An Open Letter to a Tango Teacher

Here is a letter to myself for the day that I get the (probably ill-informed) idea that I might be ready to teach tango:

Dear Mark:

Please remember these seven things, if you think you are now ready to teach, especially #7 --

1. Diversity is Good:  Respect the spectrum of tango (milonguero, salón, nuevo).  You don't have to do what theologians have done and start wars and kill each over our differences.

2. Help the Gene pool:  Have your students go to different milongas from different teachers.

3. Take care of your own soul:  Dance 100% with the person you are dancing outside of a lesson.  You have danced with teachers who examined you but were not truly present -- like someone listening to a Bach Cantata at a concert next to you, but not there with you.  Hold that woman. Make her feel as if she is the only woman in the world.

4. Practice the Art of Dancing for Yourself:  Dance with people outside your "stable."  It is amazing how limited teachers become and are unable to read anything they do not intellectually/experientially know. You can dance all night with all levels of dancers, and then a teacher cannot follow the same thing you have done with everyone else -- a true sign that they have been dancing within in their own studio too much.

5. Performance Anxiety Medicine:  Talented teachers help dancers from seeking blame when things go wrong.  The music is the leader ideally and both partners create together when the leader is fully acknowledged.

6. How to Protect a Woman:  Floorcraft is the science of many couples dancing together.  Ultimately it is protecting one woman and then protecting all the woman around you.  Their legs are exposed.  Floorcraft is the main subject in every class on social tango, right?

7.  The Real Subject is NOT Tango:  This could have been #1, but I saved it for last as it is the most important.  The real subject is not tango. What you are teaching mostly is how a person can enjoy themselves, love themselves,  reach out to others and feel the tender touch of another person.  An ocho cortado is only a way to get to this real goal.  The greatest teachers in history have inspired the student to thirst knowledge not to HAVE knowledge.  If your students feel depressed and you make them feel as if they know so little after your class, please consider just going back to dancing and not teaching.  Two towns that I know of that have an inordinate amount of judgmental tangueras, and in both cases this phenomenon is the teacher's misunderstanding of the Real Subject.

In a few words:  Teaching is a calling.  Mark, tango communities need teachers who are advocates for the love of primarily dancing not watching tango and the succor of a vibrant, local tango community.  Be a good teacher with the goal of making great tangueros/tangueras.

You will be a good teacher.
You will be a good teacher.
You will be a good teacher.
You will be a good teacher.

Tango Teachers-Only Forum Part 2 : Why I am not a Teacher

Last night, an out-of-town tanguera asked me if I were a teacher.

As usual, I said, "No, I am a dancer."

I am NOT a teacher.  I am only 4 years old as a tanguero, and I have too much to learn.  If I found myself in a small town, I would teach and be a DJ, but for now I have NO desire to teach with so many qualified (and unqualified) teachers around!   Only from such a tango-deprived circumstance (living where there was no tango) could I become a member of the AUTTA (Association of Unqualified Tango Teachers of America). 

I was added to the Tango Teachers-Only Forum on Facebook by mistake.  Or perhaps it is the mutation of the same "evil little voice" that I hear at nearly every milonga I go to and dance with a stranger:  "Are you a teacher?"  Luckily from my training in psychology, I know the two types of auditory psychoses:  Non-command and command.  "Go and kill someone" is a command hallucination.  "Are you a teacher?" is not a command.  I don't HAVE TO become a teacher, you see?  

Going by the long list of members of AUTTA, this harmless non-command "little evil voice" can convert into a dangerous psychotic event only when the person sees it as a command to become a teacher.  The answer at a milonga should be: "No, I am a dancer and I am only dancing with you at this moment!"  IF I WERE a teacher, after the tanda, I might add:  "And here is my card. NOW I am a teacher."  I want to never stop being a dancer just because I might be teaching some day.  I don't want to judge and analyse my partner or cause them performance anxiety.  I want my partner to melt in my embrace and feel the power of this remarkable walking embrace.

I am learning from teachers about the problems of teaching.  Why did they start?  Do they really still love to dance or has it become merely a business?  I am certain that nearly all teachers started teaching because people asked, "Are you a teacher?"  This is like people who do not know much, cheer leading me into being something they do not understand.  Imagine being inspired to become a mathematician by people who cannot add well.   So for now, I just want to dance, and I don't listen to those little voices:  "Become a teacher."  I am waiting for the divine call -- la Vocación de Diós.  

By the way, here is my card:

Mark Word

Tanguero

Dancing with one Soul at a Time

Tango-Beat.blogspot.com

Housecalls for emergency cases only!

