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'Nuevo Tango' October 1, 2011, 9:09 pm

"Que Nunca Me Falte" September 28, 2011, 9:21 pm

Francisco Lomuto September 23, 2011, 8:04 pm

Rodolfo Biagi September 15, 2011, 5:31 pm

"Soñar y Nada Más" September 10, 2011, 4:07 pm

Enrique Rodriguez September 5, 2011, 7:26 pm

"Maleva" September 1, 2011, 6:35 pm

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1.) Length of Stay.
2.) Knowledge of ARGENTINE Spanish.
3.) Quality of Dance.
4.) How Social You Are!

Length of Stay.

Most folks come here for 2 weeks, on a little tango vacation. Some in the 3 week category. And for a lot of them. That’s fine. However, I know for fact that 2 weeks isn’t long enough. You think it is when you’re planning it. It sounds like a good length of time to start. But trust me on this one…Two Weeks is just a drop in the bucket here. At the bare, absolute, minimum, plan on a month, and even then…that’s not enough. I’d start with 3 and see what happens. By the 3rd month, you’re really just getting past the first few levels of BsAs Hell! What’s that ? BsAs Hell is by its very definition, a state of being of wanting to dance with better dancers and realizing that you’re going to sit all fucking night long, or at the very least, dance with dancers that you just know that are going to hang on you, pull on you, push you, and that’s its going to last for a few weeks like that! Its really a trial by fire, everyone has to go through it. Its how you cut your teeth here. And there are several levels of it. By that time the argentines, actually start to notice you, the better dancers start to notice you at the same time, they’ve figured out that you’re not going anywhere…and that you’re sticking around for a while. This actually helps. And saying that you’re sticking around is one thing…showing up and doing it, is entirely different! Action is stronger than words.

I was at La Glorieta a week or so ago, and this follower that i had been trying to get a dance with for the last 3 weeks, and she kept not accepting my invitations…you see, even your teacher gets snubbed! She finally accepted. She’s Argentine. And I had heard several things about her, which is why I was so keen to try her out. 1.) She doens’t dance with anyone EXCEPT the Porteños. 2.) If she dances with you, more than once, you are ALMOST Porteño quality. 3.) She’s frakkin’ delish to dance with to Biagi, Calo, and absolutely LOVES to dance a Canaro Milonga. 4.) She speaks english ONLY if you are good enough. Otherwise she’ll feign ignorace of the language.

So I finally got my dance with her last night. After the first song (Biagi’s
“A mi no me interesa”), she said….”QUE LINDO!”, which means, loosely translated, ‘Very Beautiful!’. I said, “Thank you”, in english. And she looked a little disappointed, and said in near perfect english without an accent, “You dance very Beautifully Miles.”. She knew my name, and that also spoke volumes that we had mutual friends, or she had taken the time to find out who I was, and what was more important than that was that she had been watching me! Suffice it said, I was surprised to say the least. There was a silence. And she filled it by confirming my thoughts. “Yes I have been watching you, and you danced with one of my friends a few weeks back at Villa Malcolm on a Friday night. She had said that you were her best dance, in months…and right after that she had left and gone home. So I have taken an interest in seeing what would make her do that. I see her reasoning was quite justified.” I was floored. She continued, “You dance like a Porteño. And yet you’re not one. I heard you were a teacher from NYC, and that you’re here for 3 months.” More silence from me, all I could do was nod. “You know the argentines won’t even look at you unless you’ve been here for 6 plus months. You’re doing pretty good, people are taking notice of you! Keep it up”. The second song had started and I was so embarrased that I honestly was speechless.

Trust me, in this case my friends….LONGER is BETTER!

Knowledge of ARGENTINE Spanish.

I’ve said it before…knowing the language will help you in the long run. Its only a sign of respect that you’ve taken the time to learn their language. That said. Argentine Spanish is NOT (as I’ve been told several times) an independent variant of the language because its not a written language, therefore its only a dialect of the language. And knowing the difference between what’s written on the page and how its spoken locally is like NIGHT and day. I’ve had 6 years of spanish and I can’t understand these people! I’ve had native spanish speakers say the same thing.

