Encouragement for beginners

"Am I ready for my first milonga?"

If you have taken a small number of classes and you are asking yourself this question, chances are the answer is Yes, you are as ready as you'll ever be and you might as well try it. if in doubt, you could just go and have a look, even if you don't dance (I can't imagine anyone will mind). You could get together with some other people from your beginners' class and agree that you'll all go. Some teachers who do beginners' courses (including this one) even build it in as part of it after eight weeks or so.

If you like, you can have a look at my other posts on this subject, and other people's (some are linked in mine) to give yourself some reassurance and help about the details and suggestions for what to concentrate your energies on. Hope it helps.

I also don't think you need to announce to anyone that you are a beginner. If you are following and someone has just asked you, whether you are good enough for him is entirely his concern. If you are leading, you can keep it simple, in which case it will be fun anyway and is not a problem. If she hasn't seen you before and isn't willing to take a risk, she can always say no, thanks; if she has a sense of adventure and says yes, then she's willing to dance with YOU and that's the end of it. Either way, you have nothing to apologise for.

But lots of people have lots of opinions (with a lot of overlap but some disagreement) and if you hunt a bit you could easily be overwhelmed with "do's" and "don'ts", especially if you are leading. I think it's easier if you have the adventure early, before working on technique and whatnot starts to feel like a slog. You know you won't be perfect and you won't feel bad about it and nor will anyone else, and you won't even know how to do 90% of the "don'ts", so you're safe there.

You also won't have had time to direct energy into things (like 'ornaments') that there's just no reason to worry about until you feel like it.

I went for my first one when I'd been dancing about eight weeks, and didn't go for my second one till about four weeks later. Then I went every couple of weeks for a while, then every week, and now I go twice in most weeks, which is all I have time for. I got plenty of dances early on that were lots of fun, and the ones that weren't as much fun were still really interesting. And the bad ones, quite few in number, weren't the sort of thing I was likely to let stop me. Now they pretty much all go quite well, which is 50% because I'm better and 50% because different people want to dance with me. Some are really dreamy, but some were pretty dreamy even early on.

I am a pragmatist. I don't think it is about anything except what it is. I think that it is a dance, and is about music and enjoyment and finding out the answer, over time, to "what happens if I do this?" That's because I have the personality and world-view that I do.

If you are an intelligent, curious person you will learn things from anything you are interested in and motivated to work at, and apply them to other aspects of your life. There is nothing special about dancing tango in this respect. You have to find something that interests you, that's all.

Adornments

I am not having a very good week so far (apart from the baby pictures, which always make me smile). I'm annoyed. I got a lot out of my regular class yesterday but I'm not writing about it while I'm annoyed.

So I'll just observe that Johanna has written her own version of the beginners' guide to tango. I love her bit on adornments, and why you shouldn't.

I made an executive decision quite early on not to bother with adornments until they started happening all by themselves. Only then would I pay the subject any attention. I still think that was the right decision, and I only do little ones. I'm gradually introducing variations and trying to increase the range of what I can make work.

The littlest one I do is with my eyelashes. It's tickly.

Little Pearl

Here is what the Muumibaby looks like now, wearing the hat I knitted when I was there. A little pearl with bright blue eyes. I'm so glad I chose this cloudy blue for her hat. It looks perfect. She can crawl around now, and pull herself upright.

The hat is, if I remember correctly, four repeats of a layout of two different cables. One of them is just a plain six-by-six cable. The other one is an interesting double cable. The cross happens over two rows. You decrease by one stitch on the first, and replace it on the second.

I recommend knitting all knit stitches in this cable through the back to give the appearance shown.

Set cable: k, p, k, p2, k, p, k.
Cross row 1: (on right side): sl 3 to cn, hold to front. ssk (this loses one of the centre purls), p1, k1, p1 (this will be one of the two new centre purls), then k1, p1, k1 off cn.
Cross row 2 (if knitting in the round): k, p, k, purl front and back (restores the missing centre stitch), k, p, k.
Cross row 2 (if on wrong side): p, k, p, make one by lifting and knit it (restores the missing centre stitch), p, k, p.

k = knit, p = purl, cn = cable needle, ssk = slip 2 and knit them together (i.e. decrease by one).

I crossed the double cable every nine rows because I like the resulting relationship with the six-by-six one, but this is awkward if you're knitting flat, because you'd be using the cable needle on the wrong side. If you want to knit it flat, it would be much easier to start crossing on an even numbered row.

To make the hat, do three repeats of that pattern in double-knitting wool, and when you have crossed the double cable for the third time, start decreasing on every row at four points around to make it hat-shaped.

Isn't she beautiful?

What you need to know for your first milonga - follower

Ricky and Supantheress have written a very nice guide to what a beginner follower should aim for to be nice to dance with. This post is a bit different - less about what the leader is looking for and more about what the follower needs to know for herself.

