversation. But in strict moderation.

Basically the reason I don't like them is that my limitations, quite apart from the difficulty of the lead, make them insincere, and I prefer to dance sincerely. That movement isn't something I would ever spontaneously do to express tango music, and it isn't something I would naturally do in response to even the best of leads that actually happen in reality in social dancing. It requires a higher level of technique than is going to happen. I don't like my moment being killed, and I don't like faking.

I prefer what I am doing when I dance to be faithful to a reasonably consistent overall aesthetic concept, and that means not faking things. That's just the way it works for me.

[Update: when I click Publish on a blog post, Blogger shows me a 'success' page with some ads on it. It reads what I publish to try to guess what I am interested in. On publishing this one, Ads By Google offered me the following:

The Top 10 Golf Mistakes?
Biomechanics Software
Gait Analysis Software
Golf Swing Technique

Wrong, but still sort of spooky.]

Things that make me feel Sleazed

This came up in an email correspondence. In which someone (do you want to be credited? I'll edit) David Bailey said:

“Huh, I didn't even think it was _possible_ to be sleazy in AT.”

Oh, yes it is.

1. The leader's right hand wanders up and down in a stroky way.
   
   Ewwwwwwww! And also tickly. Just Ew. I was chatting with a friend yesterday - I was trying to remember why I don't dance with a particular man who dances quite well. I remembered it as just not liking the vibe - nothing personal - and it was that, but my friend pointed out that his hand wanders up and down all the time, as though he were stroking a hairless cat. Eurgh.
   
   
2. He makes eye contact while dancing (necessarily opening out the embrace to do this).
   
   There are lots of dances where eye contact is fine, and even necessary. But in tango, it feels like you're trying to make our interaction into something it's not. I know people do it in shows. There's a reason why they do it in shows, it's because it makes it look like something it's not. You do not have to be looking at me to be thinking of me. And also, tango is a progressive dance, please keep your eyes on the road!
   
   
3. He opens out the embrace, leads something in a sort-of-patient sort-of-patronising way, tries to make eye contact, and simpers at me for applause.
   
   Oh, for goodness' sake. Controlling, impertinent, vain, silly. My thoughts are my own, luckily for you. Bugger off.
   
   
4. He leads certain movements by jabbing the ends of the fingers of his right hand into my body. Sometimes just one finger. Ewwwww!! And also, Ow!
   
   Controlling, patronising, sleazy and PAINFUL.
   
   
5. He leads leg wraps without moderation.
   
   What exactly makes you think I want to wrap my legs around you? Don't be so damned impertinent. Do it if it's in the music, maybe once a tanda, and we're good friends.
   
   
6. Constantly intrusive knees.
   
   Get out of my legs!
   
   
7. He's controlling generally. He gives the impression that he's so pleased he can make me do this or that. Sometimes with just one finger!
   
   Hard to articulate this one, but it's probably a personality thing and a combination of doing little bits of all the above, especially the simpering. People who do this are usually technically and musically well above average, but not people I'd ever dance with for fun. Domineering, bullying, oblivious, self-absorbed, boastful and boring and sleazy.
   
   
8. Show-tango generally.
   
   You don't whistle or shout after a lady in the street, either, or talk about her tits in the pub at the top of your voice. If I wanted to be on stage, I would be. Don't attract the eyes of other people unnecessarily towards us. Especially with visually obvious things like turning the embrace inside out or spinning me around. Go and do a dance where those things are a normal element that doesn't attract the eye.
   
   
9. Verbal wittering - "ooh, lovely, oooh very nice, ooooh I do like that!"
   
   Ewwww! Inappropriate. Shut up and dance. You can say very nice at the end if you want to, but don't say "ooh".
   
   
10. He comes over and talks at me in a way totally unjustified by our real acquaintance, and hangs around at my shoulder, and won't go away unless I dance with him.
    
    Go away. I never gave you any encouragement, I was never more than polite, and I get this creepy stalking act. I already told you I don't want to go for a drink. This makes me want to dance with you less, not more.
    

I speak for myself as a hedgehog.

Nightmares and a Bad Conscience

Imagine a dancing class in which the subject matter, time, location, organisation, and teacher are such that these conditions occur:

• Leaders and followers - as booked - are exactly even.
  
• All the followers are, at least, competent to a level well above what's needed for the class.
  
• About a third of the class have booked as couples, and have the option of sticking together.
  
• Exactly one of the non-paired leaders is a complete nightmare to dance with, to such a degree that those students who have also studied martial arts can name the things he is unintentionally doing to the women who dance with him, and the specific art in which each of them is taught.
  

