It actually mirrors dating irl. Most women don’t have a clue on how to approach other women (let alone guys) to hit on them. What they think works and what actually works are completely different.
Tango Diaries
- Thread starter Bailango
- Start date
opendoor
Forum Master
You reacted correctly. I know this type of follower very well. They are always loyal to their bad leaders. That's their strategy for getting onto the dance floor.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
And even then . . . not so much.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
"Some" are but the good ones are aware.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
An actual diary entry after a pause and many pages of other stuff . . .
Background: I came to these forums to bemoan the floorcraft where I live (Montréal), which I did. Since then, I've had many interesting and informative discussions here, changed my outlook on countless things, and worked on my tango . . . a lot. I dance more than I did back then, and I've been fighting not to permit bad floorcraft to get to me while I improve my own.
This week, the area had smoke settle over it due to forest fires in Western Canada (scary stuff). We had days where the air quality was poor compared even to global pollution hot spots, with smog reducing visibility to a few blocks at times, and doctors warning that merely breathing was like being a heavy smoker. So, everyone was taking extra breaks at the milongas (and some were puffing asthma inhalers).
During these breaks, I think I observed the cause of poor floorcraft: Nobody dances a walking dance. They dance figures, they rebound all over the place, they execute exaggerated lunges and pauses, etc. But at one point I counted one couple walking on a floor of about 25 couples, and all of the others fiddling around in place. Today at my usual práctica, I was watching what people were practicing: static figures.
While I observed, I looked at how people were getting from figure to figure and slowly making their way around the floor. It was with pathetic little steps starting at knee level. Nobody was starting steps from the rear end, the hip, or ideally the lower back. Moreover, followers, especially, were leaning back rather than trying to embody the ideal of staying inclined toward their partner while reaching back as far as possible with their legs.
I've been taught to loosen my hips, engage my back, and step with the entire leg, hinged as high as my old body permits. On back steps, even as a leader, I've been taught to keep forward intention and not let my chest or pelvis depart from my partner, yet to get my moving leg back as far as I can. On all steps, I've been taught that the torso moves first to create drive, and then the legs come along. And much of what I do that isn't walking is still predicated on my torso moving first to lead the movement, my eventual step coming after that, starting as high in the body as I can manage.
I'm not saying I'm perfect or even especially good. Quite possibly, I am mediocre. But it struck me as very odd that in a dance that's essentially a walk, so few people walk with purpose (or at all). Then it struck me that's probably why they prefer to park and block the line of dance . . . it's less that they like that better and more that they've spent no time getting good at walking.
That's it. That's the diary entry.
Background: I came to these forums to bemoan the floorcraft where I live (Montréal), which I did. Since then, I've had many interesting and informative discussions here, changed my outlook on countless things, and worked on my tango . . . a lot. I dance more than I did back then, and I've been fighting not to permit bad floorcraft to get to me while I improve my own.
This week, the area had smoke settle over it due to forest fires in Western Canada (scary stuff). We had days where the air quality was poor compared even to global pollution hot spots, with smog reducing visibility to a few blocks at times, and doctors warning that merely breathing was like being a heavy smoker. So, everyone was taking extra breaks at the milongas (and some were puffing asthma inhalers).
During these breaks, I think I observed the cause of poor floorcraft: Nobody dances a walking dance. They dance figures, they rebound all over the place, they execute exaggerated lunges and pauses, etc. But at one point I counted one couple walking on a floor of about 25 couples, and all of the others fiddling around in place. Today at my usual práctica, I was watching what people were practicing: static figures.
While I observed, I looked at how people were getting from figure to figure and slowly making their way around the floor. It was with pathetic little steps starting at knee level. Nobody was starting steps from the rear end, the hip, or ideally the lower back. Moreover, followers, especially, were leaning back rather than trying to embody the ideal of staying inclined toward their partner while reaching back as far as possible with their legs.
