How to teach floor craft ?

opendoor said:
In the BR world, social dancing is mostly neglected because the ambitious dancers collect metals and keep to themselves. But the competition circus acts as a motor to fill the dance schools. There is nothing comparable with tango. Ideally, all levels meet at the milonga
Click to expand...
You've never attended a packed 'Tea Dance' in a leisure centre in the north of England!:oops:

We felt young there even though only just retired.

We did get some small applause for our AT.

But I'd agree generally about competition for BR and similar activities. Just avoid it in social AT.


opendoor said:
Maybe the cinema will play some role: there are always great tango movies with great radiance
Click to expand...
Tanze Tango mit mir looked good.
 
opendoor said:
Now that you left, I really would be interested! Is it possible to dj? (Besides tango I could serve disco fox, salsa, 40s swing).
Click to expand...
Not seen any prospect of them re-opening yet. At least one I attended had a resident musician who added to the tracks - and danced.

Just thinking - book yourself afternoon tea at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom and enjoy the organists.
 
Brummbaer said:
Sort of agree, but how do you know they're 'good' unless you learn/are taught and someone observes?
Click to expand...

I take the philosophical point of view that art should speak to the audience directly without them needing to be "educated" in anything. And most people intuitively know what good and bad dancing is when they see it, even if they don't know how to dance themselves. It's easy to see if the dancers are synchronized with each other and the music, show good physicality in their movement, and don't crash into other people and things. Of course there are stylistic differences between insiders and sometimes people judge others as good or bad based on that, but outsiders don't care. (And I think it's important for any artistic/cultural scene to look at itself through the eyes of outsiders from time to time. Otherwise there's a tendency to devolve into self-referential irrelevance.)

Sadly we seem to have list the old covered bandstands in the park, and the permission to use them. You'll probably get escorted from the UK shopping mall since it's a privately-owned place. I have seen, and taken part, in some covered space in London.
Click to expand...

I found a surprisingly large number of outdoor locations last year. One well known spot has been unfortunately temporarily closed due to "antisocial" activities of dancers from another genre that shall remain nameless.
 
Last edited:
Rabbit said:
I found a surprisingly large number of outdoor locations last year.
Click to expand...
What kind of outdoor locations? Can you provide examples? What was the surface like? Did your partner find it difficult to pivot? Did you just not lead any pivoting moves?

The weather outside my office is particularly nice today, sunny and dry with a light breeze, so I could envision a little dance somewhere outdoors (but in reality I have an injury that will keep me out of partner dancing for another few months:(). Maybe in another few weeks I could host a small tango picnic.
 
Tangogal said:
What kind of outdoor locations? Can you provide examples? What was the surface like? Did your partner find it difficult to pivot? Did you just not lead any pivoting moves?
Click to expand...
I'm not Rabbit, but I've been dancing outdoors a lot, too . . . almost daily these past three months. My experiences:
  • Avoid decks, gazebos, pergolas, terraces, etc. with wooden floors. The wood warps and splinters in moisture and direct sunlight; planks end up at different heights, creating places to stub toes, and gaps between them turn into places to twist ankles. Ick.
  • Avoid cobbles or bricks for many of the same reasons: uneven surface with gaps. Perversely, two of the outdoor tango events here are on cobbles or bricks . . .
  • Unpolished concrete/stone, or asphalt, is okay, but you can't pivot well. My doctor, a tanguero, told me not to dance on this because it's hard on joints – both torsionally (pivots torque joints) and vertically (impacts are hard).
  • Polished concrete/stone is as good outside as it is inside; I've danced on polished concrete outdoors and found it identical to polished marble indoors. It's still hard and jarring for joints, but you can pivot easily and not suffer torsional injuries.
  • Grass is soft, and squishes to allow pivoting. Just make sure it's a flat lawn, or you'll have gaps and lumps worse than cobbles. Also ensure that the people who own it are fine with you killing the grass, because you will.
  • The best, though, is very fine gravel or coarse sand packed flat by machines or the passage of people. It's surprisingly flat, lacks gaps, is far softer than concrete or cobbles, and allows pivoting because it slips. But coarse gravel is hellish (worse than cobbles!), while fine sand is safe but gets in your shoes and up your nose.
All of that assumes flat shoes. I'd never counsel high heels outdoors, on any surface but a purpose-built temporary dance floor laid there for an event. If you insist, be sure to use shoes you're ready to destroy, and get something like this product for the heels – my partner has tried those, but still prefers flat cycling shoes (Puma brand) on coarse sand.

I admire all the old milongueras who danced on baldosa, but I think it's insane if you have any other option.
 
I think JournalInTime described the difference between surfaces very well. I've found grass and other natural surfaces surprisingly pleasant. I recommend some sort of dance sneakers or non-grip sports shoes for the hard floors, I think they offer better impact protection.

