pianistamediano
Forum Master
I'd rather not ruffle any feathers until I'm more established here!
Tango Diaries
- Thread starter Bailango
- Start date
I'd rather not ruffle any feathers until I'm more established here!
opendoor
Forum Master
Please, no understatement. The photos of you on the dance floor circulating on social media tell a completely different story!
pianistamediano
Forum Master
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Dear Diary...
...after a long time, I'm now practicing more intensively. Usually I'm not trying to dance better than I already do. In my opinion, dancing better doesn't make you happier in the medium term. But ultimately, it's a partner dance, and my SO (cui bono?) has a say in the matter.
Our private workshops, which take place every two months or so, are excellent for socializing, but they don't really drive my progress. So, I watch an instructional video almost every day, and then we dance along for a tanda. This often ends awkwardly because it's usually only performed in an open embrace, but we also have a private lesson every two weeks, and then we can sort things out.
So, with a practice partner, a dance space at home, a DJ smartphone, and enough free time, it's not a big deal, and progress is made. Maybe backwards; instead of Susana Miller's yoga-oriented mindfulness style, now alignment and dynamism are required. Trends swing back and forth like a pendulum.
...after a long time, I'm now practicing more intensively. Usually I'm not trying to dance better than I already do. In my opinion, dancing better doesn't make you happier in the medium term. But ultimately, it's a partner dance, and my SO (cui bono?) has a say in the matter.
Our private workshops, which take place every two months or so, are excellent for socializing, but they don't really drive my progress. So, I watch an instructional video almost every day, and then we dance along for a tanda. This often ends awkwardly because it's usually only performed in an open embrace, but we also have a private lesson every two weeks, and then we can sort things out.
So, with a practice partner, a dance space at home, a DJ smartphone, and enough free time, it's not a big deal, and progress is made. Maybe backwards; instead of Susana Miller's yoga-oriented mindfulness style, now alignment and dynamism are required. Trends swing back and forth like a pendulum.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Dear Diary...
...when I met my future girlfriend, she said that tango isn't well suited to deepen acquaintances. I pointed out that strangers usually don't approach and hug you directly in a bar either. The issue is probably not the social circle in tango; there's a strong academic bias, people like her and me.
I think we're where we wanted to be now. We travel to tango events, sometimes staying overnight with friends or in our camper, and friends stay in our home. And we occasionally organize a private workshop followed by a get-together and dancing.
And as I've already mentioned, tango is very much "real life"; there are hardly any virtual elements, apart from this forum mainly Facebook and a few books. Between you and me, it's also relaxing not to project your own needs onto a milonga or the dancers there. And conversely, it allows you to view supposed rules and constraints, which are often imposed in the interests of others, with appropriate serenity.
...when I met my future girlfriend, she said that tango isn't well suited to deepen acquaintances. I pointed out that strangers usually don't approach and hug you directly in a bar either. The issue is probably not the social circle in tango; there's a strong academic bias, people like her and me.
I think we're where we wanted to be now. We travel to tango events, sometimes staying overnight with friends or in our camper, and friends stay in our home. And we occasionally organize a private workshop followed by a get-together and dancing.
And as I've already mentioned, tango is very much "real life"; there are hardly any virtual elements, apart from this forum mainly Facebook and a few books. Between you and me, it's also relaxing not to project your own needs onto a milonga or the dancers there. And conversely, it allows you to view supposed rules and constraints, which are often imposed in the interests of others, with appropriate serenity.
brujo
Well-Known Member
Wrote a rant/confession about my feelings on my tango journey, feel this was a place to share it:
Here we are again. Forty-eight miles left on the trip. I’m driving because my city treats culture like a four-letter word. The closest thing we have to dancing there are those gigantic Christmas bears at Lowe’s shaking their booties. If I want to connect with someone rhythmically, I need to drive ninety minutes in traffic to this community center two cities away.
My mind takes me to that comment on the Facebook group I read yesterday. “Thanks to all the people who came from big cities A and B and the coast who helped make the event so special!” I’ve known this guy for three years, taken classes with him, see him at milongas every two weeks, and he doesn’t mention my city. I get it. My city is a cold sore. A forbidden word. A geographic blank space that doesn’t exist in the minds of other tango dancers. I’m sure if I dropped dead at the event, they wouldn’t mention it on the death certificate. They’d just thank the incredible guys from City A for dragging my carcass to the curb so real dancers could have more floor space.