You really do have to hear the difference to know what Im talking about but there are some truisms to knowing this language. 1.) It will help you make friends a lot faster. 2.) It will help in classes, and 3.) It will confirm that you’re not a gringo/a. You are in fact sticking around for a while…and have gone to the trouble to learn the language and the culture. It speaks volumes about you as a person!

Another reason to learn the language is becuase at the milongas you’re going to be confronted with dance partners that only speak spanish! And knowing the language also helps to grease the wheels as it were, so that you can have an enjoyable conversation verbally as well as kinesthetically!

And still one more reason to learn the language: Food! Knowing what you’re ordering…very helpful!.

And another: Taxis!

And one more: Store Clerks!

Quality of Dance.

My job as a teacher is to teach you to dance better than the rest of the room. Those of you that have studied with me a long time, have taken the benefits of my experience and what I’ve taught you and experienced first hand what I’ve been saying and why I say it. I’ve taught you to lead, I’ve taught you to follow, I’ve taught you to do both at the same time. You have had no idea that this way of teaching, and learning the dance is a very new concept in tango. Furthermore that the idea of actual technique to how you move your body is very important and again, a very new concept. That being the case…I have taught you to dance with the top 5% of the room in the united states. What I didn’t know was that that top 5% of the room in the US is also the top 1 or 2% of the room in BsAs.

My advice to you is this: even LIGHTER, SOFTER, more SUBTLY! Know your technique, cold! Know it inside and out. Fall back on what you have learned from me, it will hold you in good stead. Its a good foundation for very similar ideas. And you have been well trained well, you just don’t know it. You have had nothing to compare it to. Now you do. My experience. I can safely say to you that what you’ve been taught is right on the money. Go with that. That my friends, use me as you litmus test…if I rave about your dance, if I say GOOD JOB, then you’re on the right path. If not…time to take a few more privates until you do. So that when you get here…you are well trained to navigate these floors.

A few rules to follow:

Tighter.
Smaller.
Faster.
Cleaner.
Leave nothing behind!

Which is to say that every enrosque is TIGHTER. Every molenete should be close embrace turn, with collapsed crosses (forward and back) and use the side step to get around him. Your weight changes, as SUBTLE, and CLEAR. No tension or force in the embrace…EVER! Walk on the beat, no matter what….always!

How Social You Are!

Some people are gregarious. Some people are not. Some people deal well with social situations and some people don’t. I do. When I want to. Which is to say that I have the luxury of turning on social charms when I want to do so. That skill is invaluable here, you have to be able to be very social with people, that’s what the argentines recognize more than anything else. You must be able to walk around the milonga with a smile on your face and be able to interact with everyone in a very pleasant and joyful manner….This reflects on you in more ways that you can imagine. Who you sit with, who you talk to at the milongas, who you dance with…all of this reflects on you at the milongas. Everyone sees everything. You can immediately tell who’s sleeping with who, who’s not talking to who, and who’s interested in whom for what reason!

So being social is far more important in BsAs than the dancing part. In the rest of the world there is an axiom that doesn’t hold true in BsAs, and that is, DANCE FIRST, TALK LATER. Here in BsAs, its the polar opposite with a twist: TALK FIRST, DANCE…MAYBE! And so that you understand why this is a twist…its because here, at nearly any given milonga you’re looking at half the room are teacher class dancers of some measure – whether they’re any good at it is a whole other issue entirely; the other half aren’t, and that means that either those teacher class dancers have been teaching all day (privates, classes, workshops, or seminars) usually until about 10 pm every night, and that generally means that the last thing in the world they want to do is DANCE! So mostly its sit, unwind, have a few glasses of wine, a cervesa or 3, a plate of medialunas…chat with their friends, bitch about the idiot students they had today…etc. So for most argentines, especially the pros in the room…its TALK first, dance MAYBE….

Its important to recognize that there’s also the cultural thing that you won’t ever see it talked about, but you see it all over the place, even in the supermercados, even in the larger chain stores, something you’d never see in US store or store chain…ever. Managers kissing their workers on the cheeks as they change shifts and go for the day or come in for the day. Its cultural, even the chatting while at work, before work, after work…lots of slow play time here. Its cultural to be VERY, very social here.