I've been taught to loosen my hips, engage my back, and step with the entire leg, hinged as high as my old body permits. On back steps, even as a leader, I've been taught to keep forward intention and not let my chest or pelvis depart from my partner, yet to get my moving leg back as far as I can. On all steps, I've been taught that the torso moves first to create drive, and then the legs come along. And much of what I do that isn't walking is still predicated on my torso moving first to lead the movement, my eventual step coming after that, starting as high in the body as I can manage.
I'm not saying I'm perfect or even especially good. Quite possibly, I am mediocre. But it struck me as very odd that in a dance that's essentially a walk, so few people walk with purpose (or at all). Then it struck me that's probably why they prefer to park and block the line of dance . . . it's less that they like that better and more that they've spent no time getting good at walking.
That's it. That's the diary entry.
Maybe it’s a chicken and egg problem — the dancers don’t know how to walk and advance the line of dance since they’re stuck so they learned static figures which reinforces the whole thing?
itwillhappen
Forum Master
What the majority considers tango, is tango. It's no use pretending to know what's right and wrong.
I would wish that everyone here at a flagship encuentro would look before they stagger onto the dance floor and be able to hold their line afterwards. But this is now mainstream and no longer niche, the other dancers pay just as much as I do.
Perhaps a look back at the roots of the worldwide tango boom, the slapstick without which none of us would dance tango, might help?
I would wish that everyone here at a flagship encuentro would look before they stagger onto the dance floor and be able to hold their line afterwards. But this is now mainstream and no longer niche, the other dancers pay just as much as I do.
Perhaps a look back at the roots of the worldwide tango boom, the slapstick without which none of us would dance tango, might help?
opendoor
Forum Master
There are several documents and much footage on YT from tango the 70s, and also of social tango. And in these videos you can clearly see that everyone was dancing on the spot socially back then. The ronda and the walk isn't part of the tango's DNA, JournalInTime! The ronda was brought to BsAs from Europe by the Guardia nueva; and found its place in the expensive cabarets (not downtown). The Guardia vieja hadn't anything like that. During the tango craze the ronda disappeared again. The tango nuevo of Copes, Todaro, M. Pugliese and Dinzels didn't know the ronda, because that generation saw itself as a revival of the Guardia vieja. It wasn't until the rediscovery of elegant tango in the clubs of Villa Urquiza that the ronda was reintroduced, because they now saw themselves as a revival of the Guardia nueva and tango de salón. Tango has always experienced ebbs and flows, movement and countermovement, instream and outlier niches. Hence my appeal to appreciate tango in all its plurality and diversity. I can understand that JournalInTime is annoyed by dancers blocking the lanes. But the fact that one is only allowed to dance on the spot in the center of the dance floor essentially is an act of oppression of other tango traditions.
In every dance style I've tried, the large majority find the basics to be "too simple" and dull. They need to become very skilled indeed before they appreciate the beauty of an excellent basic. And insomuch as AT can be said to have a basic, it would be the walk.
Boring! Molinete, parada, sacada, enrosque! That's the good stuff!
Agreed. This is another near-universal phenomenon.
In every first lesson, my main coach tells newbies "if you can walk, you can dance." She says this to be encouraging, highlighting the fact that dance movement is more precise than what we use day-to-day, but not markedly more complicated or difficult. High ceiling but very low floor, we can say.
What she does not admit until years later is "...but nobody knows how to walk properly." It needs to be studied, if we are going to meet the necessary standard of precision.
And even then, everyone's brain falls out when there is a body in front of them. Things they can do perfectly well by themselves become obstacle-conscious and truncated when done with a partner.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Then you write:
From this distance in time, it's all DNA, my friend! I cannot agree that the walk isn't part of it. Once it showed up and became part of the "ebbs and flows" – before our time – it entered the genetic code of the dance as it's taught the better part of a century later. Call it a mutation, call it evolution, but nobody where I live has taught tango without "the base of tango is the walk" since my teacher started teaching it in the 1990s.