Honestly, the drive is freeing. I pop in an audiobook and just turn my brain off. The hallway effect between home life and dance, just dragged out for a hour or more. I sometimes pretend I’m carpooling with folks from more popular cities instead of being all alone. Gossiping about the dancers we all know. It’s like a condensed version of being Will Smith in I am Legend or Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
I remind myself of the eight years where I stopped dancing. Life happened. Or rather, life got in the way. It started up great with traveling, a new marriage, and things that were more fun than sitting at clubs ignored at ten pm. Then it became a busy blur. Sucking up to the corporate job. Kids. Deadlines. Taking out the trash. 4-H meetings.
I look at my hands on the steering wheel. They are my father’s hands. Well, the ones he had before he decided to start living in an urn. Knobby. Full of little dots and scars. Wrinkled. Just old.
I think of the people I used to look up to when I first started dancing thirty years ago. Oh boy, they were living desire navigating the dance floor. Shines, snappy footwork, smiles, body isolations, and musicality. Now, the only times their names get mentioned are in memorial tributes, or when I see a video of them at live music events sitting in a wheelchair. I know I’m getting there. It won’t be long.
I feel dumb. Two decades spent as a mediocre dancer of salsa and bachata, giving all that up for this moody, sophisticated dance called Argentine Tango. A mistress who wears black and refuses to reveal her secrets. Heck, she won’t even reply to a text. Me, the idiot that left his high school sweetheart at the altar because he just needed to suffer more expensively.
I wasn’t great as a salsa dude. The one benefit tango has is that I’m just a creepy dude, not a creepy old dude. But back then, the poor lady only had to suffer three minutes of my incompetence before she could run away. Now, I’ve abandoned those drum-filled songs for a dance that traps the poor woman in a fifteen-minute tanda of my mistakes. It is more a hostage situation than a dance.
I have been at it for three years and it still feels like absolute failure. In the other dances, I can articulate my feelings and connect. Here, I can barely say a word, much less try to make a poem. My posture is wrong. My embrace is more like embarrassment. And musicality-wise, I feel like the only beat I have is giving the poor floor a beating with my clumsy, off-time steps.
At the community center, the self-pity hits. Surrounded by beautiful people. Cultured. Funny. Sociable. Fit. Like they were birthed directly onto a Buenos Aires dance floor. Draped in fabrics that often make my hands wonder if I am texturally neurodivergent. Me? Rejected most of my life. Feeling like I was assembled from spare parts in a garage and dressed by a blind tech bro. Every “no” I’ve ever received in my life is amplified at the milonga.
When I ask for a dance, I see the pity calculation in her eyes. It’s more a charitable donation and community service project for the poor girl. Suffering she must endure to grow the scene.
I want to quit. Burn these shoes. Just stay home and glue myself to stupid little games and AI slop on my phone. That would be so comfortable. So easy. I am a sentient sack of meat failing at art.
I somehow land in the arms of a poor woman who agrees to dance with me. She smells like she has a life full of joy. Her embrace radiates compassionate indifference, but I clutch on with my very off-axis incompetence.
And there it is. That stupid moment. Maybe ten seconds. Fifteen if I am really, really lucky. That moment where my brain stops trying to grow my dance. Where I stop worrying about my salsa habits creeping into my footwork. I feel her feet through her chest. There is music flowing. I stop thinking of her boobs and actually connect. Something tangy. Sometimes sweet. Always different.
In my head, I feel I finally understand that dude on YouTube that says tango is two sad faces and four feet at play. Because my damn feet are playing for sure. Those fifteen delicious seconds. Weightless, worry-free seconds. A high so fleeting it is practically just a hallucination.
The moment ends. Then, much later and mercifully for her, the tanda.
She gives me a polite smile. The one you give a coworker when you pass them in the hallway and can’t remember their name. To her, the fifteen minutes was just a blank space, something her mind will immediately wipe from her memory as a mediocre tanda. She’s off now, looking for a cabeceo from someone who can actually lead.
On the drive home, another fifty miles of John Grisham, I savor and munch on each and every fragment of those fifteen seconds. Yup, I’m coming back next month. Need to get as many of those as I can before I am dust.
