Why some women are not asked to dance

[JournalInTime]

Of course, but I wrote of Encuentros. Apparently you haven't been invited yet, Cabbit. The participants are handpicked, and belong to the best social dancers. You need a recommendation or many years of waiting to get in.

I disagree. There are lots of encuentros I know about. Lots of the dancers invited are people I know. They are not "the best social dancers." They are the "the dancers best at being social": people with the right handshakes and winks. Several post videos on Facebook, and I see the faces of people who aren't merely not the best, but in fact among the worst – real menaces to the safety of the ronda.

 

[Reuven Thetanguero]

Interesting. I'm curious to hear more about those creeps since it very much sounds like I'm one of them

If you have enough self-reflection to recognize it, you are not a creep...

 

[ardix]

I try to observe for musicality in their social dancing.(...) Whenever I see someone in the ronda whose musicality I find appealing, I will observe them more. (...) When you can see someone dance with a variety of different partners and still exhibit interesting musicality, you can say that’s a good dancer.

That's an interesting perspective...how do you see, as an outsider, if a follower exhibits musicality (I hope not from the adornos ). I guess for leaders is easier, since they are proposing the "scenario".

 

[JournalInTime]

That's an interesting perspective...how do you see, as an outsider, if a follower exhibits musicality (I hope not from the adornos ). I guess for leaders is easier, since they are proposing the "scenario".

I cannot speak for Bailango, but I use two measures when observing followers on the social dance floor:

1. When the leader leaves an opening (pause that isn't in the music + slight relaxation of abrazo, both visible if you're looking), the follower improvises in the space offered in a way that "shows me the music."

2. When the leader is moving into danger (I don't care how often you turn your head or your couple, it takes no time for another couple to move into a blind spot with an over-large or unmusical movement), the follower creates a change of course or a stop on the music, and the leader reacts as if it were planned all along.

Those indicate that the follower isn't merely an instrument for showing the leader's musicality, but musical in their own right.

However, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss ornaments. A follower who triples a single step (turning "tah" into "tic-tic-tic," still landing on the correct foot), collects with little crosses rather than simply heel to heel, removes and returns her left arm in a grand movement, tips her toe up and then down in a pause, puts a little hip wiggle into a lively step, etc. is "just" decorating, but also being musical when the gesture clearly marks some part of the music.

 

[Rabbit]

Whereas I find musicians roundly terrible for expressing music in movement.

The music is created BY movement as well. Watch the bandoneon or violin bow.

 

[ardix]

However, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss ornaments.

Right, I should have written "_not only_ from the adornos". I think while the adornos can give an indication they are highly overrated (at least among followers - I feel like swearing in the church now ).

 

[JournalInTime]

The music is created BY movement as well. Watch the bandoneon or violin bow.

You could do that, but think it would lead to the same weirdness that falls out of thinking that tango is what the feet do. When I say "movement," I mean what I said in the quoted post, "the physicality of two bodies moving across a floor" – all the feet, legs, torsos, arms, hands, necks, and heads of two people moving in three dimensions. That's far more complexity than instrument-handling can inform.

Again, I have a scant 10 years of experience, so I could be clueless, but in a few thousand floor hours with a few hundred partners, I've observed no correlation between "is a musician" and "dances musically." I have noted correlations between "is a martial artist" and "dances musically," and "is into yoga and meditation" and "dances musically," though. My humble opinion is that most people are already musical in their head and don't need to exercise a mental capacity, but have blocks that need work in order to let that musicality flow through the body – and that people in other movement disciplines have already done the necessary work. I also suspect that the unfortunate few who are not already musical in their head can't develop the capacity through dance training . . .

 

[JournalInTime]

Right, I should have written "_not only_ from the adornos". I think while the adornos can give an indication they are highly overrated (at least among followers - I feel like swearing in the church now ).

Understood and agreed! My first two indicators – musical use of openings (riffs or solos when offered space for free play) and redirecting the lead on the music (counter-proposal) – were not "ornaments" for good reason. Ornaments alone don't say much and get out of hand all too easily. But at the same time, the dancer (leader or follower) who never decorates rarely looks as musical as the one who decorates judiciously and with purpose. It's a bit like cooking: you don't want to be bland but you also don't want to dump in half the spice rack.

 

[opendoor]

...Erdemsel comes to mind.. That's all near-mathematical analysis of notes and measures.. already do that naturally..

So do I. Even as a tango beginner, I didn't need any musicality training. Nevertheless, I signed up for Murat's musicality workshop in November. I would like to know what the competitors are capable of.

 

[itwillhappen]

I hate seeing this decline in milongas. They should be THE place to dance but something is going very wrong in the execution

I don't see a decline in milongas. Maybe the tango budgets are not enough for exclusive taxi dancers?