Its also important to pay attention to the social behavior, and witness what’s actually happening. This is the WHO you talk to part, the WHERE you sit in the room part, and WHO’s sitting with you part! All of these things have a bearing on your social standing in the tango world – in BsAs. When I first got here, a friend of mine from Amsterdam introduced me via FB to argentine Gentleman. He didn’t speak a word of english, and I didn’t speak a word of spanish. He invited me to his table at Salon Canning. As I discovered, his table is a corner table, and very sought after, and its HIS table. Everyone that passed by said hello and bought drinks for him. I had no idea who the hell this guy was but he was, as far as the BsAs tango crowd goes, quite important. People that I know from the states who have been here before even stopped by to say hello and kiss him on the cheek. And my mere presence at his table was shocking to some, if not eyebrow raising! Shortly after that…I began to get dances with Argentine women exclusively. And when I say, shortly, I mean like that night. I had been in BsAs for all of 3 days at that point and I was dancing with some of the argentine women that had seen me sitting at his table. Truth be told that very night sitting there, I was being cabaceo’d left and right by women. And I did nothing about it, except watch the dancing, and have a few drinks with my new friend. We spent the rest of that night, not talking, but he drank and I had a coke. All night long. At the end of the night, he said to me in his best broken spanglish, that I could join him at his table anytime….and to come by often! That mere act of being social with him kinda cemented my position in the BsAs tango world for the next few days and really weeks. I was a someone somewhere as far as the Argentines were considered, the fact that I danced like a porteño meant nothing…except that the ladies were talking about me as I later found out.

This one little tiny factoid gets omitted or overlooked in all tango experiences and learning about the dance. Its not about the steps, the moves, the music, or the how many sacadas you can perform with flawless repetition, it really is about who you know!

So I thought I’d compile my list of favs and places that I have enjoyed dancing. Mind you, you will find your own way. You will gravitate towards your own group of peeps, and thereby go where they go, and hang out with them or not. This list is only a guide, use it, throw it out, turn it inside out…do what you want with it. I don’t care. I’m just telling what I know.

SUNDAY: La Glorieta (sping & summer only: 8 to 11), then El Beso (11 to 2), and lastly La Viruta (10 to 5 am).
MONDAY: Villa Malcolm (10 to 3) OR Salon Canning (10 to 4).
TUESDAY: El Beso (10 to 3) or Practica X (10 to 4).
WEDNESDAY: Villa Malcolm (10 to 3) and then La Viruta (3 to 6 am).
THURSDAY: Nino Bien (10 to 4).
FRIDAY: Villa Malcolm (10 to 3) and then La Viruta (3 to 6 am).
SATURDAY: DNI Practica (4 to 7), Milonga X (10 to 3), La Viruta (3 to 6am).

You suck. You’re going to suck. You’re not going to get any better with a simple 2 week visit to BsAs. You may have a few amazing private lessons that will radically change your perspective of how you view the dance. But understand this – In fact, it takes not only several private lessons, religiously, (depending on the teacher) to see any marked improvement, but also RELENTLESS and DILIGENT PRACTICE every single day for hours at a time, of what you have learned, plus SOCIAL DANCING every single night with your betters in the room before you see any kind of improvement.

I shit you not, you’re going to get your head handed to you. Deal with it.

Reality: As far as the Argentines are concerned they view you in 1 of 3 ways, and sometimes in combination. a.) you’re a cash cow just waiting to be tapped. b.) you’re a tango tourist and really only there for 2 weeks, and really there’s not much to you. c.) you have no sense of timing, rhythm, and can’t walk (lead or follow), or navigate, and you’re taking up space! And furthermore, to be honest with you, they don’t give a rats damn about you! They’ve seen it all before, you are small, insignificant, pointless, and you have to do some pretty amazing things to get noticed in BsAs. And so that we’re clear on this, that ‘pretty amazing’ thing is not what you think it is: It is not vocabulary or how many different sacadas you can do to D’Arienzo’s ‘Pasion’ or how many lapis/enrosques you can squeeze into the 2 – 3 of De Angelis’s Pobre Flor; Nor is it about the skimpy skirts that you may wear or the plunging neckline that is soooo racy (for you); and it is certainly not about those flashy shoes you just bought! It *IS* about how clean your shit is!