Here we are again. Forty-eight miles left on the trip. I’m driving because my city treats culture like a four-letter word. The closest thing we have to dancing there are those gigantic Christmas bears at Lowe’s shaking their booties. If I want to connect with someone rhythmically, I need to drive ninety minutes in traffic to this community center two cities away.
My mind takes me to that comment on the Facebook group I read yesterday. “Thanks to all the people who came from big cities A and B and the coast who helped make the event so special!” I’ve known this guy for three years, taken classes with him, see him at milongas every two weeks, and he doesn’t mention my city. I get it. My city is a cold sore. A forbidden word. A geographic blank space that doesn’t exist in the minds of other tango dancers. I’m sure if I dropped dead at the event, they wouldn’t mention it on the death certificate. They’d just thank the incredible guys from City A for dragging my carcass to the curb so real dancers could have more floor space.
Honestly, the drive is freeing. I pop in an audiobook and just turn my brain off. The hallway effect between home life and dance, just dragged out for a hour or more. I sometimes pretend I’m carpooling with folks from more popular cities instead of being all alone. Gossiping about the dancers we all know. It’s like a condensed version of being Will Smith in I am Legend or Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
I remind myself of the eight years where I stopped dancing. Life happened. Or rather, life got in the way. It started up great with traveling, a new marriage, and things that were more fun than sitting at clubs ignored at ten pm. Then it became a busy blur. Sucking up to the corporate job. Kids. Deadlines. Taking out the trash. 4-H meetings.
I look at my hands on the steering wheel. They are my father’s hands. Well, the ones he had before he decided to start living in an urn. Knobby. Full of little dots and scars. Wrinkled. Just old.
I think of the people I used to look up to when I first started dancing thirty years ago. Oh boy, they were living desire navigating the dance floor. Shines, snappy footwork, smiles, body isolations, and musicality. Now, the only times their names get mentioned are in memorial tributes, or when I see a video of them at live music events sitting in a wheelchair. I know I’m getting there. It won’t be long.
I feel dumb. Two decades spent as a mediocre dancer of salsa and bachata, giving all that up for this moody, sophisticated dance called Argentine Tango. A mistress who wears black and refuses to reveal her secrets. Heck, she won’t even reply to a text. Me, the idiot that left his high school sweetheart at the altar because he just needed to suffer more expensively.
I wasn’t great as a salsa dude. The one benefit tango has is that I’m just a creepy dude, not a creepy old dude. But back then, the poor lady only had to suffer three minutes of my incompetence before she could run away. Now, I’ve abandoned those drum-filled songs for a dance that traps the poor woman in a fifteen-minute tanda of my mistakes. It is more a hostage situation than a dance.
I have been at it for three years and it still feels like absolute failure. In the other dances, I can articulate my feelings and connect. Here, I can barely say a word, much less try to make a poem. My posture is wrong. My embrace is more like embarrassment. And musicality-wise, I feel like the only beat I have is giving the poor floor a beating with my clumsy, off-time steps.
At the community center, the self-pity hits. Surrounded by beautiful people. Cultured. Funny. Sociable. Fit. Like they were birthed directly onto a Buenos Aires dance floor. Draped in fabrics that often make my hands wonder if I am texturally neurodivergent. Me? Rejected most of my life. Feeling like I was assembled from spare parts in a garage and dressed by a blind tech bro. Every “no” I’ve ever received in my life is amplified at the milonga.
When I ask for a dance, I see the pity calculation in her eyes. It’s more a charitable donation and community service project for the poor girl. Suffering she must endure to grow the scene.
I want to quit. Burn these shoes. Just stay home and glue myself to stupid little games and AI slop on my phone. That would be so comfortable. So easy. I am a sentient sack of meat failing at art.
I somehow land in the arms of a poor woman who agrees to dance with me. She smells like she has a life full of joy. Her embrace radiates compassionate indifference, but I clutch on with my very off-axis incompetence.
And there it is. That stupid moment. Maybe ten seconds. Fifteen if I am really, really lucky. That moment where my brain stops trying to grow my dance. Where I stop worrying about my salsa habits creeping into my footwork. I feel her feet through her chest. There is music flowing. I stop thinking of her boobs and actually connect. Something tangy. Sometimes sweet. Always different.
