Weekender Packing List - Lessons Learned

Ever been to a tango weekender? Or thought about it, and wondered what to take?

Here's what I learned from my four days in the south of France. Men might simplify things a bit by taking a suit, which would deal with all of the evening milongas, but then you have to puzzle out the shirts and ties. And for the daytime milongas people wore all sorts. Polo shirts and chinos are a pretty safe bet, but I had lovely dances with guys in cargo shorts and flipflops.

Key: Final packing list, comments on return.


The Brief: 5 nights, 4 milongas, unfamiliar Mediterranean climate. 18-22C, possibly windy. Might want to do tourist things. Actually there were 7 milongas! I hadn't understood the programme.

Dancing
Dancing Shoes 1 (pink tone) I only wore these once, with dress 1, and they're a bit tight for a long milonga. I should order a half-size up in this brand.
Dancing Shoes 2 (silver tone) Wore them all the time - these are the half size up. Winner.
Dress 1 (attention-getting and folds up to nothing) That worked.
Dress 2 (also folds up to nothing - very pretty - quieter though. Could conceivably be worn as daywear, if not too windy) That didn't work. Put it on and it just felt wrong. Something about the climate and fabric and proportions. Felt sweaty. Didn't wear it.
2-piece outfit 1 (relatively casual but bright and cheerful, super-pretty, both parts recycle as daywear) Winner, wore the sweet little Audrey-Hepburn Capri trousers for 2 milongas and as daywear for 2 days.
2-piece outfit 2 (relatively warm in case of unexpected weather, top recycles as daywear, dark colour) This took care of one of the milongas I hadn't counted in the planning. But the skirt is a bit too big and rides down - requires an anti-static slip.
2-piece outfit 3 (relatively formal - cheerful colour - top recycles as daywear) This covered for the failure of Dress 2.
Little Black Dress as backup in case I've totally missed the tone. Didn't need it, but don't grudge the space to proper risk management.
Underwear as required by above.
Knee length zip-up over-dress to wear over outfits when walking to and from the venue. Very glad I put this in at the last minute, otherwise wouldn't have worn Dress 1.

There's 2 outfits redundancy there, but that's because I'm not familiar with the climate or the venue and I don't know exactly who's going or how they dress or whether there's aircon or fans, or whether Dress 1 might be out-of-place. Redundancy and flexibility, luckily.

Both pairs of shoes are comfortable rather than demanding; long nights. Good call. My feet hurt up to the knees at the end of day 1. Any of my other shoes would have been disastrous.

Daywear
Denim skirt Did the job well but could have either gone without it, or worn it instead of the tourist trousers and avoided the attention of security at King's Cross - I forgot that if you have visible pockets on loose garments, they always search you. Pencil skirt again next time.
Various cotton tops used one for one of the uncounted milongas and 2 things to cover the shoulders only needed the one that matches Dress 1 
Spare light hot-weather skirt, folds up to nothing. Took care of another milonga - good call.
Factor 50 sun cream essential
Belt
Beach towel didn't need it
Foldable kitbag didn't need it
Bag with all bits for doing hair, legs, face. Decanted shampoo, conditioner. Bobby pins.
Daywear flat sandals. Wore them all the time and danced in them twice.

Will wear tourist trousers on train with ankle-covering canvas shoes and socks, and hoodie; those will do for any off-road walking. Perfect - took me up the telepherique, hoodie took care of cool evenings.

Camera essential
Charger
Phone
Charger
Adapter for chargers
2x spare SD cards for camera

Document wallet with all booking references, train tickets, and passport.

Small bag with book, money, cards, and knitting.

The only thing I had to buy was sticking plasters for my feet.

Drawings

It is utterly, absolutely extraordinary that for about a fiver I can buy a book of Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings.

They're the most wonderful work; it's not simply their beauty, they go far beyond that, his drawings of the skeleton are are the most explanatory pictures I've ever seen. The bones of the forearm, he shows me, cross one another like this as you rotate your wrist. The pelvis is this shape, and the bone of the thigh fits into the socket in this way. The spine is attached like so, and the ribs to the vertebrae like this, and this is what a skull is like, here is how it joins the neck and shoulders, this is how the shoulder moves. You can clearly see exactly how it works.

I remember a TV programme in which an experienced heart surgeon said that out of interest he had studied Leonardo's drawings of the heart; and his depiction of the way the blood flowed had inspired the surgeon to ask "Is it really just like that?" and to invent a better way of fitting replacement heart valves.

And for less than the price of lunch I can have this in my house. What extraordinary times we live in.

hic

Bocca di lupo

cousin, cousin's man, mspigeon

I have no idea what was happening on my plate but it all tasted amazing

prosecco

The pig's blood and chocolate thing is strange, but nice, the bergamot ice thing with meringue is even stranger

soho bar

Fruit cocktail (non-alcoholic)

3 more bottles of prosecco

Round of tea

cocktails and finishing off the prosecco

I'm on coffee now

cocktails

squigglyhedgehog

z

Lessons for beginners

It may help the beginner to know that there are, broadly, two approaches you're likely to encounter in a beginner's class. In reality, everyone uses some more-or-less-successful mixture of these two approaches, I don't know anyone at all who keeps absolutely to one or the other, that would probably be silly. But in most classes, one or the the other is very much dominant. I'm going to describe what the two extremes are, tell you my opinions about them, and hope that it helps you get what you need out of your classes.

Top-down: Learn some steps by heart, do them, and then work out how to lead and follow them. Break them up into simpler parts and recombine them. Repeat this without limit, looking at technique wherever it comes up, and then at some point later maybe go on to how to actually dance if you are interested or have talent. Very common in my experience.

