Your Surrogate Tango Parent



"I am taking my tango money and going to a new
 teacher who teaches  candy moves and Barbie Doll ornementos!"

What would it be like if parents earned their money from their children?  "Mom, I think you are being too stern.  I am taking my money and I am going to live with Dad.  I like the elementary school near his apartment better anyway." 

Tango students are sometimes like children with money. And who are their poor "parents"?

Tango instructors:  their surrogate tango parents.

Even in the real world of true parenting, children very effectively modify the behavior of their parents. Often we think it is the other way around.  Sure, parents mold their children in many ways, but from the first cry for food and for the rest of their lives, children transform and teach and mold parents.

Tango students are like children in this way.  We students mold them more than they us in many ways.  Sadly, I would say that too much tango teaching has been molded by "naughty children" who have had too much power.  And of course, "power" here means "money."  If teachers don't do what their naughty children demand, they will go off to live with their stepfather or stepmother -- some other surrogate tango parent.  They'll take their business elsewhere.

However, the best real parents do not let the children take over or compromise the best path for their children.  The path of a good tango teacher is very much the same:  Insisting on teaching well takes a lot of guts and a sense of what tango really means to them.  Of course, if tango means "show time on the social dance floor," that opens a whole new topic, because now we have naughty tango parents teaching naughty children.  For the moment let's just say that  your teacher wants you to enjoy tango for its social, psychological, musical and yes, even spiritual dimensions.  That tango "parent" is worth of the 5th Tango Commandment:  "Honor thy tango parent that thy days may be long."

At some point we students must grow up, and change the all-too prevalent of naughty-tango-children syndrome.  This is also known as adult learning.  Our relationship will be dual -- teachers teaching us, and we will teach our teachers, but hopefully it will be a functional dynamic, as with any human relationship.  It looks like this:



The Larger Classroom
Teachers are influenced by not just one individual.  Their first individual or group class begins the process.  They learn the most from students who do not understand what the teacher thought would be easy.  If no one  in the class understands the teacher, then the teacher can be exasperated, but also the teacher will learn a lot from this humbling moment.  When I taught fourth-graders in Mexico, I threw out any test that no one did well on.  My test was failure, not the children.  It can be very humbling to be a teacher, and so it is with tango teaching.

As adult learners, let's reverse the way we look at teachers -- just for the moment if nothing else.  I have used and suggest these reversals:

1.  Have a lesson plan for the teacher:  For a private lesson, the practical thing for a student to do is to prepare for the lesson well.  How will you teach your teacher today?  Know what you want them to teach you.  Most students allow their teacher to tell them what they are going to learn and are not active, adult learners.  At best you have practiced what they have given you or bring some new idea.  At worst you insist on some direction that you are not developmentally ready for.  Here's an example:  The student says, "I want to learn how to do a wild-ass volcada."  The teacher says, "You need to learn to walk to the music!"  The teacher is now teaching you and you are no longer in charge because you didn't prepare or did not really understand your level.   Adult students should know that one learns to walk before one runs.  If your teacher has been taught to obey naughty surrogate children with too much money, they just might teach you that volcada and it will take many lessons because you were not ready for it in the first place.  How much did that cool volcada cost you?  $500?  And you still cannot walk that well.
  

Another reversal from believing you are now intermediate or advanced:


2.  Expect to stay a beginner:  The "beginner's mind" is an attitude of learning.  Once you think you are "advanced," no teacher can help you.  A wise teacher cannot fill "the cup that is already filled."


Here's the reversal of learning new steps:

3.  Add to your teacher's knowledge of steps:  Once you have really learned the basics, show your teacher some step that she has never seen before.  This is definitely a reversal of common wisdom -- showing your teacher some new cool step!  However, there are a million cool steps out on DVDs and YouTube.  Figure out some step that appeals to you.  A good teacher will fix it or tell you that you are not ready for it.  The BEST teachers might say.  "When will you actually dance that?  Are you planning on dancing on television or is this just to injure or kill people you don't like at a social milonga?"  If you are truly ready to drive the car responsibly, your surrogate tango parents will give you the keys.

4.   Go back to the basics over and over.  I suggest filming yourself.  Ask yourself:  "Why am I still bouncing around on the dance floor like  prom night at a special middle school for children with ADHD?"  Your teacher will help you with this (without medication, I hope).  Here are some more questions you might pose to a good teacher:   "I notice that my dancing has nothing to do with the music."   Dancing musically will be the work of a lifetime; so your tango coach/teacher has a lot of work to do.
 
Teachers need your help.  They need to stay on track.  So be a good student and prepare for your class on teaching them.  Remind them about how you need to learn to walk; how your evening is ruined by not knowing more about floorcraft; how you have a new step for them to clean up for you; that a video of yourself shows you are doing many things that look awkward."

The joke about the three stages of many tango students are:

• Beginner
• Intermediate
• Tango Teacher.

If you start realizing the pain you have put your surrogate tango parent through, you won't want to start having children of your own at an "early [tango] age." 

The next time you see your surrogate tango parent, say:  "Thanks Mom!"  or "Thanks, Dad."  You might be surprised that they understand what you mean.  They may love you, even if you have been at times a naughty child. 



Photocredit:  Child with money  http://kidsandbills.com/kids/10-ways-to-teach-your-child-about-money/





Tangosutra for her eyes only!

Is your tangosutra for "her eyes only" or for the crowds?

In earlier posts I have mentioned teachers who perhaps were not spectacular on the dance floor but great teachers.  The teaching couple in Austin who had by far the biggest single impact on my dancing are Stephen and Marty.  They and a few of their students would find each other at the snack table during performances at festivals or at a milonga.  It was a great time for us to hydrate and nibble on some strawberries or chase the last of the grapes around the plate while the rest of the tangueros/tangueras put on their sweaters and adoringly watched the awesome tango performers.