Tango Teachers-Only Forum?

The question on a for-tango-teachers-only Facebook page was:  "How do you teach a beginner to walk?  What is the first thing that you start with?"  This is an advanced question.  The starting off question for a teachers-only Facebook page might better be:  "What makes a teacher a great teacher?"  Or, "should I really even be a teacher?"

But being a good student, I will try to answer the question about walking, and how to teach it -- but I say this as only as a customer (I am not a teacher):

I practice walking still more than any other thing.  So, I would recommend teaching students  to walk by themselves for a long time and practice it outdoors as often as possible. We give lip service to how walking is taught for years before anything else in Buenos Aires, but then we start with a figure, calling it the "basic step."  Walking is the basic step.

Secondly, I would suggest teaching them to walk in close embrace as much as possible.  Always teaching in open embrace with a partner will inculcate that open is the natural embrace and easier when in fact showing intention is more difficult at the more advanced levels when there is less connection.  

Tip: You can even start with a pillow between body-phobic students (Americans), but teach connectedness!  If they don't want to embrace a stranger, suggest therapy before taking up this wonderful dance.  In therapy they can work out their body issues and perhaps unresolved traumas.  Maybe explain to your students that open embrace is for people who wish to do advanced moves and to dance for others (our best marketing for bringing people to tango).  Closed embrace is to dance for one person -- your partner (a great way for people to STAY with tango).

I will address the more basic question "why I am not a teacher" (some ideas for unqualified teachers) and "what makes a teacher great" (a great business plan for good teachers) in my next posts.  ¿Nos vemos?  ¡Hasta entonces!

Halloween 2010: Witchcraft vs Floorcraft

Halloween WARNING: This post includes some pretty scary things:  The dangers of witchcraft, references to nightmare-inducing mythical creatures, and images of US Marines in a combat zone.

Mythical Creature:
Every village has a its own mythical creature.  Every milonga has someone who stands out in a crowd in the wrong way.  Dressing up cannot hide this creature.  You can identify their distinctive sound:  A bump in the night.  Sometime these creatures are chameleon like.  Sometimes they appear like innocent beginners, but more often they hide in the disguise of "one of the best dancers in the community" costume.  Bump in the nigh reveals who they really are.  (Elvis sang about them: "Whole lota bumping going on.")  The Burro-Mariposa is not like the tooth fairy, this creature really does exist.  The so-called mythical being, the Burro-Mariposa (a donkey-butterfly), has been spotted at many milongas flitting about the dance floor like a butterfly but with a certain amount of weight uncharacteristic to butterflies.  The horror is too much for me to detail further.

Now for the horror of the battlefield:
US Marines are a hard breed of men and women.  But friendly fire is sometimes the biggest danger in combat or the dance floor.  Please do not watch this before bed.



Video clip thanks to by Alex:  http://www.alextangofuego.blogspot.com/  Love it!

Send this video link to your own burro-butterfly, with the hope of bringing him or her into a more social way to dance.  One less jackass-butterfly on the dance floor will make the world a much better and safer place.

Happy Halloween, Tangueros / Tangueras!

Tango Vals: "Perfect Time"

First, please watch this video clip (below) of the great masters, Gavito and Durán.  This entry today is all about the rhythm of tango vals (waltz), which plays with the time like no other waltz.  That is, one can play with the rhythm, and I would argue make the dance truly what tango is at its best:  Improvisation in movement for two.  You will need to watch this video clip more than once, so just this first time, look for the normal down beat (ONE two three).

In music history, 3/4 (the waltz) was called "perfect time."  4/4 time was called, and still is called, "common time."  At the start of a piece a "C" is written for "common time," and is still often used to denote 4/4 time by today's composers.  The word "Common" is used in this sense as "less than perfect" or "vulgar" (in the Latin meaning of that word).  The theology of the Trinity and the huge influence of three on Christianity out of Stoicism influenced this idea of "perfect time."  Is it really "perfect"?  Absolutely!

So let's indulge in the myth of "perfect time."  Vals is the perfect time in which to dance.  Musically speaking we have some interesting things that can be done with the tango vals (waltz), and this video clip is a great example.

Gavito clearly thinks in larger phrases, the smallest of which is 12 beats long (4 measures of 3/4).  The common dancer dances on ONE(2,3), FOUR(5,6), SEVEN (8,9) TEN (11,12), which is the downbeat of each 3/4 phrase.  Since Gavito knows where these are, it does not confuse him to dance on every second beat of the 12-beat phrase (2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12), or the second beat of the normal downbeat (2, 5, 8, and 11), for example, which he does at the outset of the video clip.  His partner and any woman with a few tango courses could follow him on this because he is exactly on these beats and they make sense.  His steps on the first half of this clip are mostly on 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 of the 12-beat phrase.  Then he comes home to the power of the downbeat and resolves with intense pauses.