‘Clean Shit’ is defined this way:

a.) I mean tight, as in how tight your crosses are, how tight your musicality is on the beat, to the musical puases, within the musical phrases, or how tight you look with your partner in time to the music … consistantly! or how tight and crisp your execution of your chosen vocab to the music is! That is tight.

b.) I mean clean, clean as in how little space you take up as a lead or follow, how you execute what you know in time to the music with accuracy to the musical phrasing you create or recieve.

c.) I mean ZERO daylight anywhere, this means that you ‘draft’ no one, you leave zero footprint that you were ever there, that your frame shows nothing of the outside…nada.

d.) I mean soft, as in it looks soft to be in, it IS soft to be in, and your partner is fucking smiling so frakkin radiantly that you’ve got to have plastic surgery to remove the damned thing and afterwards they rave about you to everyone they meet! That there is a line to get a dance with you….and I mean A LINE! No hyperbole here, just the facts. I’ve seen it happen and it does…but its RARE.

e.) I mean sharp, as in every move you make is on point, to the decimal place. That kind of sharp.

f.) I mean on the beat folks, that every note is an opportunity for you to make a musical symphony out of your dance, and you do so with every single note. Each pause is perfect, exacting and with singular musicality in its own right. You are so frakkin religious about hitting every beat, every pause, every musical phrase, that not only can people set their watch by you, but the World Time Clock has you registered as an external time piece!

That my friends is ‘CLEAN SHIT’…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

Having been there, I can safely say that what I taught you so far, is only a drop in the bucket. You have to step it up several notches beyond me yelling at you BEFORE you get onto the same planet, let alone the same geographical area as what I am telling you about.

This is the singluar REALITY CHECK you are going to get…because once you are on the ground, my words are going to ring in your ears and you’ll see what I mean.

That said as to the ‘sucking’ part, I am not saying this to put you down, I saying this to give you some serious perspective on what you will find there. You will find everything in every level of measure beyond what you imagined and some of what you can’t even comprehend. I’m also saying this because of my own experience of being what I am…a realist. I don’t want you to go with illusions that you’re going to be some tango superstar, and/or dance with the most amazing youtube stars you’ve seen, because you’re not. So don’t pretend to be that or want to be that. At the same time, you have to go with a real attitude which is BE HUMBLE, BE GRACIOUS, BE KIND…ALWAYS.

You’re going to find that BsAs is different for everyone, you will find your way, you will make new friends, you will gain a whole new understanding of the dance and the social aspect of the dance (which is far more important to you than you realize) but that there are some basic truisms that happen when you’re on the ground in BsAs.

Herein is a basic dance floor survival guide.

(0) Use cabaceo regardless of the milonga – you can always spot a bad/inexperienced dancer because they walk right up to your table & stand in front of you….haha…bad….portenas will not want to dance with you. You can also use this to your advantage with someone who you know is stalking you for a dance.

(1) You’re going to be quickly disillusioned about the quality of dance in Argentina. If you’re thinking that the argentines are the best dancers in the world, the sad fact is that they aren’t. Only a small, and I do mean SMALL, percentage of them have learned any ‘technique’ as you and I would understand it, and because of that it makes logical sense that they have no concept of it. And the ones that have are the dancer performers that you see on youtube, and more than likely they’re not going to dance with you, not because you’re not good enough (which you aren’t) but because they don’t know you! What they think of as technique is nothing more than patterns and steps to a musical beat. There are rare exceptions to this, and a few teachers with the idea of teaching actual body mechanics and musculature technique as you would in a typical dance class. Most of the classes you will take with the except of 2 schools and 4 teachers (that I know of) will teach you patterns and steps, they’re taught from the perspective of monkey see, monkey do! And don’t even think for an instant that you’re going to get anything more out of them. There is a reason for this, that’s because the argentines have something over the western dancer that on the surface seems antiquated and useless to us. They PAY ATTENTION. They can do MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO. They have the ability, because they have to, to literally look at something once, and are able to replicate it…exactly and precisely. Which accounts for the way that things are taught here, and why things feel the way that they do, which means muscled force in a lot of cases. The idea of studied dance through technique is a relatively new concept in the tango world. Also if you’ve been taught as one of my students to have a light and soft embrace, that I’ve drilled into your head a thousand times….be prepared for HEAVY, HANGING, and COMPRESSED (squeezed with muscled force!). The dancers who don’t do this are most of the european dancers, the italians, and the russians. So you’ll have a fine time dancing with them.