Stephen and Marty were not alone in this aversion of performance tango at a crowded-floor festival or milonga.  I also experienced the same thing in Washington, DC at the Tangosutra Festival back in October when I first arrived in "D'C-ity of Thieves." At Tangosutra the instructors* didn't steal a moment of dance time from us.  They purposely decided NOT to perform at the festival for philosophical reasons.  They explained to us that they were there to teach and model appropriate behavior for social tango and not show off or do the very thing that should not be done on the social dance floor.

An Embarrassing Moment
At the Thursday opening milonga in DC, I went over to a man whom I never had seen before, and I was praising him for his floorcraft.  I felt so comfortable next to him, I told him.  I heard his accent and realized he was from Buenos Aires.  We continued in Spanish, and I finally realized that he might be an INSTRUCTOR.  Oh my God, who would have ever guessed that someone next to me who is practicing the best of floorcraft would be a tango instructor!?  It was a tango-miracle. :-)

This unknown (to me) caballero, Maximilano Gluzman, ended up being a great instructor, a great tango philosopher and a consummate gentleman.  Later that night and into the festival I noticed others with excellent floorcraft that night -- Sabá and Krebs -- who were also instructors.  Much of the training we had at that festival was about musicality and floorcraft.  One interesting class that Maxi had was on what the community of dancers could do to protect themselves with "rogue dancers," endangering others on the social dance floor.

I do not mean to say these instructors at Tangosutra were not great dancers.  But tango is all about dancing just for your partner; so don't ask me, ask their partners what it was like to dance with them.  They dance in public, sure, but "for her eyes only."

*The Honorable Faculty at Tangosutra Festival last October:

Karina Colmeiro & Felipe Martinez
Mariana Galassi with Juan Cruz Masotta
María Olivera & Gustavo Benzecry Sabá
Silvina Valz & Oliver Kolker
Sergio Alessandro Buslje
Joaquín Canay
Maximiliano Gluzman
-And-
Alex Krebs

PS:  I wish not to disparage tango performers who have a range of talent and can dance the full spectrum of tango.  Tango Fantasía has it place.  Visual tango draws new dancers to the tango community, and I love to watch videos of truly great performers.  Great performers like Murat Erdemsel and Daniela Arcuri balance themselves off by being great teachers of a spectrum of tango not just performance tango.  My next post will address the fuller-spectrum teacher, and I will suggest Albert Schweitzer as one of the best examples of a multi-talented teacher.  Tentative title:  Tango Jocks vs Tango Teachers.

Highs and Lows at a milonga

If you put out your hand, perhaps you may find yourself richer than before. 

We all have had a tough milonga.  I have a pretty good idea that mostly the "highs" people have at a milonga are from excellent dancers, and the "lows" are from some beginner that tortures you though a tanda. Well, that has happened to me too, but not last night.

First, the Mountain High
Last night I put my hand out to a woman as she came near, wending her way through the crowd as I stood near the dance floor smiling at her.  She had assented to my cabeceo from about 4 meters away.  However, as I put out my hand, two women put theirs in mine!  Now I had a problem!

Every milonga has a story!  About four tandas later I told the lady who had mistakenly thought I was inviting her to dance, "Ma'am, I think I owe you a dance."  She seemed eager but very shy.  I asked her name, and from this intro, I started speaking to her in Spanish.  I found out that this little Peruvian lady had taken lessons but had never gone to a milonga before.   I don't think I will ever have a self-esteem issue after all the praise that sweet woman bestowed on me.  She didn't know that she was to stay with me for the three waltzes of the tanda.  She lavished embarrassing praise upon me, and nearly took off!  I had to stop her from leaving.  I told her about "el grupo de canciones" of a tanda.  I knew that as she was leaving that it was my way out of dancing more, but instead I danced the entire four songs of the tanda.  It was really wonderful. She was remarkably talented. It was her maiden voyage.  She made my night.

Now the Valley
I dance with a lot of very accomplished dancers; so I am certain that no one in my tango community will know who I am talking about.  After many wonderful dances with friends and some strangers, I finally danced with an accomplished -- no let's say, Very Accomplished Dancer.  In the middle of a milonga tanda she says, "You are dancing by yourself."  I was not sure what this means, mostly out of shock.  I have danced with women who are doing all sorts of decorations and I know how this feels.  It is hard for me to continue after such a nebulous and brash criticism but I listen to the music and do my very best.  She is sweet and it does not at least look like she is upset with me as we walk off the floor.  We go back and continue to talk.  She explains that I don't lead clearly with my torso and that milonga is more than just walking!  I am sure that I need to go in and revamp the entire way I dance.  Perhaps I should just find a bridge and end the torture I cause many pooer women!  She makes it clear that I am messing up on the most elemental level; so for the moment, I am considering just giving up altogether.  "Thanks for making this clear now!  I should have given up 4 or 5 years ago," I think to myself.

This phenomenon is called "Tango Trauma."  But it is easily healed.  Sure, I DO want to heed this unsolicited sage advice regarding my level of suck-ed-ness.  Surely it will make me grow because it did not kill me to hear her opinion, right?  Undoubtedly she had a good point that I have a long way to go and end point will lead me back to the most basic of things:  the embrace.  But how am I to psychologically survive to the next milonga?  I needed some sort of special milonga antidepressant!