The unspoken rules of conduct observed among women are, more or less, these:

• If you booked as a couple you are allowed to hang on to your man, sacrificing opportunities to safety. Only a quite exceptional sense of honour, or a spirit of enquiry worthy of the Beagle, would lead you to do otherwise, and no-one will resent it, or at least not much.
• Over-seventies are exempt.
  
• Everyone else takes more or less her fair share, and will suffer in her conscience if she doesn't.
  

Frequent rotation keeps anyone from missing too much of the class, but when he's that bad, once is enough for anyone, and after a while it can turn, very gently, into a case of every woman for herself.

I wish I had a pet behavioural scientist, or some sort of pocket omniscient Jane Austen, who could watch and somehow measure and describe the subtle and blatant manipulations of space and attention, the moments of guilt, resignation, and relief, the subterfuge, the acting, the shirking, and the occasional bursts of self-sacrifice with which the women divide up the work. He can't be got rid of, so somebody has to dance with him.

Or you could just film the whole thing from the centre of a high ceiling and speed it up.

Can you tell that I'm suffering in my conscience? One possible game-changing move would be to get one of the men present who is a competent follower to dance with Mr. Nightmare, while one of the followers able to do so switched to leading for a while. But that can't really happen, because dance classes are civilised events, and it could all too easily result in a smack in the mouth.

Some interesting emails

From a couple of weeks ago. Emphasis mine.

Email 1:

“Contents: This class is designed to help students understand the notion of connection in tango as a technical tool. We will teach you to dance from your centre with the whole body using your intention to connect with your partner, the music, the ground and the rest of the dancers on the dance floor.”

I don't remember that last bit being mentioned in the ad for a class at Negracha before. I could be wrong. Sounds like a good thing, anyway.

Email 2:

“n.b :We welcome all styles, and with a dance floor as large as ours we are happy this is possible. Our only request is that we respect each others space (no overtaking, stepping back into someone else's space, wild crossing into other peoples lanes etc!), making our milonga a happy social gathering, where everyone can safely and blissfully dance together!”

I don't remember reading that message before, either, but that could be because I live too far away from this particular place to think about going under normal circumstances, and didn't read that far down. Nice, though, I like it. It definitely encourages me to consider going there.

Email 3:

“we're running - for the very first time - a course on choreography. ... By the end of the course, you will not only have learnt new skills, but you should also find that your social dancing has indirectly benefited.”

What interests me about this one is that the writer felt that mentioning that possible benefit would be a good idea. It's nice to hear they have that in mind.

Postcards from the Salon

[Update 25/01/10: The milonga at this venue is cancelled, probably permanently - they're looking for a new one]

I think that some people I talk to who haven't danced anywhere but London, sometimes assume that there are only two points on the continuum, London and Buenos Aires, with nothing in between. They take it for granted that the standard of dancing and the standard of experience in London must be at least normal, and they conclude that defensive driving, being frequently kicked and bumped, and continually having to master fight-or-flight in a zigzagging, jerking, braking, crashing, bouncing, incoherent, amusical, unpredictable dog's dinner of variously oblivious, incompetent, maddened, tense and frustrated people is just what comes with the tango territory.

With no experience of the real normal, as you might find, say, an hour away in Eton, or a few hours away in Scotland or Germany or the south of France, they're not convinced that any change is possible or necessary. It is, but they will only be convinced by experience, not assertion.

So I think it's important, and it makes a real difference, to create at least one space where people can experience an orderly floor and a relaxed atmosphere. They're trying to do this at 33 Portland Place with the “salon room” downstairs. They have a dedicated room, with a playlist that's trying hard, a notice on the wall and sweet little flyers with basic instructions. Their website is pure Flash so I can't copy and paste, but I've taken a screenshot which should be readable if you click on it. (I think the rather un-idiomatic English is because the first version was dictated by Adrian Costa).

So far, whenever I've gone there, it's more or less worked and delivered an orderly floor on which I could relax and dance properly at least 70 percent of the time. The first four times I went, I didn't get kicked or bumped even once - not a touch. There were people who didn't realise there were rules, and there were people who did but who had technical problems following them (more on that another time) but not enough all at once to screw it up completely.

It tends to work best for the first half of the evening.