Gavito is by no means the only great dancer who uses 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 or 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 in a vals.  When one is dancing on these beats, it is as if one is dancing a waltz within a waltz (instead of 1 against 3 -- the normal waltz -- one is dancing 3 steps (a waltz) per 6 beats.  Note:  You will need to clap out 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 (3 against 6 on the downbeat) or 2, 4, 6, 8 10, 12 (3 against 6 on the upbeat) while counting to 12 (over and over) to understand what he is doing.  Watch first, stop the clip, and work out the rhythm with hand clapping.  Then watch it again, and you will begin to understand his genius.  [If you are a musician, the feel is quarter note triplets here.]

Gavito may not have known what he was doing.  I discovered these things from feeling and then tried to figure out why they worked.

Have fun, and if you have questions leave a comment or email me at mark.word1@gmail.com.

Dancing at my own Funeral

Self-Reflection vs Self-Deflection:
Dancing at my own Funeral


First I must define some terms:
Did you ever hear of "Self-Deflection"?  We all know what "self-reflection" means: Thinking about ourselves all the while somewhat removed, trying to understand ourselves. But there is something that has happened a few times in my life for which self-reflection did not prepare me.  I have had to invent a word for this phenomenon:  "Self-deflection." 

Reflection returns our own image to us.  Deflection does not return to us, but our image is sent off in an unexpected direction.  A person who wishes to grow from this event, readjusts where they are standing until the deflection is once again a reflection.  The most powerful self-deflective moment in my life was when an unfaithful woman returned to me, and although I thought her return was my greatest wish the event "deflected" off my sense of the man I knew as me.  I did not rejoice.  I panicked!  "Now what will I do with her!" I asked myself.   I was like the puppy who caught up with the cat, but now was uncertain of what to do with this dangerous object of desire.  

The Funeral
A recent self-deflection allowed me to -- as it were -- dance at my own funeral. This remarkable event was in Austin, Texas. Leaving Austin was a self-deflective moment, and I have been too overwhelmed to fully understand it.  I did not have the terms or the needed level of self-reflection to understand it.  But I did not want to delay writing about it out of gratitude for the love I felt upon leaving.   I have been speechless.


Self-Deflection
Upon getting the word that I had a new job in Washington D.C., I was caught off guard by how much I realized I loved the Austin Tango Community, and how much love they gave me back.  I realized I was a true polygamist and I loved their husbands too!  (Don't read too much into that one, okay?)  I loved so many tangueras.  I knew their stories and danced with them through celebrations and hurts.  And they spoke to me about my place in their lives through conversations and private emails after I started telling them that I would be leaving.  All of these relationship have been absolutely platonic.


Especially dancing at my last milongas (Uptown and Kay's home) was like dancing at my own funeral.  In some ways my own mirror of self-reflection was set slightly off, and the deflection allowed me to be almost an outsider to my own going away. I didn't know the man that so many were fond of and I did not fully realize how fond I was of them.

The other part to being my own funeral is that I had taken the time to say my goodbyes without the dying part!  So I got to hear some pretty powerful eulogies.  The saddest thing about any well-planned funeral is that things are said and eulogies are intoned that the dead one really would have liked to hear.  But at a funeral or wake it is too late!  I got to hear these "eulogies" by many in the community.  Breaking tradition of funerals, however, the dead guy got up and mingled among the crowd:  I thanked others for their eulogies and outpouring of love.


Some months ago, Margret died in the Austin Tango Community and we gathered in one of the most loving memorial services I had ever seen.  People surrounded her and Vance with love.  And this is perhaps how I got my basic theme of what I said at the last milonga -- that the community was more loving than any church I had ever experienced.  


At Kay's milonga for me, I didn't have my glasses on and (as usual), and I could not find them as the music stopped, and I saw Kay saying a few words and asking me to speak.  I wanted to look people in the eye and thank them, but it was just as well that I couldn't.  One person even hid her eyes and just listened for my voice, she told me later.  I might have realized my fear of sobbing had I seen the faces and eyes of so many friends, some of whom wept during our last dances and words together. 