I took one little "pill":  I remembered the little Peruvian tanguera.  I remembered how I got to be her first ever partner at a milonga and how she just was besides herself in joy.  And then a whole host of women stood in line behind her and reassured me of my worth.  The therapy worked.  I am whole again because I know that I hold no grudge against my Sage Adviser.  So even if you don't have too many experiences with other dancers, let these words embrace you:  You are unique and every person deserves to dance without criticism at a milonga.  When it does happen, sure it will hurt, but you will have many people who were and will be glad to have you in their arms.  Stick with these memories and thoughts.

Life has it's highs and lows, so does the milonga.  Dwell on the view from the mountain top.  You will need it to endure the Lessons of the Valley.



Outstretched hand photocredit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyedeaz/3660876708/
The embracing words:
http://radiantfear.blogspot.com/2010/09/day-165-ezra-9-10-acts1-proverbs-1.html

Good Tango Karma

This way to good karma

Imagine if ideas for dance steps were the same as writing a novel.  Each tango move, let's say, were a story in and of itself.  Imagine for a moment -- just pretend --  that each tango step were intellectual property.  Now let's also assume, that unlike in the world of intellectual property and commerce, that in the tango world we all agreed to share and simply give credit where credit is due.  


This world already is very real in the world of Karma -- tango karma.


These are the steps to good tango karma:

1.  The music inspires and gives you a totally new idea.  You silently or openly acknowledge the music when some new beautiful movement results.  The music includes so many things:  The composer, the musicians and the DJ.  Go over and thank the DJ and find out what he or she knows about the music.

2.  You are dancing with a women or a man who consummates this new idea from the music and takes you to a new place you never have been.  I try to remember this woman by naming the step after her.  Sometimes it is only for that moment, and I cannot go back to remember her or the movement, but I recognize the magic of that moment and from where it came.

3.  If you are a teacher, you take this new move to a tango class and teach this inspiration taken from the music and your partner.  You give credit to these sources of inspiration and ideas.  Also, you might mention the composer and orchestra who inspired the move.  Why not PLAY this music too?  If your partner is there at the class, you demonstrate the new step together.

Giving credit opens up a whole new world of the joy of movement, of a community which embraces each other.  In literature or scientific journals not giving credit (even in a foot note) would be grounds for a law suit and/or being severely reprimanded by the professional community.

I have suggested in early posts la Música is the true leader.  But music is much more.  It is our great inspiration.  Our partner corroborates in the inspiration.  So this is "tango karma":  If you really want to be prolific with ideas and the beauty of tango -- acknowledge your sources of inspiration.    If you do not want to have bad karma, tango teachers, always teach with the music that inspires a step.   Certain orchestras make you dance differently.  Mention that.  And if you really want to have good karma, mention the tanguero or tanguera who inspired the new idea.  If the idea was taught by an old milonguero/milonguera, give credit.  It is probably too late now, but wouldn't it be nice to know who inspired him or her -- which composer, orchestra, piece of music and person in his or her arms?


This is the way to good tango karma, and much more enjoyment in this art of movement.

Photo credit (not sure who did the original photo -- but found two sources) and two good articles:
http://cherylkicksass.blogspot.com/2011/06/clear-evidence-laws-of-karma-are-for.html
http://suddenlysinglejourney.com/2011/05/05/happiness-is-creating-karma/

Follower: A job without promotion

My new blog address is:

Tango-Therapist.blogspot.com 


Please visit me there.  All the content from Tango-Beat is still there, but in deference to a company with a similar name (Tangobeat.com), I have changed the name of my blog.  Please visit them too -- a great resource but with a very different mission.


The updated version of this article is:  http://tango-therapist.blogspot.de/2012/04/follower-job-without-promotion.html 


--  Thanks!

Tangueros, would you dare try to lead this woman without knowing her power?

Definition of tango terms:
Women know better they are NOT followers -- person who does not lead.  A person willing to have a role without any possibility of promotion or future leadership position.

Female warriors have it better off in the military than many female tango dancers.

Females in the corporate world have it better off than many tangueras.

Okay, now I have said it.  I didn't want to.  But it slipped out.

Intelligent, talented women don't like being followers without the chance of promotion. This is especially true in roles that would stop them from ever having a chance to become a leader. They do not like being in a position without hope of promotion.  Tango, one would think, should be the worst dance in the world for intelligent, talented women.  Women do not want to be perennial privates in the Army or mail room clerks forever.

Notice, I have said above that the military and the corporate world are better for women than tango is for many tangueras.  Not for all.  Some women know instinctively how terribly deficient the word "follower" is for their role in the most magical dance of all partner dances.

So why not a revolt, ladies?!  Where are the women warriors or at least female tango philosophers to lead the revolt that must some day happen?  My theory is that women put on their tango shoes and feel the magic.  They shrug their shoulders and say, "Let's make tango, not war."  Or they just say "so what?" or they say "stop talking and let's dance."  The power of tango shoes.

Really, ladies, followership is a concept of subservient, mindless obediency, as it is expressed by many  tango instructors -- especially women instructors, who give lead-and-follow validity, like a black man who insists on being called the "n-word."  Am I upsetting a few folks by saying this?   Good!  Why do you keep coming up with ways to protect a terrible term for something so beautiful as the rol femenino (the feminine role)?  

Why to you keep using this word, "follower," and then come up with excuses for it?  Imagine using a any rude, rank, and meaningless derogatory word and then trying to tell people its good side and philosophical uses!   Why is it that so many English-speaking dancers have decided to use this term to describe the nearly indescribable role you have in dancing tango?  Of all words, why the "f-word" -- "follower"?


Let's think philosophically for the next generation of dancers.  Leadership is a military concept.  Yet followership is not a military ideal.   Please trust me on this; I have over 20 years in the military.  Leadership is central to the warrior ethos. If a soldier is in a following position, it is only with the idea of learning to lead, learning what a true leader is.  Ever see a promotion ceremony at a milonga:  "Now she's a leader, first class"?  No.  Women do not need men leading them, and there is no need of promoting "followers" because they are not in reality followers.  They are women doing magical and wonderful things.  Intelligent things.  Creative things.  They are women.