I do try to avoid pivots when the floor is rough. Sometimes one or two accidentally slip out in the middle of
improvisation sometimes.

(I admit to having gone around testing pivots in all sorts of random places with whatever shoes I'm wearing at the time.)
 
Rabbit said:
(I admit to having gone around testing pivots in all sorts of random places with whatever shoes I'm wearing at the time.)
Click to expand...
Same here. I've been on the receiving end of the "Why pivot?" lecture, aimed at beating me into believing that old-timey tango dancers didn't pivot, and managed everything through crosses. (Which is probably total bunk, but some people believe it.) I've tried that. It's no fun. So my answer to "Why pivot?" is: "Because it's fun, and I do it everywhere, even when not dancing."
 
I think part of the difficulty of teaching floorcraft is that is the not about a couple as a couple, but about all the couples on the dancefloor together creating the ronda. It is not about how we fit into whatever empty space we can discover on the dancefloor, but about how the ronda as a whole moves, and we are just a small element of this.

Whenever it see graphs like the one in the OP with all the sqiggly paths i see people who are good dancers, but they are not connected enough with each other to actually create a ronda. We need less specific floorcraft skills, and more awareness of the creation of the flow of the dancefloor as one of the goals that we as dancers are trying to achieve. And a lot of milongas here don't have enough people to create the density neccessary for dancers to experience a nice ronda.
(And i also think there are a lot of people are not interested in that aspect of the dance - i think this is often the difference between the people who visit BA and think it is tango heaven (there is a ronda everywhere), or tango hell (the average level of "technical skills" is not that high))

One of the really interesting floorcraft exercises one of my teachers did was to ask leaders to keep constant eye contact with other leaders while dancing - floorcraft as the dance of leaders with other leaders. Just continuously looking for and acknowledging the other leaders around oneself makes a big difference.
 
Gssh said:
And a lot of milongas here don't have enough people to create the density neccessary for dancers to experience a nice ronda.
(And i also think there are a lot of people are not interested in that aspect of the dance - i think this is often the difference between the people who visit BA and think it is tango heaven (there is a ronda everywhere), or tango hell (the average level of "technical skills" is not that high))
Click to expand...
For me in Europe there is the differenciation between (sold out) "encuentros" and "festivals".
Both have the density, but at the first are (enough) people who have the experience, at the latter rather not.
At at "marathon" it is undefined.
 
Well the ronda is, I think, one of the few places in tango where the infamous car analogy actually makes a lot of sense. If everyone follows the same driving rules, which are pretty much the same as traffic queueing (stay in lane, don't reverse, keep a safe distance from whoever's in front and behind, if whoever's in front of you moves forward move forward too) an orderly ronda emerges without anyone trying to connect to or create anything.

The difference in a milonga is that there are no driving lessons and instead everyone gets a car and is told "figure out the controls yourself".

I experience a good ronda (or just my neighbours knowing what they are doing in an otherwise chaotic one) as more of the ABSENCE of the usual negative interactions that we're accustomed to when it's crowded. I dont feel like I am dancing "with" the other couples any more than I really have a connection with the other vehicles in a queue, I just appreciate them for their politeness.
 
Rabbit said:
The difference in a milonga is that there are no driving lessons and instead everyone gets a car and is told "figure out the controls yourself".
Click to expand...

Well, to stay with the driving metaphor it is more like we are trying to teach how to merge into a freeway by practicing on an empty parking lot, and then are surprised when a) the practice does not translate into applicable skills and b) smart people realize that even if the skills don't work you can just force your way in so why bother with trying to develop these skills.
 
If a community maintains different kinds of stories about pista, IMO a larger number of dancers could become active, participate and a good enough pista would be possible.

The codigos story is working well for people who are sensitive to social pressure, who appreciate being part of a group. To understand the rules for a good pista, these dancers need to have quite a high skill to detect the patterns experienced dancers use to adapt, as well as the skill to apply the patterns during their own dance. There are a lot of people missing this mindset and skills and they need something else to grow!

The choreography story could be more attractive for dancers who appreciate complicated figures and individual skill development more than nice coexistence in a group. One of the goals could be to manage the ronda while doing those complicated figures. The development of pista skills is translated to a learning process with beginner and advanced levels.

The choreography story could be more attractive to the young teachers too! Many of them do not mind the codigos at all but see them be part of historic crap and their students are sent to milongas without any training. They'll maybe wake up by questions: Why don't you teach the choreographic part of tango? or How come you are using a double space compared to other dancers on the ronda?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Dance Ads

Advertise on Dance Forums Reach dancers, teachers, studios, event organizers, and dance-friendly brands. View ad options
Back
Top