My Tango Diaries

(Photo 1: Warming up the floor before the milonga.) There is a lot to love about dancing at Texas French Bread (a campus-area restaurant and bakery). Walking in and smelling herbs roasting for the dinner entrees, warm bread, plus cakes and other desserts from the counter - irresistible! Outside, the street is gray and dark, lit only with the cold fluorescent lights from other buildings and street lights. The lights from TFB's windows shine gold and warm - so inviting. If I arrive a little late, Glover Gill is already playing and I can hear the piano just as I get to the door. When I close my eyes, I can hear layers of music, glasses clinking, shoes whispering over the floor. This milonga is the highlight of my week. This last Tuesday I only had enough time for a few tandas, then I had to return to campus, and then take the bus home. First tanda of the night, I danced with El Oso ("El Abrazo de Oso"), I was still so cold from being outside. We danced off the chill by the...

What I’m working on now in my tango journey . . . After recording and reviewing a video of myself dancing, I was able to get an idea of a few things I need to focus on. It’s one thing to know that certain things feel off, or unstable, or wear me out a little too soon – it’s another thing to be able to see video evidence of what’s causing it. It’s still hard to watch myself dance, but I always get so much more information from it (after I get done wincing and cringing). (Photo 1) The biggest problem lately – actually, it’s been the biggest problem for a long time, is my tendency to “sickle” my left foot. (See photo below of me dancing with one of my teachers, Stephen Shortnacy, of Georgetown Tango.) As I extend into my back steps, my tendency is to land on the ball of my foot then roll out toward the outer edge of my foot and through the heel. The goal is really to keep mostly on the inside edge of feet, which I’ve been able train my right foot to do. But I’ve been having a lot more tro...

(Warning: my music education is pretty much nada, so please forgive my usage of such technical terms as, well, "bing", for instance.) Enrique Rodriguez King of the Missing Bing Melina and Detlef dancing to "Llorar por una mujer" Scenario - You and your partner are dancing to the lovely "Llorar por una mujer" and you can hear the smooth phrasing build to the traditional end and listen for the end "bing" that signals "this is the end of the song" so you can end your dance smoothly on the beat. Except the bing doesn't come. The song just ends..... No "bing". Sort of like hearing someone sing "Happy Birthday" except at the end, the last line just goes, "Happy birthday to." Welcome to the tangos of Enrique Rodriguez, King of the Missing Bing . Rodriguez gets quite a bit of play at milongas, locally anyway, and his pieces have a nice balance between strong rhythm and silky melody that make dancers pretty hap...

Tango is Art. . . . Art class. Mr. Agacinski. (Forgive me, Mr. A, if I misspelled your name. Of course you always mispronounced mine, opting instead to call me, "a real stand-up broad" - which I kind of liked, so we can call it even.) :-) Mr. A laid out the rules very simply. All projects would be graded on a scale of 1-99%. A large portion of the class was outraged (really, I'm not kidding, outraged!) that earning 100% on an assignment, or for the semester, was impossible. So seeing that several of his students were clearly disgruntled by his rule, he acquiesced. Sort of. . . He offered a deal. "All or nothing." You could have a chance to earn 100% on an art project, but if he found a flaw anywhere in the piece, the grade would be zero. Several students smiled, getting the implication. Others still balked. "But there's always going to be something you can find wrong with it!" "How can you judge if a painting is perfect???" ...

I've always asked people why they started tango - what they wanted from it. It's an important question and it's related to the question I ponder a lot these days, "What kind of dancer do I want to be?" Which really translates, for me, to what kind of follower do I want to be? I spend a lot of time watching other dancers, teachers - both local and visiting, in person and online. I try different things, different techniques, different ways of expressing the music. I try a few things on and see how they fit. When something doesn't fit or feels off, I try to figure out why. Keep what works. Let go of the things that don't work. Here are the things that make up the kind of dancer I want to be - in no particular order. I want to be soft. Many of these descriptors are going to be troublesome to explain. All can do is kind of dance around the idea and hope I get it clear by the end of my explaining. "Soft" is one of the tough ones. Some dances feel ...