Sure, some of the best teachers in the world use poor words to describe what they are doing.  But why are they good teachers?  Well, for one thing, we learn by doing.  If we relied just on their words -- we might learn the wrong spirit of what tango is, that is,  if we had only words like "lead and follow" to go on.

So what is the solution?  It is primal.  Easy.  You don't need a book.


Sex is the solution
Start using the words feminine role or simply "lady," "gal," or "woman."  "Lead-and-follow" has neutered tango.  That is something you might do to a cat, but please not tango!  The masculine role and feminine role are roles of the sexes.  Let's not take human sexuality out of tango!  Should we really desexualize the roles of tango?  God save us all!  What would the old milonguero ghosts say?  Surely this must be a sign of the world truly coming to an end! 

The True Leader
Also, we must have a philosophically sound way of describing the beauty of tango.   Lead and follow are dead-end terms because men are actually not leaders.  The music is and always has been the true leader which both roles must follow.  We form up like soldiers on the dance floor ready to march around in circles when the leader (the music) tells us to.  We go fast or slow because the leader tells us to.  And the true leader is a woman:  La Música.


The masculine and feminine roles are magical and mysterious.  Yin and Yang.  One is not powerful and the other not.  One is not creative and the other not.  Sharna, a local Washington DC, instructor calls the feminine role "the keeper of possibilities." 

Okay, all you "keepers of possibilities," can you start a revolt?   I am getting tired of hearing you line up and call yourselves "followers" with only a slight cringe on your faces.


I just put on my tango shoes.  I surrender!   Let's just dance.

More on this subject: "The End of Leading is Near" http://tango-beat.blogspot.com/2010/11/end-of-leading-is-near.html  

Photocredit:
http://www.eaglefilms.com/despiser/Beserker_brochure1.htm  

The Assertive Female Cabeceo

"As she slid across the table and looked into my eyes I realized she wanted to dance.  In fact I found her gaze irresistible."

I cannot argue with the majority of women who are sure that the cabeceo* is a male-generated requested to dance.  Recently, I even heard the words, "I hate the cabeceo" from a woman who is an advanced dancer.  If not the cabeceo then what?  But the argument goes on and on with the ladies who are sure that the cabeceo is for men, their egos and for women to be submissive.  ¡No comprendo, de veras!


All I know is that I dance with women who make it very clear that they would like to dance with me by their eyes and posture.   Who exactly is in charge of the initiation of the cabeceo is often an enigma.  I would even argue that any man who is in touch with the social skills of a primate, will be very aware of a woman's willingness to spend time with her -- even if it is just for one tanda.  And the same is true of a man's eyes.  Primates are awfully sophisticated with this sort of thing, you know. 


The argument comes back from women, "I can make it clear that I want to dance with him, but he still doesn't respond to my communication.  So it is clearly up to the man."  Not true.  How is that any different for me or any man?  I can show interest all night to a women and she may not respond.  Just because a man wants to dance with certain women, she can look uninterested or even off in another direction when he comes near.  Please tell me how is this "up to the man"?  


So to fix it all, some would stop using non-verbal cues to request a dance.  Does that mean I should now start asking all the women who have been looking away?  God save us, if men and women start asking everyone with whom they would like to dance.  There would be a wave of discontent at the milonga.   Let's try it for a night for the women who hate the cabeceo.  That would put an end to the controversy!


*Cabeceo:  From the word "cabeza" (head), a nod of the head, indicating a desire to dance.  For more on this and tango etiquette, please visit this link:  http://tango-beat.blogspot.com/p/los-codigos-tango-etiquette-made-easy.html

Photo credits:

Find some great cartoons about dance at

 http://www.gocomics.com/9chickweedlane/2011/06/07 .

An Open Letter to Tango Musicians

The Pan American Symphony Orchestra (PASO)

Some musicians may be open to hear what their most attentive audience wants.  What would you say to them if they would only listen?  Below is a letter to tango musicians and more specifically to the director of the Pan American Symphony.  I did get a response, which was basically, "thanks for writing."  So the letter goes unanswered.

If you have been following my blog, the series on musicians "killing" tango came from my first draft to the director of PASO (below).  In my very first post in which I mentioned PASO, I included a video of clip of the Pan American Symphony Orchestra, but I realized something in talking with my dance partner after posting the video clip and article.  I was lamenting to her that I would have liked to dance to such great live music. My partner countered that not everyone wants to dance but just "intensely listen" to the Orchestra. The words "intensely listen" hit me. I realized that if I am dancing, only then am I really listening intensely with my whole brain.  She agreed that this too was her experience in tango.  Sitting and intensely listening to tango is only valid for musicians actively playing tango.  I know this feeling of intensely listening in two ways only -- playing music to any kind of music or dancing to tango.

I can only speak for myself, but when I am dancing to tango more than any other dance music, my mind, body and soul are engaged, not just my ears and brain.  Perhaps this phenomenon could be called, "intense listening-via-participation."  I make pauses as a dancer because the music does when I dance tango; I may have been stepping only once per measure at the start of the song, but during the variación at the end of the piece, my steps may become only a blur, mirroring the virtuoso bandoneón's climax.  Sitting could be intense, I suppose, but it is not participatory and way too cerebral for a music born out of the African canyengue clave (tresillo).*

Musicians often want people to stop and listen to them and "fully enjoy" or "to fully take notice" to their art.  However, I believe that this is a mistake with tango and most Latin American music, which is both a psychological and a somatic experience.  Latin American musicians distinguishes themselves by wanting people to be moved to dance to their music.