For my first milonga, this was what I needed to know:

1. How to walk backwards with my feet in a straight line so I didn't go from side to side. (That took a bit of work - but practising it forwards works, and practising walking down the stairs without looking works really well).
2. If my foot met his foot, to make contact and then step over (assuming the lead is going that way, sometimes it doesn't but they still want you to do this - let them sort that out).
3. How to just stand there and look puzzled when I didn't understand what to do. This is difficult, it takes determination. But any other action is counterproductive. You move together or not at all. Give him a chance to make it clearer.
4. The way to get danced with is to stand near the edge of the dance floor, smile, and fidget slightly in time to the music. At least, this was the first thing I tried, it worked, and it still does.
5. What to wear. I think that deserves a seperate post, but anything nice you can move in will do, and nothing that can catch on his clothing.
6. Not to rush. (This is a hard one).
7. Not to talk. You need the concentration, and so does he.
8. Not to apologise. It just drives everybody round the bend. If you find this one tricky, decide in advance that when you feel the urge to say "sorry", you will giggle instead.
9. Not to say "thank you" until he does, or the end of the set. This is very difficult and takes even more concentration than standing still, because you're genuinely grateful to be danced with, it's a completely natural thing to say in the pauses between tracks, and it just seems wrong and impossible not to say it. But it has a special meaning in this context which is not what you have in mind at all. So here's a technique: allow your mouth to open, then say something else instead. It doesn't matter how inane - prepare something in advance. Try "what a nice piece of music that is," or "Isn't it hot?" It worked for me.

Some of this I had been told, some of it I rapidly worked out for myself, and happily someone managed to communicate (2) in two words during the dancing, and I went "oh!" and it all made sense. So you can afford to wing it a bit.

You should actively avoid learning or remembering any sequences. It will only confuse you, and if it makes you anticipate it will confuse the leaders even more. Tango is an improvised dance and you cannot make any assumptions at all about what's going to happen next. (Of course, that's more true with some leaders than others, and if you get to dance with someone of whom it's really true, dance with him as often as you possibly can). If in doubt, just stand there and don't change weight. If someone seems to expect you to remember a sequence, ignore him. And it doesn't matter if you never dance with him again. You have identified a wally.

Useful supplementary information includes:

1. Lechers have an incentive to work hard on their dancing, and are always kind and very useful to the learner. They will politely lose interest when they conclude that they are not going to get into your knickers, but this does not matter, since by that time you will be getting other dances too. They are perfectly harmless, and the contents of their imaginations are Not Your Problem.
2. If you think a man is making strange faces at you and you are wondering why, it's possible he is inviting you to dance. Try smiling at him, and if he intended to ask you, he will wander over and look at you sideways. At this point, stand up, and he will offer you his hand. Off you go; no common language required. Very few men do this where I dance in London, but those who do are usually good dancers, so go for it. It's traditional. Don't question it or worry about it for now. And it's unlikely to happen at your first milonga unless the man is your teacher or someone else you already know.
3. It's going to be stressful and someone will try to teach you on the dance floor. Just smile and pretend you can't hear what he's saying over the music. Promise yourself that you will never, ever, do that to anyone. Wear reliable waterproof mascara, in case it gets you down.

But mainly, just do the best you can to relax and concentrate. Following is quite demanding cognitively and uses up a surprising amount of energy. Remember that you're trying to feel it, not infer it, and that means you have to be willing to be wrong and not worry about it. It could be anything, and you're not psychic, so for all you know, it was what he meant after all. But this is all harder than it sounds, and you will probably not be able to do it at first unless they keep it simple, and not all leaders have enough imagination and confidence to be able to keep it simple. So don't get annoyed with yourself.

Oh yes, and you don't need to worry about your handbag. You can just leave it on a table, it's a small world, people are there to dance, and the chances of anyone touching it are exceedingly remote. But it's a good idea to take a very small one - you only need your keys, your train ticket home, and the money to get in and for one or two drinks.

My very, very first social dance was a milonga (in the musical sense, i.e. really fast!) - I just jumped right in at the deep end, there. Even when you've got the skills, there's a lot to be said for only dancing milonga with leaders who have a clue, and he didn't - he expected me to know a pattern and his lead was totally unclear. I was awful, but I survived it and decided not to regret displeasing him, and then I had some really good dances and a fool who thought it was OK to stop dead on the dance floor and try to lecture me.

It was hard, but I was glad I'd gone, it's exciting, and it steadily gets easier. But it stays exciting. And when it works, it feels fabulous.

Last.FM Tango DJ Radio

Back to the subject of where to find tango music, look at this! This is fun; Last.FM music-on-demand. You can make radio stations. And you can also buy music.

There's one generated by a "Tango-DJs" group, but if you try to skip a track, it tends to start playing awful rock, or Shakira, for no very obvious reason. So instead I've embedded one that plays what people on the site have tagged as "tango".

As I understand it from this announcement on the last.fm blog, once they are made available, artists get paid based on how much people actually stream them.

The tango-dj one just played me something I sort of like, and haven't heard before, and wouldn't have bought after looking at the cover; but I might, now. Well, maybe not this one (Gotan Project tends to get on my nerves after the first eighty seconds), but one of them.

