an Ice cube in tea!

When we foreigners are flooding over the tango countries to for a visit or for a longer stay I wonder what is happening.

 Are we diluting the original tango? Changing it? Like when an ice cube is added to a hot tea cup.

Should there be some entry restrictions as there is for the Moss Garden in Kyoto Japan?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saih%C5%8D-ji_(Kyoto)

or

Should we appreciate this change which will create a tango for total globe?

A one night tanda

At my home pista I am actually not interested about a one night tanda. I am much more interested about long term dance relationships.

Sometimes it takes many months to establish a new relationship because there is several things we need to know about each others before coming to a mutual understanding and dancing. Does she have her own musicality?  Do we share the same musicality? Are we dancing well together? Can we talk about other things than tango? Her boyfriend, does he accept me?  and so on. . . .

So sometimes I just sit and watch the dancers even when the music is wonderful!

Dance as no one is watching

*Dance as no one is watching!* has been going around at net as a mantra for spiritual dancing.

I would like to change it a little bit: Check every now and then who is watching your dance!

I learned to monitor the onlookers because I needed to know who among the followers could accept an invitation from a woman leader. A smiling face or an eye steadily staying in contact was quite sure signs of interest for a tanda with me.

Today I appreciate also the eye contact with the leaders because it creates a nice atmosphere on the pista. A friendly eye on my feet during a fierce milonga can give me a feeling of being on the right road and I can happily continue to develop in that direction.

A new split of tango types

During my years in tango I have learned different types of categories. The first one was how the music was divided to tango, vals and milonga. It followed by the splits to tango salon and milonguero as well as to open and close embrace.

I am today adding to my personal sets two new categories: a meditative style and dynamic style.

The former style has as a goal to create a flow where the dancers' level in steps and musicality guarantee effortless movement and musical accuracy. I think the biggest scene for these dancers are the encuentros.

The dynamic dance is more focused on movements and a powerful and skilful performance of them.

When I became aware of these possibilities I started to spot information about them in tango texts.

The local or worldwide barrio?

In the old days the dance styles evolved in the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires & Co. The main  feature keeping the group together was the geographical aspect; the people, dancers near you will develope the same way of dancing. People met weekly and watched how the skilled peers were dancing, get inspired and let their own dance change to that direction

In the worldwide barrio the teachers have become the central feature for a community. The peers in the community around a teacher will travel to the workshops, watch the videos and communicate in the net with others and develop their movements in that teachers style.

I suppose a person belongs to different barrios. 

What are your local barrios and the characteristics there?
Are you a member of a worldwide barrio, following a teacher and a style?

Teachers or Youtube?

Today we are living in the expert world so we don't believe on our own ability to see, understand and apply our own ideas on our dance. We want quite exact guidance from a teacher and we want to get forward at racer speed. This gives us a very strong from outside to inside learning and we create a more homogeneous pista, less variation on a figure.

In the old world the dancers were watching the skilled local dancers and then tried to do something similar. The learning was from outside to inside but I think that the results were more or less individual.

There are also stories how a dancer wanted to go around and found a way to do so. All the results were different creating a jungle of movements and an utterly diversified pista.The learning was from inside to outside.

To learn from youtube is a kind of modern variation of this old type of learning!

Shoulders or Feet?

I think one of the biggest differences between the dancers of earlier days and the ones today is the place, where people primarily focus the dance. The old milongueros told that they looked at the shoulders, the upper part of the body to find the DANCE. 

Today the the attention is mainly focused on feet. This phenomenon you can easily discover on youtube! If the person behind the camera cannot get the whole image in same window they will move downward and show you the feet. The same on workshops where people will eagerly learn the consecutive steps and only after that pay attention to the movement of torso.

I think this shift of primary focus has an impact on our dance and dance experience!

Eye contact!

I have had a few encouraging memories from other leaders, who caught my eyes and improved the contact by a light smile on his lips. There was a short moment of understanding between us until the music put us to next whirling turns in different directions. In May I got this gift from a guy in Athens and another in Stockholm, both unknown leaders to me. Those short eye contacts made my milonga, they made my night!

For some reason these instant contacts to another leader have had a deep positive impact on me and they have created long term memories, gems, for me! 

History impact on a tanda

In Athens:  the girl told me 
she took some steps on her own 
during our tanda.

She told it's because of her origin,
because she is from Sparta.

I did not noticed, it was ok

Wikipedia:
In ancient Sparta in contrast to Athens, the girls were reared much like boys, including physical fitness training. 









http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_Sparta

The different goals on one pista

It is not so easy to notice that on this very same pista people have different goals, which are driving the split of the group to different subgroups.

We could compare the possible groups in a runner's world to see the activators there and to compare those with the dancers' world. We maybe could agree about following groups: Sunday stroll, Easy training for health, to Get Good at running and the Long Distance Runners who are testing their personal edges.

Can you identify the corresponding groups in your dance community? 

I think the social aspects are strongest for the *Sunday stroll* group and least of importance for the *LongDistance* dancers. There are maybe some health aspects too but not for the Long Distance dancers who are pushing themselves through pain and injuries. The skill development must be extremly important for the LongDistance group and even for the GetGood dancers who are travelling for workshops and milongas around the world .

Which of these would be your group? 

I think your dance life will be much more pleasurable if you can identify the group which suits your interests. If you can find the other dancers with the same goals in your community, establish relationships with those dancers and you will create the most harmonious atmosphere possible for your dance life.

parallel vs. connected dance

Within tango you often hear the word connected. I think one of the important aspects explaining the difference is the source of the movement, where the movement starts.

Parallel
Both partners are initiating their own movements when they understand that the other person is reacting on music. You can start a serie of steps when you see/understand that the other person is going to start on a certain beat in music.

Connected
In connected dance you take a step when you in your body feel what kind of step the other person is doing. The information goes both ways and often simultaneously.

I think in most of the couple dances the dancers are growing towards the connected dance, but for the Argentine tango it is the starting point.

What women are looking at on the dance floor

It seems that there is some favorite patterns female followers do appreciate when they watch male dancers.
I wonder in what extent this can be applyed to Argentine tango?

In this Washingtonpost article they think anyhow that some eye catchers can be nailed!

Check here!  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/24/what-women-want-on-the-dance-floor-according-to-science/

The number of available dances and a remedy

The painful fact is that the NUMBER of AVAILABLE dances is too low leaving many followers frustrated. To me the following two alternatives are the main possibilities to create a better situation.

You can ease the situation by REDISTRIBUTING the EXISTING dances by implementing new social rules so more followers can step to the pista.

To create a change so the follower group could cooperate and initiate mentor programs/ other activities to atract MORE LEADERS to START and STAY on pista.

This is a follower problem and needs a follower action!


Want to read more?
http://leadingladyl.blogspot.se/2014/02/women-cooperate.html

A tricky question?

There is a group of tango dancers who claim that we/they can call for tango only the steps taken to the tango music.

What do YOU think about the following situations:

A. The couple is walking the caminata to a good tango song. Is this tango?

B. Another couple on same pista uses earplugs of good quality and can not hear anything but they are using wellknown tango technique in their walk, stepping in time with others. Is this tango?

C. There is an audience, youtube maybe, who has turned off the sound while watching the couple A. Are they watching tango dancing?

D. The same audience without possibility to hear the sound are looking the couple B without knowing about the earplugs. Do they watch tango dancing?

What is your opinion?