So it is not just one person or orchestra tipica, but to all modern tango composers and musicians for whom I write this appeal:


Sergio Alessandro Buslje,
    Artistic Director and Conductor
Pan American Symphony Orchestra
125 Michigan Ave., NE
Washington , DC 20017
panam.symphony@gmail.com


Estimado Director Buslje:

I fully enjoyed the quality and passion of the Pan American Symphony Orchestra's performance I recently attended.  Your mission statement on your website and the breadth of what you are doing to promote Latin American music is impressive.  More than having a mission statement, your fulfillment of this mission is highly esteemed by critics.  You are with out a doubt influencing modern tango composers and musicians.  For this reason, I hope to appeal to you as a life-long musician and a dancer that you change your presentation slightly.  I suggest that at some point in your concert you allow common people to dance to your music.

I think this is really the spirit of tango -- the people's dance.  Tango has survived especially because of dancers, as has been the case with other Latin American music.  Jazz is no longer a dance "in the street," but tango, cumbia, salsa and samba are.  A dancing public demonstrates something essential about Latin America.

My experience from living in Latin America, being a dancer, and from being a Latin percussionist is that Latin Americans hold their music close to their hearts but "listen" through their bodies as dancers.  I hope that whenever you perform in the future that at least at some point you invite the public to dance.  Doing so would teach the unknowing public a great deal about what Latin American culture and music has to offer the world:  A music that moves the soul and body.

What are you thoughts about this?

Sincerely,

Mark Word

Washington, D.C.

PS to my readers:   Since I received no response to this, perhaps some other musicians you know would benefit from reading this and the series, Musicians Killing Tango:  Click on the links -- Part One; Part Two; Part Three (part 3 included DJs as proxy musicians).  I believe that if musicians read these articles, they will get insight into a great business plan for themselves.  Musicians who value the dancer are doing themselves a business-wise favor and at the same time keeping the music they love truly alive.  My experience has been that modern tango ensembles and composers too often are influenced by Piazzolla or other composers who were not thinking from the dancer's perspective.  Then these present musicians get a gig to play live tango and wonder why people don't like live musicians.  It isn't the live music so much as the musicians not knowing what is danceable and loved by dancers.  Those who love to dance need to help out the sometimes unwitting musicians who want to please dancers but do not know why they are not invited back.  Dancers must find a way to tell them how to please the audience-that-moves!  I hope these blog discussions help create a better musician-dancer alliance.

*The tango clave is denied by many musicians and ignored by most authors.  The Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clave_(rhythm) is an example of forgetting tango's clave, while mentioning even the tresillo in Middle Eastern music and southern Asia!  However, if you love tango and know tango, the tango clave is clearly there and omnipresent even in silence.  More on this subject will follow with videos of each of the claves.

Photo credit:
http://www.panamsymphony.org/about2.html

The Solo Performance

A couple of weeks ago I had free tickets through my work to go to a ballroom competition dinner. This extravaganza included social dancing, a finalist competition and a show. I am used to dancing, but this was something new, being surrounded by the ballroom dance competition crowd. Afterwards, I planned to go with my dance partner to a milonga -- our more usual routine.

A few days before the dinner, I mentioned to my partner that we could actually sign up to compete as novice first-time Argentine Tango dancers. But she responded: "No way! Remember, you are the guy who has a blog that talks about tango being a connection between two people, and you are always saying, 'It is not what shows, but how it feels!'" she said wisely.

Of course she was right, but my appeal to her was to go and just improvise as a statement that dance is all about letting your soul play on the playground, and just dance with our hearts.

But she again countered with, "No, competitive ballroom is another world. People pay lots of money -- classes, costumes -- and learn to perfect each level in a curriculum, gradually moving from first timer, to novice, to bronze level, silver level and gold level. Judges would be looking for perfection in just the moves at your competition level. Nothing more and nothing less counts."

"Well, it would just be for fun," I said.

"Yeah, and if you do it once and have an ounce of success it is so easy to get sucked in and want to do it again!"

"Yes, the Dark Side. You're right. I know the Dark Side and its allure." My face has a distant stare of delusions of grandeur. I enter a trance. I imagine myself at the tango alter, giving up my Holy Grail Philosophy of dancing just for the one person in front of you, breaking to bits my Stone Tablet Philosophy of connection -- especially the First Commandment to have only One Connection and not to worship the pagan gods of Cool Steps. I hear Darth Vader's artificial lung regulator sucking in and blowing out air. His voice says, "Mark... Mark...Come to the Dark Side."

The trance is broken by "Mark! Hey, are you okay?"

"Sorry. I was just spacing out. I thought I heard an important announcement over the P.A. system."

"Yeah, it was me talking!"

She pulled me away from the Dark Side. "Yes, that‘s right," I told myself. "I am a social dancer. What would I accomplish competing?"

Nevertheless, we still have a story to tell. . .
Sure enough, after dinner had been served and a chachachá, a waltz and a foxtrot had been played, we hear a tango--an authentic tango--being played. The following video records the wildly different styles between our milonguero style and our distant cousin dancers, doing a ballroom rendition to the same music! Just play this for the first little bit, and you will get the idea.




Then later they played a milonga. My partner, with her eyes closed, didn't even realize until the end that we were the only ones on the dance floor for this one. We, of all people, the social milongueros, ended up unwittingly performing solo before wannabe show dancers -- and they applauded us!

In the video that follows, we are dancing to a milonga played by a mere duet--piano and bass.




That was when it dawned on my partner: "You know if we had competed, no one here would have even competed against us in Argentine Tango. We could have won gold!"