Bottom-up: Learn how to move to the music and connect with your partner, start dancing in response to the music in a very basic way more or less immediately, and grow the steps from there. Work on technique as necessary. Get better at it over time. Add more complex skills if and only if they appeal to you. I've seen this only rarely around here, but it does happen.

The advantage of  top-down is that you get a map of where you're going, which is reassuring and gives you a sense of progress. The danger of this approach is that you get a map of where you're going which reduces a real landscape to a two-dimensional drawing, and makes you think things that aren't true, so that your sense of progress might be false.

The advantage of bottom-up is that you quickly get a view of the landscape, which is vast, awe-inspiring, and full of possibilities. The danger of bottom-up is that you quickly get a view of the landscape, which is vast, terrifying, and a bit short of signage.

Limerick has a great post on why that landscape appeals to him, and apparently looked good to George Bernard Shaw.

Practical advantages of top-down include that it's traditional and widely used, and it seems to be normally used to teach professional performers, so they feel very comfortable with it. Anyone with previous dance experience will probably also feel comfortable with it. It's also very good for bringing out points of physical technique, and introducing new techniques and ideas.

However, in my view it is very poor and slow at producing social dancers who anyone else would really want to dance with. The problem is that with non-professional students, the vital last few steps very often never happen - the procedure never gets broken down into re-usable elements, and even if it does, the student never actually gets to move to the music and develop their own dance.

Another problem is that the way a moves-based class has to work, spending 80% of the time on leader problems and then trying to compensate for that in various ways, it tends to seperate rather than integrate the leader's (man's) part and the follower's (woman's) part, so that the dance is a to-and-fro rather than a joint production.

Practical advantages of bottom-up include that it's (in my limited experience) about 1,000% more efficient at producing people who dance well, both more of them and much faster. This is a major advantage for the teacher who is primarily a social dancer and wishes to dance with his or her students. Another advantage is that leader and follower can get something much closer to equal time, because of the attention paid to creating and keeping connection, and to musical movement. That means the women can be more challenged and contributing more equally right from the start, which makes for less stress and soul-searching for everybody, as well as a better dance. It doesn't always happen, but it's much more possible.

However, it's demanding on the communication skills and curiosity of teacher and student. It also requires a much smaller number of lessons; the dancer can continue to improve at his or her own pace with relatively little help, a lot of it in the form of mentoring from peers and/or professionals, and just personal discovery, rather than actual teaching. Lessons will be fewer, more interesting, and more focused. So it only makes sense where the goals of both teacher and student are primarily to do with social dancing, rather than lessons as such.

So you can see what my opinion is. I think the bottom-up approach is better overall, but top-down is very useful for certain tasks and it never really makes sense to seperate them completely. Any teacher you choose will probably use some mixture, but with one approach predominant. Some will switch approaches if they realise you have a preference. And if you are informed, you can understand what is going on, and look for the useful bits.

OK, this is one of what I hope will be a series of posts intended to help out the beginner who has had either rather few lessons in tango, or no lessons at all. I'm not claiming any special authority, but I think help from peers is quite important. It is to me. And it's a confusing world. It's a common thing to take someone new under your wing as best you can; this is too important to be left to people who make their living out of it. If you are a beginner you don't need to assume I'm right, but I hope what I say will be useful to you; comments from prospective and recent beginners are particularly welcome. The next one I have in mind is a discussion of styles, and whether that concept means anything or is even slightly useful.

I agree with the Shaman

I quite agree about photoshopping Gillian Tett. So unnecessary! Anyone who'd fancy the real you gets wierded out, and anyone who'd fancy the photoshopped you is going to be disappointed. What's the point?

On his other observations I have nothing to say.

Total Connection (Salon Swing)

Connection - this is it. Miss Dawn Hampton, and John Dokes, again. Each other, and the music.

The Need for Agony Granddads

Once upon a time, one of those men's magazines hired a team of over-80 males to be an advice column; someone left his on the train, and I perused some very entertaining letters and replies, less detailed and more direct than the feminine form of this genre, including an exchange which ended - "If you don't like her, why are you with her? Stop wasting her time!" I don't know if it lasted, and I don't remember what the magazine was, but I thought it was a great idea.

That's the kind of conversation that has to happen for there to be a real, living, fully functioning community. There has to be enough respect and self-respect that one adult male, who has and deserves respect, can say to another: you are doing the wrong thing.

Because it isn't enough for the women to do it. To do that, we have to be in a heavily biased seller's market. And, hello, reality! We're not. Let me take a sad but rather mundane, indeed universal, example from ordinary life:

What he says:

I wouldn't want to hurt you.

What it sounds like it means:

I'm going to think about how I behave towards you, and take care not to hurt you, and if I hurt you accidentally, I'll do something to make it better.

What it really means:

I'd feel quite inconvenienced if you seemed hurt, so will you please be invulnerable; when you fail, I'll look embarrassed and disappear.

And it isn't really something the woman can fix, because she's too directly concerned. She can avoid hurt, by sacrificing joy, but she can't make him behave better, because while she hides her hurts he'll consider them as nothing, and when she shows them, he'll become nothing. The only way it changes, is if he changes his mind about what to do, and we already know her attractions are not adequate to cause that, unless you have Jane Austen write the script. You wouldn't bother making a movie out of it, unless you had her in the credits. It's just too dull.

I daresay it happens the other way round. It's only an illustration of the logic. Over-poetic, perhaps.

In the same way, women complaining about getting hurt will never produce better dancing. Only the fear of looking bad and incompetent in the eyes of confident and effectually dominant rival males will actually do that, in my view.