(2) You have no space for boleos, ganchos, colgadas, volcadas, none of that shit flies on a social dance floor here in the outer track of dance. There’s no space for it. You literally have millimeters between yourself and the next couple. So that means LADIES keep your feet on the floor, think tight, and I do mean tight, clean MILONGUERO style turns as I have shown you! Do not open your hips to your lead, you don’t have the space for it. Leaders, you have NO room for error on your turns, none. You also have no room for backsteps or side steps….none. Keep it moving forward.

(3) Note for leaders only: Your going to get jostled. A lot. And from older dancers specifically you’re going to get an elbow thrown at you. Its deliberate! Its to scare the shit out of you. You have to stand your ground. Take the hit twice and then throw it back! The leader that’s doing this is doing it for 1 of 2 reasons….and if its an older dancer its the first, if its a younger dancer, its the second. a.) the older dancer is throwing the elbow at you because he’s testing you, sort of like game of chicken to see who’ll flinch first. in the case of b.) he’s doing it because you’re holding up the line of dance!

(3a) Note for leaders only: Dude, lose the vocab. Seriously. Walk, walk, walk, ocho, ocho, ocho, molinete, cross. In every combination you can think of and then some. You won’t and don’t have space for being fancy. People that do are hogging the line of dance and usually get thrown off the dance floor in one way, shape, or form or another.

(4) LEARN SPANISH! Seriously. Know the 5 questions you’re going to get asked and how to respond to them and how to initiate them: a.) where are you from, b.) how long have you been dancing…etc.

(5) Get a drink in your hand, get a table and sit and talk with your friends. This is probably the single most important piece of advice I can give you. The dance here isn’t abou the dance, its about the social part. The argentines come to sit and talk with their friends…this is SOCIAL for them FIRST, and the dancing part is an after thought! For us in the western world, its the polar opposite, dance first, talk later. Wrong attitude to have here. They respect and recognize that you’re there to have a good time, not to show off your flashy moves. Its a given that you’re there to dance and to dance well. They don’t care…not one little bit that you’re some superstar from hobokin, NH. They honestly don’t give a rats damn. Oh to be certain they will watch you, they’ll talk about you, they see everything…however you’re not even on their radar screen yet. You are passing through their neck of the weeds. You’re there for 2 weeks and you’re gone. So they won’t even acknowledge that you exist! So drop the attitude, and the frakkin snobbery that you’re used to in the states…as I’ve discovered, it is the american dancer that is the snobby sob, not the argentines! So do yourself a favor, get a table, sit and talk with your friends, if you don’t have any…make some new ones! But get a table and talk about the sun, the moon, and the stars, but get a crew and hang the fuck out!

(6) Note for the ladies: You’re going to get groped, talked at, schmoozed, felt up, asked out to breakfast…get used to it. The simple fact is that the argentine men are good looking, sauve, and they know how to seduce a woman better than the western european man or the american man. Thats because there is an art to this idea of seduction. He already assumes, rightly so in a lot of cases, that you can’t dance. So he’s going to push you, pull you, and throw you around the dance floor and then he’s going to try to charm your pants off you! You have one weapon against all of that…the word that you will repeat a lot, “NO!”. He’s going to dance you the way that he’s going to dance you, but to the rest you can and should always say “NO”. A further note on this subject is that if he’s talked you up all night and he hasn’t danced with you, he wants to sleep with you. If he dances with you, he doesn’t want to sleep with you, he really just wants to dance with you. If he dances with you once in the night and then chats you up, he’s there for sex, and that’s it. You’re getting chatted up to have sex with him dear. Just remember to bring a condom with you if you’re agreeable to an argentine man that wants you. At the same time, don’t go looking for sex…you’re not going to find it. The fact is that there are a LOT of women in the room and they’re all wanting the same thing. It will find you….not to worry.