What you need to know for your first milonga - leaders

[Following? Read what tangologue would like a beginner follower to do. It's very good.]

This was inspired by ricky's story about an acquaintance of his. This acquaintance went to classes for two years before he went out to dance socially. Of course, if you've danced socially even once or twice you will know exactly why this was a mistake; but if you haven't, it's not obvious at all.

So this post is intended to encourage beginner leaders to get out there by telling you what you need to be able to deliver (not necessarily very well) for your very first go at social dancing, and what you don't. It's mostly what I, as a follower, need you to be able to do so that dancing with you can be fun. So if you lead and you have something to add or subtract, chip in.

I'll be happy to dance with you, and you will manage OK, if you know:

1. How to synchronise properly. Just put your feet together and change weight from one to the other, on the beat. Don't bounce up and down or lift your heels off the floor, it's totally confusing (get someone to lead you and do it, so you find out why). Now I know which foot you're on and which one you're going to go with next.
   
2. How to walk positively, on the beat, with your feet close together. Now I know whether you're moving or stopping, and I can get my feet out of the way, as if by magic.
   
3. How to make a steady embrace (open is fine, just don't lean forwards or look at your feet).
   
4. How to get in and out of a cross. (Ochos are optional - too many make my feet hurt).
   
5. How to do a rock-step. It's easy to follow, and you can use it to fill time in a traffic jam and to change direction; you can do a lot with it musically, too.
   
6. How to do some little double-times if you feel like it and the music suggests it.
   
7. That (a) you are supposed to go round the floor anticlockwise without overtaking, reversing, or bumping, and (b) the world is full of people who can't do this, and some days you are one. It's no big deal.

Some kind of a round turn will also be very useful. But I don't mind.

Nothing else I can think of will be any additional use at all, and if you know all the above it is time to make yourself presentable and go dancing.

If you try get 'good' before your first adventure in social dancing, you will be wasting your time, money, and spirit, because:

1. It is just not possible. The skills you learn in class are not, and can't be, the same as the ones you learn by doing it - as I have observed before. The social dancing skills are not trivial to learn, and you really don't want to be doing anything complicated while you're trying to get the hang of them. You also don't want to be thinking of yourself as a good dancer and then finding you're not. That's just upsetting and distracting. It's much better to know where you are.
   
2. No-one will care. Social dancing is not a big deal and it's not about you. No-one is going to be looking at you admiringly, scornfully, or, very much, at all. They are busy dancing, gossiping, eating cake, observing each other's dress sense, waffling about the music, bitching about rival clubs, or thinking about themselves. It's not that people don't watch, but they don't watch very attentively, and when they do happen to look at you, it is a very good thing to be seen as what you are - a beginner with some sense.
   
3. The followers want you to keep it simple and give the social skills priority. We all know that it's more fun to dance with a beginner who walks nicely, listens to the music, mostly knows which foot you're on, and doesn't get your stockings torn, than someone who expects you to deliver all sorts of fancy stuff without regard to anyone else (or, very often, the music) on a crowded floor. Such people are fools and bores. Watch the fellow reversing at high speed and doing all the ganchos and know that if you could see the woman's thought bubble, it would often say "He thinks I'm a Playstation, I bet he'd be rubbish in bed". Do not be misdirected by his example. And we also know that the beginner with some sense may well turn into a good dancer, and we'll be glad we were nice to him, whereas the other bloke is probably beyond redemption. [There are people who can do all the fancy stuff, with the music, and the floorcraft, and make it fun. Watch them, enjoy them, don't worry about them.]
   
4. It's nice to be able to dance with someone from the same beginners' class as you, while she is still a beginner too. It makes the jumping in easier for her, too. If you wait, she will have either given up or grown wings by the time you arrive.

I'm not telling you to stop taking classes. I think a regular class is essential if you want to improve. But I assure you that social dancing is even more rewarding and fun.

Jump in, it's going to be stressful, but people who do it think it's worth it.

Music Downloads

The Internet is a great invention and has done a world of good in enabling human beings to communicate with each other. However, humans being, in the end, just humans, it turned out to be best at:

1. Porn for all - and that means all
2. Recreational Arguments
3. Shopping

Recently it has become possible to transmit music at pretty high quality, and some unusually alert exec at EMI has realised, about five years late, that the "all" part and the "shopping" part add up to a rather good way of making money, at practically zero cost, out of their old recordings.

The prices are four times what they would be if they were serious about me unzipping my purse, and the licence seems bizarre to me (non-commercial use? What, no DJs? Why exclude your highest-spending, most determined customers?), but it's DRM-less, it's high-bitrate, and it's there. Have a look at what they've got for Carlos di Sarli and Alfredo de Angelis.

Now, let's see. Is anyone going to compete? I might buy one album at this price, if I weren't the sort of annoying person who reads licence terms and gets offended. At a quarter of the price, I might well buy more than four albums and a bunch of odd tracks, and they would make more money at a marginal cost of practically £0.00. Why?