"I try to explain to people who do not dance or understand what I find in tango," I told the group, "...that I have a true treasure through the Austin Tango Community.  I tell those who do not dance that it is like a church, only with less in-fighting and sexual drama happening behind the scenes."  Someone said, "Amen!"  "It is a loving group of people," I continued to say, "who are not afraid to embrace each other.  Some people we get to know very well.  They come from all walks of life. . . . I may be leaving, but I will always consider myself as a part of the Austin Church of Tango."  In the middle, I mentioned how the teachers had made this possible by working together, coming to each other's milongas and supporting each other.  Austin is Austin for the great people, but without the teachers supporting the larger sense of community, Austin would not be special -- as most visiting tangueros/tangueras sense when they come to visit.


So that night I danced as if it were my own funeral.  It was my own self-deflective moment.  I was totally caught off guard by how much I realized I loved so many people, some deeply -- so deeply that each time I talk about this experience I weep.  Each time I re-read and try edit this I weep (and I am getting tired of all the weeping -- so just accept all the typos and tangents, okay?) 


When Deflection turns to Reflection

The larger life lesson is that I hope that I communicate my love more regularly for people who mean so much to me, because at the real event, I may not have the time to say it to each person as I did in Austin.  I may not dance at my real funeral, but I hope that my friends do.


You are awesome Austin!  ¡Les amo mucho!

It takes more than two to Tango

It Takes more than two to Tango:
Lessons from a Cabeceo*- Challenged Tanguero

*Note: Cabeceo comes from the word "cabeza," (head) in Spanish, and means "a nod of  the head."  In the tango community the cabeceo is the way to ask for a dance without words.  The "codicos" or rules of etiquette of the community includes the cabeceo as a major tenant of gentlemanly/ladylike behavior.  Use of the cabeceo helps the lady from having to say "no," and helps the gentleman from confronting unnecessary rejection.  Many tangueros and tangueras have a visual acuity problem.  This post addresses the role of friendship in in the tango community to help tangueros/tangueras who are "cabeceo-challenged."   

Marcus is legally blind.  I did not know this fact when I first met him, but slowly figured it out.  He is pretty good at not revealing this because he probably has honed his social skills since being a kid with a very conscious effort of not sticking out too much.  But now these skills of stealth might be getting in the way of survival in a new social context -- the tango milonga.  However, unlike middle school girls,  tangueras do need to know at a milonga that Marcus is not a snob.  They must know that he just cannot see their gaze that says, "I really would like to dance."  I had a few ideas for Marcus to confront this obstacle:  He could wear a T-shirt with the words on his chest, "If you can read this & wear stilettos, consider this a cabeceo."  Marcus didn't like my idea.  "How about a card you could pass out at the start of a milonga with 'cabeceo' written on it?" I asked.  Also rejected. [Note:  Yes, I did get his reluctant permission to write this post using his name.]


So how does a person who sees only the fuzzy movements of dancers approach a woman and get a dance?  The cabeceo is the correct way in tango, but how does that work for a person who cannot use this method.


The answer might be obvious to many:  just break the rules and ask for dances.  Well, we only modified these rules of etiquette.  The plan was to go on a bit of risky adventure:  His first Tango Festival and in a great place -- Denver.  The risk was that I would be my normal hunter self, searching out unwitting and innocent tangueras at the watering hole (water table), hiding in the bushes of bouquets on ballroom tables, and infiltrating the huddling droves of dance-hungry females, who in their own coy way are hunting for a dance too.  Since I invited Marcus, I knew that I could not leave him alone and have him just sitting out.  Sure, I like Marcus, and I wouldn't want see him just sitting there, but the other thing, I am sure that he would purposely snore in our hotel room or maybe even strangle me in the night.  Now you know what I mean by a risky adventure.


Tango Festival and the Blind Cabeceo
Let's be honest about it.  Many people are legally blind when they don't have their glasses on.  So our discoveries on this adventure should be noted by those people who are already part-time blind (like me) or harbor the fear that old age will one day take away the ability to get a dance at an unknown milonga.  Tango is said to be a social dance between two people.  But to really dance tango well is to dance among everyone else on the floor.  It takes more than two to dance tango.  Tangueros and tangueras dance with everyone on the floor not just with a partner, and we take care of those who are not dancing too.  I learned more about this last part of the social dance at the Denver festival.