(7) Snobs. They’re everywhere. And they abound in BsAs…especially the Americans! If you’re a US based dancer, you’re going to see people you know from the US tango circuit or from NY or SF, expect them to say hello to you, maybe. But really don’t expect to sit with them at their table. Literally expect them to snub you, especially the ‘cool’ kids, and most especially the NYC based dancers. Its going to happen, you’re not worthy, yet. Don’t try to get in the cool kids scene, or to drink their coolaid…and by all means DON’T CABECEO them! The Europeans on the other hand…are much nicer. Expect them to invite to sit with them. The russians and the italians, same thing. The italians are much nicer, the russians…sadly, not so much but it depends on the russian. The serbs, the romainians, the croatians, the folks from poland….super nice, not the best dancers in the universe, but super nice and they’ll treat you with open arms.

(8) SMILE. A LOT. Not kidding.

(9) Leave your preconcieved notions of ‘PROPER’ BsAs at the door and go with an open mind. You’ll need it.

(10) Note for the leads: Argentine Women aren’t even looking at you. Don’t go there. However, because you’re not going to listen to me, I’ll tell you this….they’re going to hang on you, pull and push and use more tension and force than you’ve ever experienced in your entire life! Im not kidding about this. Had someone told me this when I first went, I wouldn’t have listened or cared. But after visiting a Chiropractor several times while I was in BsAs, I can safely say…just don’t dance with them…98% of the are absolutely HORRIBLE to dance with. As a side note to this, you will find very very very very few that are frakkin lovely to dance with once you get past the pretty dresses, shoes, and hair. Don’t go for looks, go for looking at TECHNIQUE, watch how musical they are, are THEY playing with the music ? IF so, that’s someone YOU want to know…very well!

(11) Note for followers: Go ahead, buy the shoes that you want. Its not going to make a rats damn worth of difference. Do you why ? Because most of the men never see your shoes because the room is too damned dark. That and there are several other ladies in the room with the exact same shoe. So let it go. Its not the shoe that matters, its what’s in the shoe that matters the most. Walk, Walk well, and Walk in time to the beat. Smile, nod, wave. Be *VERY* discriminating in WHO you say yes to…don’t just say yes to everything that comes along. How many times have I told you to WATCH the damned floor. Look for who looks good to dance with, who doesn’t push, pull, poke, prod, compress or squeeze their embrace. Watch who is walking on the beat and who is not. Note if the follower is consistantly on beat or not. If she is, then there’s he’s doing something right, if not….then you have a problem child and you want to stay away from him. Its the music that drives us and if you’re watching some lead that’s running all over the damned floor with his followers consistantly, you should expect to get that same thing when you dance with that lead…by the way, you’re encouraging him by dancing with him. Saying NO to that lead is the only real honest and nice thing you do to him so that he gets the message.

(12) Breathe. Learn to breathe. You’re going to see clean dancing beyond your wildest imaginings. You think you’ve seen some argentine couples on youtube that are fucking amazing. They’re shitty by comparison to what you’ll see on a social dance floor every night, especially the early morning milongas (La Viruta y El Yeita). Don’t let that detur you. Go, watch, learn.

(13) Reality is this: The evening really doesn’t start until 2 am. Anything before that is a warm up. A practica is not a practica but in fact a milonga with nicer clothes. There’s no practice that actually happens. Its a milonga with a practica name. There are 2 exceptions to this but the rest are all milongas. The late milongas are the places to be and to learn and to dance. They’re dark, get used to it. La Viruta is the lions den of BsAs, if you can crack La Viruta after 3 am in anything less than your first week, you have arrived, otherwise sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, watch and learn.

(14) Note for leaders: If its summer, bring a change of shirt…several, wear deoderant your followers will love you for it, also a hankerchief is also HIGHLY recommended! If its winter, invest in several suit jackets and a slew hankerchiefs. Seriously. Not kidding. Jeans and a t-shirt are for the street and private practice, dress to impress but don’t over do it with a tie…that’s just right out. No one wears them. Think, relaxed business casual and you’ll get on just fine.

(15) Plan on checking your bags at the coatcheck…its 2 pesos, which is 50 cents in US dollars. It’s worth it.

(16) You can change you shoes at the table, its not rude, its just unsightly. Do it quietly and under the table.

(17) Learn to pace yourself. You’re going to want to dance every tanda. DON’T! You have a long night ahead of you, and several days in a row of abusing your body ahead of you. Learn to pace yourself…go with a plan in mind. 2 tangos, 1 vals, sit 2, 2 tangos, 1 vals, sit 3, 1 milonga, start again.