 

[itwillhappen]

Everybody is learning all the time though. No such thing as a perfect dancer.
I like going to my regular milongas. It is about the people. Festivals however... Im on a festival right now, and there is a serious lack of good intermediate dancers. The average skill level is way lower than on the milongas at home, not worth the time.

My regular milonga has a potential catchment area of 5 million people and not much competition that day of the week. I don't go to festivals in the hope that the level could be higher there. This then requires selected events with travelers at least from Northern Europe.

 

[JournalInTime]

I don't see a decline in milongas. Maybe the tango budgets are not enough for exclusive taxi dancers?

My regular milonga has a potential catchment area of 5 million people and not much competition that day of the week. I don't go to festivals in the hope that the level could be higher there. This then requires selected events with travelers at least from Northern Europe.

I think you, like me, see things differently because you live in an area with lots of tango going on.

I've seen no decline in milongas, either . . . the level is the same in 2022 as it was in 2013, when I started, and I've never heard of people around here paying to dance in private lessons but not going out to dance at milongas. I know a lot of teachers, so word would reach me. Most teachers are serious about pushing students to attend milongas because that's advertising. With an active, vibrant scene, they'd lose too much business if they used their limited time for private dance sessions.

Setting aside my modest travel budget, I don't feel very inclined to hit festivals, either. There are ~4 million people in my metro area and a few million more within a short road trip. There's tango every day, and most days you have two or three options. This pushes up the level and means that an "average" milonga here is like an "advanced" one in a smaller place.

But I suppose that if you're in a town with (to exaggerate) eight dancers, one teacher, and one milonga a month, the teacher might be only too happy to take money to dance in private, because there isn't much other business, and you may have to travel to see high-level dancing.

Just because of the way statistics and urbanization work, though, I suspect that "tango = tango in large urban centers" is close enough to true that you can use the city-of-millions experience as the general one that drives the culture of the dance, even if specific people here don't live that experience. I know from my moderator status on other, unrelated web forums that special-interest forums like this one attract disproportionate representation from smallish places specifically because there aren't enough people there to discuss the special interest in person . . . you have to look online.

 

[ArbeeNYC]

I know a few followers, who are not of the calibre you describe, but also prefer to spend their dance budget on private lessons (and a few pairs of shoes). They don’t attend group classes, practicas or milongas. One, I spoke to recently, is deciding between two teachers for her private classes.

This could be part of the problem not part of the solution, however. There are followers who only dance with taxi dancers and never learn or wish to dance with anyone else at milongas. Part of learning tango is learning to dance with various partners. As you improve, hopefully, you'll be dancing with more accomplished partners. Dance with a "teacher" or taxi dancer and all you learn are their tics and tricks. And I would imagine it gets boring after a while.

 

[ArbeeNYC]

It seems that other communities have a different definition of a beginner (less than three months of class).

Whoa, I'd say less than two years of class and practice. For a leader, five years. Gavito said it took 20.

 

[Bailango]

I cannot speak for Bailango, but I use two measures when observing followers on the social dance floor:

1. When the leader leaves an opening (pause that isn't in the music + slight relaxation of abrazo, both visible if you're looking), the follower improvises in the space offered in a way that "shows me the music."

2. When the leader is moving into danger (I don't care how often you turn your head or your couple, it takes no time for another couple to move into a blind spot with an over-large or unmusical movement), the follower creates a change of course or a stop on the music, and the leader reacts as if it were planned all along.

Those indicate that the follower isn't merely an instrument for showing the leader's musicality, but musical in their own right.

However, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss ornaments. A follower who triples a single step (turning "tah" into "tic-tic-tic," still landing on the correct foot), collects with little crosses rather than simply heel to heel, removes and returns her left arm in a grand movement, tips her toe up and then down in a pause, puts a little hip wiggle into a lively step, etc. is "just" decorating, but also being musical when the gesture clearly marks some part of the music.

That's an interesting perspective...how do you see, as an outsider, if a follower exhibits musicality (I hope not from the adornos ). I guess for leaders is easier, since they are proposing the "scenario".

Yes, the leaders are easier. Most of the time my eyes are focused on the leaders.
With the followers I agree with the first point made by @JournalInTime and the last para. The second point of redirection by the follower is valid but that’s easier to feel in a dance and tricky to catch as an observer.

One of the ways follower’s musicality jumps out for an observer is when she is dancing with a non-musical leader.

To build on what @JournalInTime wrote, the followers with musicality will not finish the movement as expected after the leader has expressed the intention. They will let the music guide them on how they will finish the movement. By how, I mean what they will do movement wise and time they will take to do it. Do they slow it down, do they syncopate, do they match the energy or accent in the music with an element of their movement. Some of it can be very subtle. If I can match what part of movement is expressing which part of the music, that’s the same as watching a leader. Like they say leader is the frame and follower is the picture. Follower can paint the picture depending on the music.