But wait a second. Is that Miss Tango Purity speaking now? How the allure of performance beguiles! Interestingly enough, that night we both lamented that the ballroom extravaganza was a lot more fun than the milonga that followed. Perhaps the Dark Side is always there lurking, ready with the next temptation!





 

Musicians/DJ's killing tango, part 3

Musicians/DJ's:  What is the mission -- make us sit and listen or make us move?

As a recap from part one and two of "Musicians Killing Tango" the basic thesis was:

Musicians who forget the dancer kill the very music that they love.

This thesis was not my thesis. I just borrowed the idea from two Latin American musicians. Some musicians will cringe at this added thesis (which is my own) here in part three:

DJ's are proxy musicians, and as such they can be just as effective at killing the very music they love as musicians have through time.

DJ's, whether we like it or not, have taken over the role that too many musicians have abandoned -- keeping people dancing. However, DJ's are susceptible to falling in love with the music and forgetting the dancers just as much as musicians are susceptible.

Let's assume that great musicians and their proxies do an excellent job of working the crowd--sensing what the crowd wants and taking them there and beyond:  When to go slow, when to go fast, when to play to tradition, when to be an iconoclast, when to introduce a new dimension to the dancer.   This is the Art and Science of the true performer. We have all experienced this magical evening when musicians or their proxies make this happen.

When does the magic stop and why?

• When musicians do not practice or do not know their stuff; when DJ's just don't do the work of getting a play list together that honors the musicians and dancers.  For example, the DJ plays the same songs more than once without even knowing it.  The worst example of this was a DJ who thought fast tangos were milongas.  To be a proxy musician means learning about la música de tango from good DJ's or local musician-tangueros.
• When musicians get tired of their own "best hits" which the crowd is waiting for; when DJ's forget the dancers' favorites and start playing scratchy old tangos or a very cool bossa nova to which it is easy to dance.  What happened to di Sarli, did he go on a vacation in Brazil?   
• When musicians do not understand the importance of the cortina for dancers;  when DJ's come up with their own bizarre ordering of songs that is their "signature," causing chaos on the floor (milonga/vals sets together or rarely playing a milonga); when DJ's do not follow the general idea of featuring one orchestra or composer at a time.  
• When musicians play something that will catch everyone's attention so much that they will sit down waiting for the ballet dancers to appear because no trained dancer can follow the legato wanderings of the tempo; when DJ's have learned so much about music that now they are self-deputized musicologists playing artifacts for a "dancing music appreciation class" that sounded interesting while the DJ was in the hospital with a broken foot.  (See the Music Appreciation Assumption in part two.)  For example:  Why would you play a guitar-bandoneón duet at a milonga that does not have the power to go over the din of the milonga crowd?  It worked while bed-ridden in a hospital bed, but now the dancers are all visiting the snack table, hoping the next tanda will have the dance-power of an orchestra tipica.
• When live musicians play so loud that dancers have to wear earplugs or suffer at least a small amount of hearing loss; when DJ's set up their equipment at ear level, blasting you every time you dance by one of two speakers.  Some DJ's play louder than any musical group would.  "Musician proxy" does not suggest trying to emulate the biggest mistakes that musicians make, hurting their own art. 
• When musicians forget or even despise the dancer by demonstrating (for example) how one can tangoize a Bach fugue  (the Serious Music Assumption, mentioned in part 2);  when DJ's play this music just because it is "serious and deeply meaningful tango." 
• When musicians play with poor equipment and distortion; when DJ's have poor equipment or do not know how to use good equipment.  The biggest DJ mistake in this area is a different sort of "distortion":  Using recordings which have poor fidelity to the musicians' performance.  What is the opposite of fidelity?  Infidelity (adultery).  DJ's who play music with low fidelity (just because it is cool to play that old record) are committing adultery!  :-)  And of course, they are living in their own world because they have (...OMG...) forgotten the dancer!

A good business plan for musicians and their proxies:
Let's forget about the "calling" of musicians and DJ's to make dancers happy.  Let's talk about just being successful in the music business.  Let's say that musicians want to play what moves their souls, and DJ's want to play what they most like.  Do your soul work at home and leave the public out of your search for real meaning.  We all really want you to find your Holy Grail (seriously), but this search is a a personal matter.  The art of playing music in public is to NOT forget the public.  A great business plan is to nurture and develop this skill and present music as an art to the public and all the while feeding your own soul.  That is truly an art all by itself.  Picasso did this.  He did not have to die to become famous and all the while do what he wanted.

Isn't it clear now?  Musicians and DJ's who truly love their music will never forget the dancer.

Photo credit:

DJ:  http://www.foolsparadise.co.uk/foolsparadise2010/fools_acts_detail.php?recordID=148

Psychiatry on the Dance Floor

Is your movement a goal or a process?

Diálogo Tanguero 
Psychiatry on the Dance Floor

Prologue:  Lately, I have had wonderful discussions with tangueros and tangueras all over the world and so I hope to bring their wisdom to Tango-Beat.  This is the first Diálogo Tanguero (Tango Dialog) of  what I hope will be many to come.  My conversation below is with a forensic psychiatrist in one of the most populated cities in the US.  Over a cup of coffee, she told me about incidences that influenced her from her childhood, and how these influenced her pursuit of happiness through tango.  An earlier post “Tango Start Line” was about dancing for only your partner and not competing or dancing for the onlookers.  This dialog grew out that article.

Tango-Beat:
What brought you to tango?

María:
I grew up in Colombia, and I listened to tangos all the time.  My siblings thought I was strange because they were listening to rock ‘n roll, but I was influenced by our father who constantly would listen to tangos and boleros.  I loved these classic tangos.  I knew all the words to them by heart.