I don't actually agree with the flyer's implication that this represents a particular style of dancing beyond the literal meaning of tango salon, that is, tango for a social dance hall as opposed to a stage. For example, I wouldn't, based on my own experience alone, contrast it to ‘nuevo’. Twenty-odd people on the First Friday of each month who have all said Yes to a Facebook page that says, among other things:

You will be expected to dance in an anti-clockwise route around the dance floor, not overtake, and dance appropriately i.e. no drops or aerials etc. Practice moves are not to be done on the dance floor but to the side out of harms way."

have in my experience actually delivered a very orderly and relaxing floor for at least the first two to three hours downstairs at Negracha, where the music is definitely ‘nuevo’. (Last Friday I could even live with a lot of the music). However, I understand why it makes sense to talk about it as an alternative ‘style’. It's easier for people to consider learning a new ‘style’ than it is to consider becoming courteous and competent - and if the result is the same, I'm willing to overlook a little therapeutic lying to smooth the transition.

I don't know about you but it's shocking how much better I dance, and for how much longer, when I'm not in physical fear.

Zombie music

There's live music, with real live musicians playing their instruments right there and then.

There's dead or suspended-animation music, captured, preserved, and reanimated from something plastic, a boon to humanity.

And then there's Zombie music.

Buskers do this in the London Tube network. They play an instrument, or sing, but they bring with them a backing track, which is all the rest of the music except their own instrument, and loudspeakers. They play along with that, slaves to the machine, and if we're lucky they more or less keep time. It's an abomination, but you can keep moving.

When I was on my holidays I was briefly menaced by the Undead Clarinettist of St. Wendel, a man with a suitcase-sized loudspeaker on wheels, who wandered about playing Undead Clarinet and Ghost Piano to luckless diners at restaurants in the square.

Make music, if you are inspired to do so. Make it badly, if you want; it would be nice if people didn't hire you (I'm dreaming). Make it live with other musicians, or on your own; or make it direct-to-dead.

But Zombie Music is just wrong.

Help me not be a crazy lady

When I see someone who, when I was so ill-judging as to dance with him, heaved my waist to the right, shoved my head to the left, bounced up and down, rocked from side to side, walked like two-legged drunken deaf spider with no sense of time, and twisted me about with a death-grip - when I see him wrestling a poor innocent beginner around and instructing her in detail and interminably on the dancefloor, it makes me insane.

This is not, heaven knows, an uncommon occurrence, but every now and then there's an example so outrageous that I have not always and on every occasion managed to restrain myself from making faces and mouthing like a loopy lady "don't listen to him!". Nor have I on every single occasion refrained from seeking out the young woman later and saying the same thing.

I probably need to stop doing this, because it's NUTS.

Anyway they can probably look after themselves. I certainly did when I was a beginner; I knew I could follow my teacher, no problem, I knew I could follow other good dancers, I knew I didn't know much, but I knew enough not to listen to that sort. It didn't stop the first one reducing me to tears, but the second and subsequent ones weren't problematic.

So if you are someone who has the skill level and human spirit to gently retrieve said beginner, to dance with her, perhaps in an open embrace, because she'll be a bit battered and probably frightened and probably hasn't been taught close embrace, and if you can give her a nice, musical dance that feels good, and if you are a kind person who can find something - anything - to praise about her dancing: you'll be a hero in a small way to her, you'll be a hero in a small way to me too, and you might just rescue me from a long slide into the loony bin.

Soft and light and wrung out like a dishrag

If I'm going to be 'soft' as well as 'light' and 'easy to lead', and other presumably-good things people sometimes say I am, if I'm going to have great connection and energy in the right place, if I'm going to dance to the music, feel good and make my partner look good, I have to give a lot of myself and take a lot of risk. There's a lot of 'feel the fear and do it anyway' in following tango. If I am going to follow properly, I am giving up a lot of control and I am choosing to behave as though I trust the man a lot - sometimes on the basis of no evidence whatever. And if I dance better I'm taking more risk than if I dance badly, because we're dancing tango, and dancing the woman's part well in tango means connecting more, and that means putting myself out there.

I'm not really talking about physical danger. I can generally protect myself from injury (although the high, hard open-side hand is a tough one, especially if twisted). It's really more of a cognitive thing. It's a lot harder on the mind than on the body.

It pisses me off when people don't respect that.

I do still, more often than not, accept direct verbal requests from strangers I haven't had a chance to see dance. The justifications I have for saying yes are adventure, curiosity, and kindness. Sometimes they're just new in town, in which case they're not-unlikely to be better than average, sometimes much better. Often they're perfectly harmless beginners, and a good investment in future dances.

