The apilado equation

[Brummbaer]

What is your experience with workshops and navigation instructions?

Some if those who've danced AT for years think they know it all and ignore all advice/instruction/improvement; others are prepared to learn.

At a very simple level, you may learn high boleos, but you ought to be, and are, advised not to do them in a crowded space.

 

[LadyLeader]

I went to the milonga from day 1 though and walked too much and overtook people a lot.

For us there was way too much 9countBasic!

Step backward
Collision with another couple
Sidestep
.... contiues as ordinary 8CB

 

[Brummbaer]

For us there was way too much 9countBasic!

Step backward
Collision with another couple
Sidestep
.... contiues as ordinary 8CB

Didn't learn of the 8CB through social AT lessons but through a ballroom teacher who we used early on when the AT group wasn't helpful. He explained that step 1 backwards of the 8CB had been when inviting the follower onto the dancefloor into the ronda, and the first dance step was step 2, i.e. you never stepped backwards against the flow without checking (ok, we know more now about spacing).

I know the Argentinian maestros couldn't agree on where to start (1 or 2). We've also had an introduction where the leader's backward step is along the LOD (now that confuses them).

I'd heard the 8CB was really introduced as a teaching aid for the US.

Isn't this more about floor craft and milonga style rather than apilado?

 

[LadyLeader]

Isn't this more about floor craft and milonga style rather than apilado?

Absolutely right, but sometimes it is difficult to keep it organized.

Apilado -> Volcadas blocking the ronda -> and so on . . .

 

[Rabbit]

Isn't this more about floor craft and milonga style rather than apilado?

I noticed on this forum that the thread topic is really just a conversation starter

 

[JournalInTime]

I noticed on this forum that the thread topic is really just a conversation starter

I'm the admin on other forums. I've noticed that this is true of all of them.

 

[ArbeeNYC]

Pre-Urquiza style teachers did not teach codigos for ideological reasons.

Please explain.

 

[ArbeeNYC]

Isn't this more about floor craft and milonga style rather than apilado?

Hmm. True. How did that happen? Someone did divert some replies into an earlier floorcraft discussion but we're back here again. Clearly bad floorcraft.

 

[Gssh]

Well, I am not sure that chacarera and other folk dances with fixed sequences are really relevant analogies.

I think when "the masses" dance, whether in Finland in the 80s or Argentina in the 40s, then there is no dedicated concept, something that got learned, and there is also no overall elegance. Basically a feeling of wanting to move forward, similar to a demonstration on the street.

I don't think of the "fixed sequences" part as an analogy, but of the "dance is for moving in a crowd" part - e.g. chacarera works just fine as a couples dance, and there are plenty of performers who do it that way, but there is an awareness that this is a group dance. And i would argue that moving forward/having a ronda is a concept - and a concept worth developing. (and it is pretty much what dance is historically and anthropologically about)
Looking at the old ballroom videos, and the modern folk dance videos i am thinking that floorcraft is less a question of skills and training, but of expectations. When people think of tango they think of performers, a single couple doing a showy (or elegant) dance - people don't want to learn tango because they see the social dance, and what to be able to be on that dancefloor.
I think of the milonga / the group dance as one of the defining characteristics of tango, and one that should be acknowledged and cherished. Somewhere else i said that for me somebody who does pure stage performance tango with their partner, and never sets foot into a milonga is very much in the grey area of "somewhere between tango and not-tango", and i am leaning more into the direction of non-tango at the moment. It is like the question if olympic 10m air-rifle is hunting - sure, it is a highly refined form of some aspect of the technical skills required for hunting, but for me this isolated high level skill is detached enough from the application to make the relationship tenuous. And when i say that i am not sure i want to take a gold medalist deer hunting i am not slighting their athleticism, their skill, or the effort it took them to be able to do what they do, but i am questioning if what they do is the same as what i do.

 

[opendoor]

Please explain..

I did last week in the other thread, Arbee !