Mark:
You are a forensic psychiatrist, and you are summoned internationally in your work.  No one would ever guess that at night you come out as a tanguera!  And I am sure that few would ever guess you are a tanguera aficionada when you present papers to audiences, appear in court for victims or that you are treating patients.  My experience is that when we dance you are absolutely 100% connected to me and to the music.

María:
At work I present myself as plain as I can, with little makeup and very conservatively dressed.  Tango lets me be as feminine as I want to be, and that has really been wonderful for me.  Also, as a child I always knew that one day I would be dancing tango.  The reason for this is that my father always listened to tangos, and I have been listening to them since the time I was inside of my mother’s womb.

Mark:
You told me that you guide your tango teachers away from technique, choreography, and competition.  Instead, you are interested in the simple passion of the music and tango as a social dance.  Tell me why.

María:
I think I learned how unimportant competition is early on.  I want to dance it for me and my partner, not what others think or see.  When I was 12 or 13, I participated in an all girl’s bicycle competition in my neighborhood’s club.  My cousins Gladys and Nubia, who were 6 and 8 years older than I was at the time, also participated.  In the middle of the competition, a girl ahead of me tripped over something and fell off the road into grass and mud.  Behind her I fell with others.  My cousin Gladys, came to help me to get back on my bike.  I still remember telling her, “You shouldn't stop for me!  You could win the competition.”  She answered, “It doesn't matter; the important thing is that we are all going to make it to the end. . . .Who cares about being the winner or not.”

On life's track: Against others or with others?

Since that day, Gladys became my favorite cousin, and what she taught me that day stayed forever with me.  Approximately two and a half years ago, when I started taking tango lessons, I remember telling my first tango instructor, “I just want to learn to do it correctly, but overall I want to enjoy it.  I don’t want to compete.”  I don’t plan to be a tango instructor, though if one day it I teach, it would be to help others less advanced than me to get better.  Being on a stage in order to have ovations from the public is not my goal.  All I care about is to dance this music with all my heart, because I love it.  

Mark:
But you have through your passion learned good technique, I think.  I danced with you when you first started and you have really become very good in a short time.

María:
Well, thanks.  But I think that I have learned quicker because I never forgot about dancing just for my partner.  With my teachers, I have had that very clear, that my wish is to be a good dancer, but technically good dancers often are sitting.  My hope has been that anytime that I attend a milonga, I’ll be asked to dance all the time, not because I am the best on the dance floor, but because men will be able to tell that I have passion for tango and I dance it with my soul.   So, my hope is always to be dancing to the end, like in my bike competition, where I did not win, but I was able to finish despite the bumps on the road.

Mark:
Well, I feel this when I dance with you.  It doesn’t take a forensic psychiatrist to analyze this!  You have rediscovered your passion for tango that you knew as a girl.  Now, you are dancing to it, but it has been moving your heart for a long time.  What a great story, María!

Photo Credit:
http://www.thevelodrome.com/community-programs/bicycle-racing-league/

If the Cello could play the Violin (poem)

If the Cello could play the Violin
What music would he play?

If the Violin could play the Cello,
What song would she first play?
If she could hear his harmony,
What would she sing?

I hear a tango, inspiring mortals to dance.
I see the Cello, painting a canyenge background.
I feel her wet, soft tear
Fall upon the Cello's shoulder.

I hear the Violin recite a sonnet,
A story of love, joy and sorrow,
Told by her four vocal cords with his bow.
I feel his sonorous lows, rocking her,
Her soprano melody playing my heart.

You are that Violin.
I am your Cello.
Let’s play a heavenly tango.
Together.
Each other.
For our souls to dance.


 

Photo Credit:  http://www.terminartors.com/artworkprofile/Bereny_Robert-Woman_Playing_Cello

Being great: In your dreams, Tanguero

Dear readers...this entry has been one of the most favorite blogs -- I really don't know why!  But because of the trademark "www.tangobeat.com" (a for-profit NY company), I moved this blog article to my new name, "The Tango Therapist."  Please visit me at my new blog, www.tango-therapist.blogspot.com.

http://tango-therapist.blogspot.com/2011/04/being-great-in-your-dreams-tanguero.html takes you to my new blog.  Below is the start to the blog and the comments which I could not transfer to the new name.  thanks for visiting.

The below article is only the beginning ... please visit me at the new address given above!

_____________April Fool's Day 2011______________________________

Dualing Tangueros:  Who will win?

I had a dream last night.  I dreamed that I was dancing near an experienced tango teacher, and although I did not look up, I could tell that all eyes were on him.  He was swirling around, doing all sorts of cool moves.  My job was mostly just to creep behind him and make sure that he didn't hurt my tanguera with high-flying boleos, ganchos or simply slam into my tanguera as he went forward and backwards in the space that all we lesser tangueros were humbly providing him.

This was my realization:  Why should I be so meek, dancing just for one person, the woman in front of me?  In my dream I reasoned that if my partner were sitting at the tables, she too would be watching his awesomeness. . .


Please read the whole article at:  http://tango-therapist.blogspot.com/2011/04/being-great-in-your-dreams-tanguero.html.

Photo credit:  Tango Fire advertisement at top.
For dualing pigs:  http://sean-ashby.blogspot.com/2010/06/dueling-banjos.html

We are the Arch (poem)

The "apilado" or shared embrace of tango argentino

We are the Arch

It takes two ... for an Arch.
We connect and our feet have room to play.
Others cannot see what we do in our dance.
Can they hear our hearts beating together,
Or our breath in synchronicity to the music?

The arch of shared weight is the greatest mystery,
To those who might watch us.
I am not a pillar on my axis, but part of an Archway.
Above us may be the weight of the world,
But together we are strong.
And below us, our feet have room to play.