But sometimes they heave my waist to the right, shove my head to the left, bounce up and down, rock from side to side, walk like two-legged drunken deaf spiders with no sense of time, and twist me about with a death-grip.

It can happen. There are ways of recovering afterwards.

Of course I know I am taking a risk. And I have heard it said the bad dancing is all the women's fault for ever accepting verbal requests from strangers. Apparently they could never tell right from wrong without us handing them apples.

I don't think so. Nor do I give unsolicited feedback at milongas; their bad dancing is NOT my responsibility and puts NO obligation on me to spoil my evening even more by being rude and giving totally unqualified, unpaid, and probably unhelpful and inaccurate advice to someone whose reaction I can't predict, except for the fact that I already know from experiment that he's slightly delusional.

In any event, the women are no better - many are clueless, many are dangerous, and as for delusionality, quite a few of us are, frankly, four stops short of Dagenham East on a good day. I don't think our role as Mother Goddess World Police is a functional proposal or productive explanation.

So I would never argue for everyone to use the 'nod' exclusively. I've seen direct, serendipitous requests produce nice, sometimes wonderful, dances far too often. I can always say "no" - and I do, if I've seen the man dance and I've seen he's a menace. Even though my concept of manners then requires me to sit out at least one song, and in most cases the tanda - quite a sacrifice in some cases.

But I do think Ghost has a reasonable take here, and I could probably say 'thank you' after one or two dances a little bit more often than I do:

Learning Tango - First, do no harm: The problem in London is that the tanda and the cabeceo don't really work together. If a stranger wants to verbally ask for a dance they have to accept that by not using the cabeceo they're not entitiled to a tanda. If you use an MJ convention, then you get the MJ result - one dance. Now in MJ you may well decide to continue on and have more dances, that's fine. But you don't take it for granted. Likewise if you start hurting each other it's over. Again you're playing by MJ rules.

On the other hand if you have both used the cabeceo, then you reasonably can expect a tanda. And that changes how you dance. For a start you'll be a lot less guarded than you would with an unknown dancer.

A problem with that is of course that if I'm guarded at all, I'm not dancing tango properly. Really, you have to start unguarded and adjust the other way.

He goes on:

Ghost: What complicates things is that people often refer to it as filtering out people who aren't skilled enough. That's a half truth that some hide behind.

I've watched the experienced women and which beginners / newish intermediates they approach and without exception they're the ones who had agreed to this contract. They not worried whether the guy's been dancing for 10 years and toured the world - they want to know they won't get hurt and that it'll be gentle enough for them to enjoy it.

Correct. Beginners don't know how to do the bad stuff - the worst thing they do is steer with their arms, and I can deal with that. I know one who steered horribly with his arms the first time he asked me, which I think was after his first or second lesson, and a year later he is a very nice dancer, easily in the top 20%, which may not be very difficult for London but is nevertheless truly nice to dance with, and better than some who've been dancing for ten to twenty years. I'm glad I was nice to him.

This bit sounds like a heartfelt point, and brings me back to where I started:

Ghost: ... there are going to be people at a venue who will injure you in a variety of creative and painful ways. How do you deal with them? Well part of the cabeceo is "We are going to dance. This specifically excludes hurting each other and the people around us."

Be honest, does everyone who verbally asks you to dance keep to this?

Unfortunately the ones who don't are urinating in the pool the rest of us are swimming in. And that can lead to people refusing the verbal ask because they've had enough.

There is a bit more to it than that, though. For me, the advantage of using some kind of a nod (I hate using the Spanish word where there's a meaningful English translation) is not that it signals anything very reliably about the dancer. Whether someone asks directly or indirectly is a very much less reliable guide to whether he'll dance well, than is his posture alone. The advantage is the lower risk of asking, and the relative ease of polite refusal. The difference is not between a verbal and non-verbal request, but between asking in such a way that a refusal may be embarrassing to either or both, and inviting in such a way that someone who's not feeling strong doesn't have to choose between taking the risk of getting wrung out like a dishrag, and being unkind.

Now it goes without saying, to me, that in a North-European society where men and women are routinely expected to, and do, treat each other like adults, the border between these two things is obviously not in exactly the same place as it is elsewhere. Nor is it in the same place with different people or in different situations. How direct you can be obviously depends on how likely you think it is that the person will enjoy this dance with you, rather than no-one, how likely you think they are to feel it's unkind to tell you otherwise, how important those things are to you, and what other opportunities you think there might be to ask that person in future. It's just manners and consideration, and having your brain switched on, that's all.