(18) CHACARARA. Learn it, know it, dance it, live it. Chacarara is the NEW milonga.

(19) Argentine SAMBA. Its the sexiest thing since sliced bread. Dance it at your own grace and peril. Its not what you think it is….that’s all I can tell you.

More later as I think of it.

Let me set this up for you….

Husband and wife go to the milonga together, they dance the first tanda together, and then another, and then sit down and don’t dance again until 7 or 8 tandas later, again, with each other…this goes on for several hours. The night passes, at the end of the night, the last tanda they dance the Cumparsita together. He later confides to friends that he wanted to dance with X, Y, and Z partners. She, much later, confides to friends that she wanted to dance with A, B, C partners. Both felt that they couldn’t follow that desire because they felt obligated to dance with their romantic partner.

This happens a lot in tango based relationships, very rarely do they enjoy dancing together after a while, yet they feel obligated to dance with that person and that person alone because they’re committed to that person. At the same time there is this feeling of being tied down even more so with no way out, trapped. Running along side this is that you see all of their tango flaws which X, A, Y, B, Z, and C does not possess…but your romantic partner does have those flaws…in spades! You know what Irma Bombeck used to say, ‘The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Septic Tank!” Its amazing what projections we place on other people. My high school vice principle once said to me, “Don’t point the finger of blame at anyone else until you’ve pointed it at yourself first!”. He was right then, and he’s right now. I only mention this point in passing because its a contributing factor to killing the dancing relationship you have with your partner. Nobody likes to be second fiddle, period.

Today’s relationships are very Monogamous, but at the same time the very nature of tango is in fact quite the opposite, its ‘Polyamarous’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory) not polygamous which is not the same thing. A good reason why Polyamory actually works in tango is that the more partners you dance with, the more experienced you become. You’re able to hone your skillset, refine it, make it better (hopefully)…so it actually helps you to become a better dancer if you dance with different ‘multiple’ partners. At the same time, Monogamy doesn’t work in tango, for just the same reasons I pointed out. As you might imagine or have experienced first hand, at some point along the curve ‘jealousy’ rears its ugly head out of this dynamic. For a lot of people when they see their romantic partner dancing with someone else they feel a sense of insecurity and jealousy especially if their partner is having a great time with someone ELSE! You can easily understand how this may cause more strife than pleasure!

Is there a way around this slippery sloap ? Is there something that can be done ? A way that both parties can be in relationship and end up dancing with each other ?

Yes. There is one way that seems to work rather well….

Enter: The Dance Agreement!

So what is a Dance Agreement ? Its an agreement between dancing pairs that they have a set number of dances in an evening. Usually for a lot of romantic dancing pairs I know…they dance the first tanda together and the last tanda together. After that, all bets are off as it were! I know certain couples that have it by milonga tanda only, they must dance each milonga tanda with each other, and no one else. I know another that only dances the pugliese tandas with each other. They are free to dance with whomever they want EXCEPT in the cases of the agreement!

In the case of the more common agreement, there are usually some stipulations to guard against inciting insecurity and the resulting jealousy. Stipulations ? Usually there’s someone that 1 partner really loves dancing with, but the other partner sees that 3rd party as a threat to the security of their relationship, hence the ‘insecurity’. So we add a ‘rider’, a partial agreement to limit the number of tandas with X, or A.

Relationships are about compromise, and tango is no exception.

In an earlier life when I was going to weekly Freestyle Dance Events (dancefriday.com for example) and Contact Improv and dating in that world, I felt it was necessary that when I met someone new that was not part of the Freestyle Dance World and brought them to the dance that I explain the mores of the day, and the codes, and instilled the idea of the “dance agreement” so that they were prepared for what they were about to see and do. That it was ok, as far as I was concerned with things, that they dance with OTHER PEOPLE as often as they like, however, I get the last song of the night. That if they come with me, they leave with me. That was my way of seeing that we’re still on the same page. For the most part this worked out really well. I never felt threatened by any other men that danced with the women I was dating because for the most part I knew that she was leaving with me! I grew up a bit more after that and limited my ‘insecurity’ to just the last dance.

The solution of a ‘Dance Agreement’ is a good first step towards creating a healthy dance relationship, it is by no means the only one. Its just one that I’ve seen work time and time and time again. And remember, your milage may vary!