We are the human arch, you and I,
When our hearts connect.

Photo credit of Apilado couple (tango embrace):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacoromero/2311524702/in/photostream/

Photo credit of archway, and please visit some great views of arches:
http://www.domoblue.co.cc/archway-trellis.html&page=5

The 1001 Tangueras I love

The telling of 1001 Stories

The milonga allows me to live 1001 lives, better than just telling 1001 stories as the Persian queen, Scheherazade, did to save her life from execution.

Let me explain.

A single dance took me back through the centuries, and lives I have never lived.  Last night at the milonga.  A single dance brought me there.  I remembered things I had forgotten, some of my many lives.

Just last century, when I first arrived in Germany I lived in Stuttgart.  It was 1991 to be exact, late September.  I was alone in my apartment after going for a walk at night.  It was Sankt Martins Tag (St. Martin's Day).  Next to the small lake and pristine park, the Max-Eyth-See, children were with their parents at night, walking and singing with lanterns made from paper bags with candles in them.  Later that night in my apartment, I sat down to listen to Südwestrundfunk, German public radio.

The radio program's diversity boggled my mind.  One song was a Miles Davis jazz walz, the next Janis Joplin's Bobby McGee.  Then came a driving but simple rhythm to an Italian hit.  "Robert," a German song I have never heard again, was next on the program.  I remember that song because I learned to hear and roll the German rolled 'R' from it.  Rrrrrobert, was a bad boy, evidently.

The radio program continued with a a story, read from a book, something one rarely hears in the US.  I imagined myself a small child with my siblings listening to a story told by our grandfather. I couldn't understand much at the time, but I listened and loved his deep voice and imagined watching my older siblings' enthralled faces.  This was not the German I was expecting.  It was beautiful, sonorous, expressive.  I was committed to being fluent in this beautiful language, now the language of my children.

After the story, the music continued.  A song from "Turkei" (Turkey) came on.  At first I did not like it, but then I imagined that I had heard this song many times.  I was in love when I first heard it, in fact.  How the memories poured in from this life-I-have-never-lived.   The song brought back sorrow and joy, being young and in love.  How I fell in love with this "Musik" when I put it in a "beginners mind" frame like that.  I got up and danced around my apartment to the Middle-Eastern rhythms.

Six years later, I realized that my private dance alone in my German apartment on Burgholzhof, was not so far from how it truly is danced by male dancers.  By then it was late in the last century, and I was in Egypt watching a live band play with dancers.  I was enthralled.  Hypnotized.

All these experiences came up last night when I danced with a Turkish woman at a milonga.  The music that started to play after the official conclusion of the milonga was "alternative" music.  Suddenly my body was taken over by a song from Turkey.  I immediately  sensed it was Turkish.  I saw my partner's face light up.  Then I knew it was Turkish.  The Middle Eastern rhythm put me in a trance and I dance with a hybrid of Argentine tango movements, but she and I were there, in her country, among her people, dancing as if we were the only people who had been transported through time and space.

Our dance was not a slow-slow-quick-quick dance but a complex rhythm that the ancients developed because of no television or ready-made entertainment that dulls our ability to let our bodies be possessed by the poly-rhythms of music.  I did not have to think or analyze being possessed by the ancient spirits!  Surely, it helps to have studied music, but only afterwards could I think of what the rhythms were and how they transformed my mind and body.

As my Mesopotamian Tangera and I danced, I could imagine the tribal peoples of her ancestors telling each other stories, improvising their own stories as musicians improvised music to fit the ambiance of the story.  I was dancing with her in the desert around a fire after coming home under the stars.  Last night we could see the stars that were so clear they appeared like clouds and embodied  permanent cloud-like features that looked like scorpions and rams and lions*.   You may find it hard to believe, but last night at the milonga, she and I were there in the Desert.  She was my first and only love.

When the music stopped, she told me what the words meant in Turkish.  The woman singer had sung her heartache from the many whom she had loved, how they had gone, how it hurt.  And so it was with us.  The tanda was over and we parted.  But not in my mind, my heart, my soul.  The Musik still plays.

Tango allows me to live one thousand and one loves, a thousand and one lives, one thousand and one Arabian Nights** -- all at the milonga.


*Clouds of Stars:  Under the desert sky in 1997, with an 101st Airborne Infantry Division on a peace-keeping mission, I saw clouds of stars for the first time in my life.  On the top of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Nevada, I had seen stars so clearly that even the satellites whizzed clearly across the sky.  But in the Sinai, I could see clouds of stars and constellations I had never seen before in North America.  Added to this momentous experience, one night I was issued some "NVG's" -- military-grade Night Vision Goggles.  THEN I could see 10 times the amount of starts.  It was startling.  That is what the ancients could see without layers of world-wide pollution.  I am still in awe of these moments in the dessert, in the shadow of Mount Sinai.

**1001 Arabian Nights' frame story is of a woman storyteller from Persia.  The stories have been traced back to stories far from Persia and Arabia, including Mesopotamia, which in part includes modern Turkey.  I danced with the archetypal Mesopotamian Woman last night.

If tango were my car ...

For a moment.  Just a moment.  I thought I should buy a Polo after seeing their car commercial distributed by VW in the UK.



What would a car commercial look like if it were made for me and my taste for tango?  It would be all about the connection I had to her leather, her handling in giros, ability to parada on a dime, windshield wipers that were the perfect boleos. With the electric key in my pocket, just a nod of the head would open her doors. In heavy traffic I would be glad to turn the surround-sound up and just be in her presence -- no texting, looking at who is looking -- just being there with her, the only car in the world.

But maybe I'll buy a VW Polo for my son.