That means that you can accept the basic principle of not embarrassing people without insisting on some arbitrary procedure. There are lots of ways of making an indirect or partly indirect request; I use a wide variety myself, and which of them I choose depends on many things.

I'm not quite sure if the above is a coherent argument for anything at all. I'm not feeling very Krugmanesque today. But I do think it follows that if for your own reasons you prefer to ask directly, you ought also to want to make quite sure that you're taking responsibility for the quality of your own dance, and regularly checking for apples in your pocket.

So I do say, with Ghost:

Play nice.

Anoia, Goddess of Things that get stuck in Drawers

Readers of Terry Pratchett will know Anoia, goddess of Things that get stuck in Drawers.

Whenever someone furiously rattles a stuck drawer, and cries "Dammit, why do we need an egg-slicer anyway?!?! Who invented that?!?! Who even bought this useless thing?!?!", it is as praise unto Anoia.

She becomes the patron of Moist von Lipwig, whose fame elevates her from a part-time jobbing goddess to an important place in the Ankh-Morpork pantheon. Her High Priestess goes from serving obscure deities at a kitchen-table altar to being a person of some importance, with a golden ladle and a crown of not-especially-useful kitchen implements.

Anoia is also invoked whenever someone leads a back sacada.

Just so you know.

Raising expectations

Yesterday I went to the Crypt earlier than I usually would because it was Adrian and Amanda Costa, and I wanted to take the class. Unfortunately I still missed the first third, partly because of the rugby, but mainly because I'd forgotten my Tube route was partially down for some scheduled repairs. It would have been rude to join at that point, and it was also extremely full (good thing, too) so I just watched and listened with a cup of tea. But I was told this:

Adrian had started the class by explaining and demonstrating the rhythmic distinction between milonga, tango, and tango-vals, and how to tell the difference.

And I am pretty sure of this:

This simple, necessary information was new to a large proportion of the students, most of whose faces were not new to me, and most of whom had been dancing for more than one year. And important parts of it would have been new to me, too, if I hadn't happened to take that class with Joaquín Amenábar.

Which — is a scandal. And here I cut two paragraphs of rant: but I think it's a scandal and I don't really give a bugger what the excuses are.

So, back to the class. Adrian gives pretty good quotes and I really wished I had a dictaphone, but in running for my train I had neglected to bring even a pencil and paper. So paraphrases of what stuck are the best I can do.

"If the traspié it is there in the music I can choose, to do it or not to do it. If it is not there I cannot do it."

(The class was working with a tango here, not a milonga, and by traspié he meant what is usually called "double-time" in English, in the sense of double the number of steps, each of them in half the time.)

The class was asked to dance doing whatever they liked, but mostly just walking, and always doing the double-time only when it was there in the music, not always then, and not otherwise.

And the women were expected to listen, too! Amanda assumed that we could figure out ourselves how to do whatever ornament we liked, and told us to do one for the traspié if and only if the traspié was there but the man didn't put a step in himself. The women were not treated as being there to serve, nor were we treated as lawn ornaments, studying to look as nearly as possible like a tasteful display of identical plastic flamingos. It was assumed without apology or discussion that we were there to learn to dance well, for our own pride and enjoyment; that this was a possible goal; that it was worth attaining, without other justification; that we were capable of attaining it, with some work; and that we wanted to do so. Yay!

Towards the end Adrian made the class stand still and listen again to the entire tango, pointing out that it repeated the same pattern, with the double-time in the same place each time, and a suspension (opposite of a double-time) also in the same place each time, and if you missed it the first time, the ability to count to seven and find the start of the musical phrase gave you numerous other chances. He pointed out that this is very common in tango. There are repetitions following some structure that you can understand and predict with fair reliability if you can count to eight and listen as you do. Yay!!

The class concluded with a rather long lecture, and hardly anybody dropped out. They all appeared to be listening carefully. All of it would, if applied, make anyone who heard it dance better. Yay again!!!

"There are two kinds of dancers, dancers and movers. If I don't know why I am doing what I am doing, I am just moving. If I hear it and I choose to do it, I am dancing, even if I am like this [contortions, posture of an old man]. If I choose not to do it, I am still dancing."

That last one reminded me of the class they gave on Friday at Conway Hall, which was about floorcraft, and nothing else.

"If I am this close to him [too close to the man in front] I cannot go here, because he is there. I cannot go here, because the woman is there, and I cannot see. I cannot go this way, because it is a backward step and I cannot see. I have no possibility at all. But if I am this close [leaving a metre of space] I have many possibilities."