*/rant/* Two tandas . . . Two bruised toes from getting stepped on. One abrasion and bruise on the side of right foot from a stiletto heel (ocho taps adornment). One bruise in right calf from stiletto heel (boleo). One bruise on my left Achilles tendon from a (not my) leader's kick (gancho). One silver-dollar sized bruise on the inside of knee (back sacada). Fairly ranty requests: Teachers: every single class you teach about any pattern/sequence/step whatever, should include floorcraft. Every one of these injuries could have been prevented by following the most basic rules of good floorcraft. When your students, leaders or followers, kick people, it's a reflection on you. Leaders: If you think the floor looks pretty tough and you may have trouble navigating it - you're probably right. Either dance small, and by small, I mean *small* - for example, two large steps to walk me to the cross is not small, or sit out until later in the milonga. If you're not sure you know the...

This has been coming up more and more as dancers (online and off) have been discussing the merits (and pitfalls) of using the cabeceo at milongas. Here's one example of what often happens... As soon as the cortina starts, especially if the milonga is very busy, leaders scramble to find their first choice next partners in scattering dancers. Because people are seated somewhat haphazardly and there's no single point of exit from the pista - visibility is tricky, even if the lights are brighter (which is rare). So gentlemen have little choice but to walk up to the table where their intended follower is sitting and simply ask her. Knowing that the milonga is usually set up poorly for the cabeceo, the follower accepts invitations that way, rather than appearing rude and declining an invitation, and "punishing" the leader for asking in the only way he had the opportunity to. So we usually accept the invitation. There are times when it would be even more prudent to turn dow...

Wait... So much of my tango education has revolved around learning to wait. To wait until something is led. To wait for the music. To wait for my partner to open the space before moving into it. In my abrazo apilado class with Daniela Arcuri, she stressed the importance of followers waiting until there is a clear invitation to lean into their partner before doing so. The leader invites the follower to share her weight, often by stepping back slightly. If I lean on my partner without that invitation, I just feel heavy and off-balance to him. During the next practica, I felt for the invitation in the leaders who had taken the class with me. I knew they would be practicing it, so it wasn't a surprise to feel the tiny step back, or the slight dip in their elevation. What did surprise me is when I felt the invitation from another dancer, El León, who had not been in that class. Had he always been inviting me and I just kept closing the distance? I was so surprised, I didn...

A rare stellar alignment resulted in far more men at the last milonga than women. While I enjoyed dancing nearly every tanda (though my feet are now less than impressed by that fact), it brought other things to light that I would have preferred not have had to deal with. When there are far more men than women, it can feel particularly obvious (I'm not sure that's the word I mean, but I can't think of a better one) when certain men don't want to dance with you. When there are 5 or 6 men that appear to rather sit out than ask the one woman left sitting (me, in this case) to dance, it stings. I know appearances can be deceiving - and I have been known to be airheaded and miss cabeceos from leaders. But when it's the entire evening - and the same leaders, it's hard not to take it personally. Still, I've learned to try to make peace with that and not make too many assumptions about it. However, the situation was made far worse that night when another dancer sug...

Nearly every tango forum, blog and listserv seems to have a percentage of posts that read something like this: - no one but Argentines can really dance tango the way it's supposed to be danced, - Argentines are natural tango dancers/have natural musicality/naturally better posture etc etc and don't need classes. Then there are the constant references to what the portenos/as do that we can never hope to understand... Am I the only one who doesn't really care about not dancing like a portena? I don't want to be misundestood here - the way that tango is danced socially in the milongas of BsAs and Montevideo (why does no one seem to mention that this heritage is shared by Uruguay?) is the ideal I hold in my head. And I very much want to go to Buenos Aires (and Montevideo) and experience tango where it was born and where it flourishes still. But there are two fundamental ideals that are the core of tango heritage and experience that I think are getting lost with posts lik...

Dear tanguero, I feel I should explain my reaction to your comments about Tim Ferriss. It touched a nerve and I didn't really explain my apparent hostility. It was certainly not meant for you. Several people have brought Tim Ferriss to my attention over this past year. I can usually make it a month before his name pops up again. For readers who are unfamiliar with him, he's the author of "The 4 Hour Work Week". He set a Guinness record for the most consecutive tango turns and has competed with his partner, Alicia Monti, at the Tango World Championship . As a social dancer the idea of a tango competition seems absurd. I don't think I will ever understand how something like tango could be judged - or why anyone would want it to be. But I digress. I think the most crucial detail of Ferriss's history, as I relate it to tango, is his winning Wired magazine's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" . If there is any concept more out of synch with social ...