It used to be possible to tell the current role by the shoes, but I did come across a trans 'gentleman' (the facial hair!) leading in heels and a skirt (which I didn't take as a 'fashion' statement).
At the end of the pandemic, maybe a new start?
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pianistamediano
Forum Master
Oooof — perhaps the only perk of such a condition?
pianistamediano
Forum Master
Their loss, our gain!
JournalInTime
Forum Master
I agree 100%. Which said . . .
. . . there are people who need itemized lists of hyper-specific rules. Someone like that isn't necessarily a !;-**# (to quote you). My observation is that tango attracts an unusual proportion of neurodivergent people – probably because it has rules that encode social interaction (which they are often bad at, and need rules for) and because it has a deep vocabulary that can be understood via geometry and physics (which they are often good at, and find reassuring). My experience with such individuals, particularly in my academic years, is that they want everything spelled out in fine detail.
Of course, there are also !;-**# around who will break any rule that isn't spelled out in an airtight fashion, because they're constantly seeking loopholes just to be a !;-**#. Lists of rules are useful for bludgeoning them. If you have enough rules, they fill several printed pages, which you can roll up and use as a cosh.
Those aren't things you need to be a leader, I feel. Floorcraft is essential, but most of the old codes aren't about that, but rather about a kind of machismo native to a different time and place from where we are.
Though most every follower I know shows up with a pair of daggers.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
I dearly hope one or two followers in my community feel that way!Their loss, our gain!
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Also, in the specific context of a "license test," you'd want very particular rules. Even my list earlier would be too broad. At least here, when you test for a driver's license, the questions are super-, ultra-, hyper-specific – stuff of the "Faced with this specific, modern set of signal lights after 10 p.m. within 5 metres of a cross-hatched zone, which right-turning lane has the right of way when there's a heavy vehicle in the inner lane?" variety. It might differ elsewhere.
Other random, specific rules are things like, "Resolve not facing directly down the line of dance, but turned 45° toward the outside (leader's right) so that you can more easily see those approaching from behind and people entering the floor," and, "During a vals, advance more than you would for a tango, turn more than you would for a tango, and do not pause except between entire musical paragraphs, so that the floor has a lively pace, and people can count on you turning rather than walking." It can get even narrower.
I'm not sure what's too narrow, but I am certain that my biggest complaint is dancers who don't advance. Tango is not a slot or spot dance. It moves at the pace of the music. Nothing bugs me more than someone parked in the lane barely shifting weight while there's some light-speed D'Arienzo number playing.
pianistamediano
Forum Master
I had quite the trouble figuring out all the norms and unspoken códigos of the milonga in the beginning, until someone kindly pointed me to a few detailed blog posts here and there (Janis, Tango and Chaos, etc.), which jumpstarted the process.
When I was growing up, I had absolutely no idea what to do with other people, and so spent over a decade with painful trial and error and much stumbling over oneself before I learned the patterns. For me, it was a crippling inability to consistently and accurately interact with people in social situations that rely on understanding how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, or what their expectations are from their facial expressions, body language, and nonverbal cues alone.
In essence, it's a massive never-ending stressful exercise in pattern recognition, which is why it is such a relief having all these things spelled out explicitly, in detail, and preferably covering every potential scenario or edge case.
I think I have more or less internalised social interaction, but in the beginning it was very much an alien concept (but not for want of empathy).
Maybe it's worse or better for other people in a similar situation, but even now, at times, it still feels like I'm stepping out into the darkness, blind to everything that I might encounter.
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I think it's a normal reaction. If someone's uninterested in me or I'm uninterested in them, the condition naturally becomes mutual and permanent after a while. I simply accept that, and don't try to change it. I believe that some people are essentially compatible with each other and some are not.
It's the opposite problem here, people will just bump you dancing in double time while the entire orchestra is paused. For some reason, the more supposedly "advanced" they are, the worse this gets.
pianistamediano
Forum Master
Got to show off the 137-step figure that gave you your black belt in the passionate and dramatic art of tango!
JournalInTime
Forum Master
I had that happen on Sunday evening. The music paused. We paused. The guy in front of us somehow lunged several metres backward and rammed us.
TTanguero
Forum Master
I won't share the video, as I don't want to disclose any identities, but I shot a video in a milonga recently to share with a friend this very phenomenon. I knew when there was a long pause coming up, so started shooting about 15 seconds earlier, and I'd say a good 40% of the leaders danced merrily through it ...
JournalInTime
Forum Master
I forgot to mention a detail: The man in question is a teacher. He was dancing at his school's milonga. There was a workshop just before the milonga, and a lot of students of the school were there. Most of them were beginner-level . . .
This is how bad habits are born.
In fact, while I like that school's milongas well enough, I've made a conscious point of never going there for instruction. Indeed, there are several schools like that in town.
I'm eternally grateful for the place where I did my first few years of lessons. They put floorcraft ahead of just about everything – almost from Day One. One teacher famously told every new group of students that until they could do whatever the class was teaching during the busiest moments at the milonga, they didn't really understand how to do that thing. I agreed then and still agree now.
My experience is that it depends where you are, and the percentage of them in the likely attendance. As you implied for driving, it depends where you're going to drive - city, motorway, urban, rural (it might be 'all'). The 'village hall' milonga might have 10-20 attendees (do I even need cabeceo?); the metropolitan milonga/festival might have 100-200.
I've seen references to traditional codigos about keeping in lanes, and also about 'no knives'. I don't expect to have that type of problem in the rural village hall (more likely a problem with heating or water leaking); I might have more complex problems with attendees in the metropolis, and it might vary depending on the local culture. Spell it out if needed, and educate attendees, or inform them politely, or eject them, but I'd still summarise that as respecting other dancers.