Yes! It was made explicit that you do not step into the blind spot. You do not step backwards. You leave space, just like on the motorway. You look where you are going, not at the steering wheel. You do not weave from lane to lane. Whenever you learn a new figure, said Adrian, before you make use of it in the milonga, you have to practice it; and when you do that, you find out which way you'll be facing when it ends. If it's any way other than forwards in the line of dance, or if the figure means that you change lanes, step backwards, or step into the blind spot, it's your responsibility to work out how to start it or adapt it so that you don't have to do those things. You can make your salida diagonal so you don't have to cross lanes sideways into traffic. Women were given advice about posture and footwork that helped to keep everything straight and the couple to move with confidence and safety and control.

I know!! Shocking!!!

And the point was this: if everybody follows these rules, it does not matter at all what style you dance — you can do whatever the hell you want, whatever you think is right for the music, whatever appeals to you, because everybody is respecting each other and giving each other enough space and not taking more than their fair share. Everybody gets to share the love. Everybody gets to see what you create. Nobody has to feel restricted. Again, I wish I'd had a dictaphone, because that's what I heard rather than what he said, but you can ask anyone.

The whole class was made, through various exercises, to follow these rules for one dance, and it was a revelation. Everybody had space; the whole room was dancing together, each couple doing its thing, not a chaotic mess of predators competing for territory, but a large gathering of consenting adults there to have fun.

It only lasted five minutes and it instantly fell apart when we tried to do something else as well, but I can only hope those five minutes left an impression on the participants that the skills of basic respect for your fellow dancers were skills worth aspiring to, worth giving some attention, and worth encouraging in other people. And I at least had fewer bumps for the rest of the evening than I usually do there. I think the total was one and a bit.

And since those little rules of thumb sound more complicated than they are, here is a diagram of Adrian and Amanda, with the green arrows showing safe directions and the red dotted line showing the contrary. Suppose that the couple are in the outside lane, the wall or seating is to the right, and the boundary with the inside lane is about where the arrow marked 'line of dance' is. (For example, you can see that they could rotate a little bit to the right about their centre, and walk straight; or they could go the way they're already pointing and zigzag, pivoting at the boundary; or if they took one step in that direction they could then quite safely do a clockwise turn about the woman's axis).



I don't think A&A are coming here again till October, but I hope they do because this sort of teaching, and the sort of dancing they do, raises people's expectations of themselves, of their teachers, and of each other. More, please.

xx Very Stroppy Phase of Moon Hedgehog

The sensation of cartilage

I had a strange dance with someone I didn't know.

He was fine except for one truly bizarre little quirk - he insisted on turning his face towards me, as though he were trying to gaze into my eyes. This is not good in itself, since it means he's not watching the road. But it's an even stranger choice if you have a very long rubbery nose that keeps prodding your partner in the temple or the ear.

I'm generally not crazy about noses in my hair. I'm even less crazy about noses in my ear canal, so I drew my head away from it as best I could. The attempt was useless. It was cartilage all the way.

I opened the embrace and the nose just cleared my forehead. Maybe I should have tried a V-embrace, but I'm not sure that would have been an improvement - the nose might have ended up in my eye.

Why wouldn't a person, in this situation, turn his face into the normal position? My skull is quite hard, and could have injured him, and the solution is so obvious, I would have thought it would be instinctive and immediate, at the first blow. But, apparently not.

Contradicting myself

A counter-example. Although I whinge sometimes about specific moves, and I really do experience them as ‘eww’-some or frightening or tiresome on the whole, the truth is that all of them are all right ...

IF

... you're good at them.

I dance now and then with just one person who does all that stuff, and I have huge fun. I'm never scared, and I don't go “eww”. I do raise an eyebrow sometimes, it's a conversation, but I feel that I'm dancing with him to the music, having an adventure, not acting as a conjourer's assistant or his audience. We do all the gizmos - inside-outs, wacky sacadas, colgadas (which I like anyway, when I remember how to follow them before it's too late), things I shouldn't wear a wraparound dress for, I even remember a lift - it's musical, it's joyous, it's pointful, and it's a hoot. Last time he got away with a leg rub. (Admittedly, I was wearing trousers.)

But those feelings of perfect balance, gentleness, stability, safety, confidence, and play, that he delivers — those make all the difference.

So, I was oversimplifying things. If I'm looking at it from a safe distance, so that I can see all the dancers of all talents and skill levels, I don't really think it's right to whinge about the moves themselves. It isn't their fault.

If I look at it from far enough away.