To address a quote with a quote:
The majority of teachers seem to believe that walking is tango. Somewhere between when people first learn, which is definitively an entire session of just walking in various ways, and when they decide to go out to milongas, they lose walking. My theory is that the following is part of the explanation:
That is, they might want to walk, but they cannot because nothing moves, so when they go to the next level or session or whatever, they pressure teachers to focus on static figures.
Agreed, which is why I also said:
I was observing the mainstream, not seriously hoping it would change. Which said, I come back to the part with which I take issue:
"Oppression" is an exaggeration! Based on this discussion so far, we have two broad ways of dancing – in place and traveling – and each has its own needs. If we're going to respect them both, then it isn't terribly oppressive to say that in a room that's, say, 10m × 8m (80m²), the 1m corridor around the outside (32m²) is for walking and the entire 8m × 6m middle (48m²) is for spots and slots. It's mathematically logical that the long lanes are for walking and that the thick rectangle is more easily divided into different shapes and sizes for everything else.
At most places here, my example exaggerates in favor of the outside lane. There's usually even more middle to park in, representing a greater percentage of the floor. One big place here is essentially all middle . . . yet people don't dance there, and those who learn there seem to have serious trouble with walking.
Unfortunately, plenty of people think that if they dance anywhere but in the outside lane, they'll be made out to be beginners, or simply not seen by onlookers. Now that is a recent invention! If people could get over it, nobody would feel "oppressed."
I agree with all of that. When- and wherever we feel the walk started or belongs, it's undeniably crucial to be able to walk if what you're doing is done on your two feet. So, that base is both worth perfecting. But as you say, it's too basic to impress people, which is the other half of the issue (with "I can't move anyway" being the first half).
Yes, every teacher of any quality I've ever encountered has said something like that. Most don't teach any figures that aren't in the "walk" family before session/level two.
Interesting. When we started there was too much emphasis in our class on 'walking', so we sought assistance from a ballroom teacher on some basic figures (Now that's what I call dancing!). Fortunately teachers changed, but we learned figures whilst advancing - and also how to do those in a confined space. Since then we've also learned to advance between them with 'walks'. So, I guess it feels more rounded.
Nowadays I might find the ronda has stopped (in vals
), but there are differing reasons. It can be just sheer numbers and queuing; it can be the couple who join randomly without checking (where did they come from?); it can be some couple with either the hyperactive follower who has to do unled boleos, adornos, similar, or just takes an eternity carressing his leg from a parada; some overzealous leader bounding backwards and forwards; even some couple dancing tango to milonga. I've occasionally resorted to holding back to create some space in which to 'walk'.In one aspect it's great that people are doing some 'figures' since that's probably what attracted them, but they're possibly not continuing to learn and progress to use those in better ways.
It's logical, but in practice the outer rim moves way too slow to support walking - the pace is much closer to a spot dance than a travelling one. Curving the walk into a small circles or doing 2 steps forward/2 steps back type patterns only works if there's A LOT of space (otherwise it interferes with other dancers.) So typically I have to go to the middle to walk.
If I'm stuck on the spot I might substitute circular sacadas or giros with both partners stepping for walking but I think most people will agree that this doesnt quite have the same feel
opendoor
Forum Master
Yes, it is!
pianistamediano
Forum Master
Again, incompetence!
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
This is a large part of the problem and one of the most frustrating, especially for those who have been dancing for several years. It drives me nuts. It happens on crowded floors and relatively open floors. It could be the result of incompetence. It could be the result of the (negative) effect of trying to copy performers and escenario dancers. And, as you say, it could be that they never spent much time practicing it. Tango is, after all, a walking dance at heart. But there are other aspects of bad floorcraft that are not related to the park-in-place-and-squirm mentality and those have to do with entering the line of dance, paying attention to where you're going, and a level of respect for the other dancers.
(Side note: A very, very crowded floor last night, which didn't loosen up until well after midnight, after a performance. Of course, even though there was space, the guy behind me knocked in time before I had even begun to move. Typical. And yes, he's really into squirmy figures.)