Manual for the Blind Cabeceo

• First and foremost be a friend.  I learned this from women, especially my fellow Austin tango community blog colleague, Mari Johnson.  Check out her great blog on this and the links she quotes from other tangueras: http://mytangodiaries.blogspot.com/2009/12/grrl-power-good-stuff.html.  Women take care of each other.  They see the pain of rejection, the muscles  tightening up from sitting, the desperation of just wanting to dance to that particular piece of music.  And they talk to tangueros about their friends, introduce them.  I would drive Marcus to a milonga, and I hated it when he was not dancing in Austin.  But I still talked him into going to Denver.  We'd have to work as friends or be forever enemies.
• Introductions are in order:  I introduced Marcus to anyone I knew.  Mostly he would tell them that he might not recognize their willingness to dance; so they might have to get closer or simply ask.
• Deputize dance partners.  I did not rely on just me introducing someone I met.  I asked them to introduce their friends.  Kari ended up getting Marcus a load of dancers, although I had never met her or any of her friends before. Of course, I also danced with Kari's friends.  Dancing with a partner's friends is good karma.  Women do this for men all the time.  An excellent, veteran dancer whom I had met in Santa Monica, introduced a friend to me too.  Ela and I bonded so well that no other woman danced with me so much as she did.  I think of her as the karma-gift of sharing friends.  I danced the Cumparsita with her at 6 am at the last milonga.  Yes, that good.  And as for Kari ... we danced a salsa that was just amazing after the Cumparsita.
• Hunting is what men do together.  "Okay, Marcus, let's go on a hunt," I would say on the rare time I would find him at our designated waiting area.  We would run into someone every time.  Never a strike out. 
• Blind Faith:  Don't try this without a licence.  "Marcus," I said one time, "do an exact 180 degree turn and give the woman in the peach dress a cabeceo, and I will make sure she gets it."  He reminds me that he doesn't see color.  I am soooo stupid.  He does the about face and like an actor on the stage who cannot see his audience acts as if he could.  There of course are several flaws in my idea.  The first flaw is that Marcus did not show the proper level of his usual caution in doing anything I suggest without considering some escape plan.  But against the odds of the improbable success of any of my shoot-from-the-hip ideas, it works!  Kind of.  She is coy and acts like, "Who me?"  His eye gaze was a few degrees off too, I think. Not seeing the exact interaction of the coy tanguera, he drops his eyes too soon.  This cabeceo stuff is very exacting -- more than one might realize.  Although somewhat unsure, she's now getting up, and I have cabeceo'd a woman four chairs down from her.  Now Marcus thinks this is his tanguera.  Without any real training in air traffic control, I point to the peach lady and nod my head with the universal sigh of "yes, him," while directing her with two four-pointed hands like I just had seen at the airport.   The other lady comes out just to meet the traffic control director (me) to see if he could also dance with my legs.  Oh, how I wish we could have had that on YouTube clip.  200,000 hits in three days.  Of course, publishing that clip would have been my death-in-the-night at the next festival.  Marcus does have his dark side.
• Independence:  It is no coincidence that a man who gets around remarkably well would also use his very gutsy skills to live in a big city to also navigate around and get dances at a festival.  He was good at this and deserves 90% of the credit for even showing up.
• It is a good thing to have cool friends.  From Marcus I learned some important things about tango that I did not expect.  The best example came from a comment of one of his tangueras.  I introduced him to Sara from Santa Barbara.  She has a great presence in her embrace, which we both like.  I take Sara on wild milonga rides, which I know she likes because she hunts me down for milongas in whatever city I am it seems.  However,  Marcus ended up being one of her favorite dancers.  From Sara, I heard that women get tired of men who are going through their entire "vocabulary list" of tango words and sentences they can babble back from expensive stage tango lessons.  Marcus is a "cause-no-harm" kind of dancer, very smooth, musical, tasty.  He later told me that he only used about 30% of his vocabulary.  This was true for me as well because of the tight quarters at first, but he kept this success formula throughout the festival.  Wise man.
• The wild card:  Another Sara -- this one from from the South West -- did not want me to introduce her to Marcus.  As a wise tanguera, she first scoped him out, evidently.  When she saw his level of dance, she found him three or four times during the festival for a dance.   She was the wild card tanguera, and really Marcus's biggest success story.  She was an advanced dancer and she kept coming back for more.  I am jealous!

My most satisfying festival ever
My time with Marcus taught me another level of tango as a social dance, and I came back from the festival more satisfied than ever before -- which says a lot!  I turned four year old as a tanguero at the Denver Festival this year.   In my short life as a tanguero, I have had wonderful experiences in Denver now twice, Albuquerque, Tuscon, Austin x 6, and Houston x 3.  This was by far the best because of the social aspect of how most tangueros in Denver led in a responsible way.  And this time around, I learned about sharing friends and making friends in this remarkable walking embrace, el tango para mas que dos personas.