In my head, I feel I finally understand that dude on YouTube that says tango is two sad faces and four feet at play. Because my damn feet are playing for sure. Those fifteen delicious seconds. Weightless, worry-free seconds. A high so fleeting it is practically just a hallucination.
The moment ends. Then, much later and mercifully for her, the tanda.
She gives me a polite smile. The one you give a coworker when you pass them in the hallway and can’t remember their name. To her, the fifteen minutes was just a blank space, something her mind will immediately wipe from her memory as a mediocre tanda. She’s off now, looking for a cabeceo from someone who can actually lead.
On the drive home, another fifty miles of John Grisham, I savor and munch on each and every fragment of those fifteen seconds. Yup, I’m coming back next month. Need to get as many of those as I can before I am dust.
Miradamiranda
Well-Known Member
Yes! More diary entries / short stories, please. Keep them coming!
opendoor
Forum Master
And you could pen the sound track!
brujo
Well-Known Member
Here are my lyric suggestions Crying in the milonga
Miradamiranda
Well-Known Member
I was once in the ladies room at a milonga putting in eye drops and using a paper towel gently to not smear my make up. A lady I didn’t know put her arm around me and said “Don’t worry, there are plenty more fish in the ocean”….
brujo
Well-Known Member
I would totally love to hear a story made up of just these type of ladies room conversations at milongas. But that’s just me the creepy dudeI was once in the ladies room at a milonga putting in eye drops and using a paper towel gently to not smear my make up. A lady I didn’t know put her arm around me and said “Don’t worry, there are plenty more fish in the ocean”….
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Dear Diary...
...I often read that (tango) dancing is far too much effort for "dating", that there are easier solutions these days. However, as far as I know, there's no scientific evidence that swiping apps are well-suited for building a (romantic) relationship. They're more like dopamine-boosting machines, similar to computer games, a kind of profile roulette. And at some point, you have to move into real life, into doing things.
Looking back, from the very first class, no, even before that, at the first introductory meeting, I had a lot of real-life contact with (potential) dance partners. The effort involved was initially the same as with "dating", except instead of meeting in a café, we met at the counter of a dance studio. And honestly, even with moderate talent, you can eventually manage to copy what the instructors have just demonstrated. I could have taken dance classes this way for years, and others do. It would have been significantly less stressful.
That I, too, went to practicas and milongas after only a few lessons was solely due to my ambition and ego. The perspective of tango dancers who compete at milongas, or who actually wanted to, is therefore in no way representative. However, compared to the effort involved in taking classes, a milonga is like extreme speed dating.
...I often read that (tango) dancing is far too much effort for "dating", that there are easier solutions these days. However, as far as I know, there's no scientific evidence that swiping apps are well-suited for building a (romantic) relationship. They're more like dopamine-boosting machines, similar to computer games, a kind of profile roulette. And at some point, you have to move into real life, into doing things.
Looking back, from the very first class, no, even before that, at the first introductory meeting, I had a lot of real-life contact with (potential) dance partners. The effort involved was initially the same as with "dating", except instead of meeting in a café, we met at the counter of a dance studio. And honestly, even with moderate talent, you can eventually manage to copy what the instructors have just demonstrated. I could have taken dance classes this way for years, and others do. It would have been significantly less stressful.
That I, too, went to practicas and milongas after only a few lessons was solely due to my ambition and ego. The perspective of tango dancers who compete at milongas, or who actually wanted to, is therefore in no way representative. However, compared to the effort involved in taking classes, a milonga is like extreme speed dating.
TTanguero
Forum Master
But if you are looking to dance for dating purposes, there are way easier options! I started with Ceroc, and after four group lessons, I could dance at an event. Each lesson was 15 mins of instruction and 45 mins of practice, so that's an hour of tuition and four hours total to go from non-dancer to dancer. The tango investment is ... a little greater.
It is also true that people have confessed to crying after going home from milongas. That’s in our usually leader-heavy local scene. I can’t think of any other social dance which has made someone cry.I was once in the ladies room at a milonga putting in eye drops and using a paper towel gently to not smear my make up. A lady I didn’t know put her arm around me and said “Don’t worry, there are plenty more fish in the ocean”….
If not cry, then terrified of going to certain milongas (for not being good enough).
My follower friends will sometime narrate the conversation and gossips that goes on in there. Some are surprised men don’t talk to each other or engage in that kind of conversation anywhere in first place.