 

[LadyLeader]

Didn't learn of the 8CB through social AT lessons but through a ballroom teacher who we used early on when the AT group wasn't helpful. He explained that step 1 backwards of the 8CB had been when inviting the follower onto the dancefloor into the ronda, and the first dance step was step 2, i.e. you never stepped backwards against the flow without checking (ok, we know more now about spacing).

I know the Argentinian maestros couldn't agree on where to start (1 or 2). We've also had an introduction where the leader's backward step is along the LOD (now that confuses them).

I'd heard the 8CB was really introduced as a teaching aid for the US.

Isn't this more about floor craft and milonga style rather than apilado?

One story here in Nordic was that 8CB was short enough to fit a BsAs living room/home training. Another version was pointing to the educational value - this pattern contained all the steps needed for tango!

Are there more stories??

 

[Rabbit]

I think of the milonga / the group dance as one of the defining characteristics of tango, and one that should be acknowledged and cherished.

For me it's primarily a couple dance. If the milonga as an institution were to disappear and be replaced by some other format of dance social, I wouldn't be bothered in the slightest.

I think we have to accept each other's viewpoints as valid forms of tango though.

 

[JournalInTime]

For me it's primarily a couple dance. If the milonga as an institution were to disappear and be replaced by some other format of dance social, I wouldn't be bothered in the slightest.

I seek a connection with the music and with my partner. I respect the connection with the other couples on the floor, but I don't seek it – it's a thing I accept as necessary in order to accommodate everybody's connection with the music and with their partners. I wouldn't call it a necessary evil, but merely a fact of life given the way we do things.

If tomorrow, all milongas were to take place on floors twice as long and as wide, but with the same number of couples – giving each couple four times the area* – I'd be just fine with it. I'd find it more agreeable, in fact, because I don't go to the milonga for the energy of a packed dance party. I go to the milonga for the curated music, the professional sound system, the good-quality dance surface, and the room big enough to hold lots of potential partners.

So, were the format to change, those are the things that would matter. If the music, sound, and floor were all excellent, and there was space for lots of favorite dancers, I wouldn't care if it were in a huge gym, if tango switched to a spot/slot dance, or even if it were because I won the lottery and had a private salon at home for me and lots of my friends.

—

* While reducing the number of couples to 1/4 what it is would have the same physical effect, it would be bad because it would mean tango is dying out. The relationships between attendance, door fees, and rent per unit area are convoluted enough that I doubt that 1/4 the admissions and four times the area would be equivalent.

 

[itwillhappen]

So, were the format to change, those are the things that would matter. If the music, sound, and floor were all excellent, and there was space for lots of favorite dancers, I wouldn't care if it were in a huge gym, if tango switched to a spot/slot dance, or even if it were because I won the lottery and had a private salon at home for me and lots of my friends.

Interesting mind game.

When I was looking to get back into dancing after 35 years, I found the dance parties for couples in my old dance school quite boring. I then switched to tango and milongas.

But if I remember the dance parties there when I was a teenager, they were pretty similar to my today's milongas. Attractive girls, the thrill of inviting, to be too late, or to be rejected from time to time, sometimes to dance well enough, and sometimes not.

No, I don't every day need a tightly packed dance floor, but if that's the case, it's good to be able to dance that way too. And from a certain emptiness, the location also looks like dead.

 

[JournalInTime]

And from a certain emptiness, the location also looks like dead.

That's more of an economic factor that anything else: I know "dead" because I've seen it, and it's just terrible . . . for the organizer. For the people in attendance, it isn't dead if their favorite partners are present – only if they're alone with a few strangers. At the place that died while I was behind the bar, those who were still coming were thrilled to have the entire floor for themselves and their friends, and were genuinely shocked when the event closed (because they and their friends weren't enough to keep it in business!), as they were having fun.

Most people develop favorites and join cliques, and aren't truly invested in dancing with complete strangers. The absence of lots of couples spells death for the event. It's only the absence of a few specific people that spells death for the attendees. Wrestling with this conundrum is one of the more painful aspects of milonga organization (and why organizers tolerate horribly rude dancers who are popular with those to whom they aren't rude . . . they make things less fun for many people, but they also guarantee business).