Successful community builders do it within the community, they don’t try and make it an image of themselves.

Sometimes people start asking me about Tango, what it is, why I dance it, etc, etc. They normally ask me to show them videos, of what it is like to dance Tango. It happened today and this video of Tomas Howlin dancing with Shorey Myers was what came up immediately into my mind. I then proceeded to explain that this video is not trivial to understand and I just want to show a part of tango that I profoundly enjoy, further explaining him that the most beautiful aspect of this video is how it tells a story and focuses on connection while being playful.

Music by Enrique Delfino and lyrics by Mario Rada. Only the second part of the poem is sung in this version by Fresedo.

¡Araca la cana!
Ya estoy engriyao…
Un par de ojos negros me han engayolao.
Ojazos profundos, oscuros y bravos,
tajantes y fieros hieren al mirar,
con brillos de acero que van a matar.
De miedo al mirarlos el cuor me ha fayao.
¡Araca la cana! ya estoy engriyao.

Yo que anduve entreverao
en mil y una ocasión
y en todas he guapeao
yo que al bardo me he jugao
entero el corazón
sin asco ni cuidao.
Como un gil vengo a ensartarme
en esta daga que va a matarme
si es pa’ creer que es cosa’e Dios
que al guapo más capaz
le faye el corazón.

The lyrics are heavy on the lunfardo and a scholar (Nicolas Poppe) has roughly translated the first part to:

Watch out for cops!
I’m imprisoned
A pair of black eyes have arrested me
Big, profound eyes, dark and fierce
sharp and ferocious they hurt at a look
with sparkles of steel that will kill
from fear of looking at them my heart has failed me
watch out for prison! I’m imprisoned!

I danced slightly different on one or two songs yesterday. Somehow, my milonga was not anymore based on a more typical/canonical phrasing that normally starts and ends on the beat, albeit syncopated, but it was now spanning measures in a less obvious way. I realized it at a point – boy, my face must have look really apprehensive – but just as it appeared in my dance it somehow disappeared soon after.

This is interesting to me because it means my dance is not dying but somehow evolving. It made me very happy, indeed, made my night. Well, that and also the fact that those tandas were danced with someone that I haven’t danced with in a long time. She was amazing to dance with.

On the other hand, and making it even more interesting, is that it captivates my inquisitive mind of how novelty in musical interpretation appears and develops. A lot of people learn other’s musicality or learn the basics of developing musicality, but this is a bit different. This is the real-time observation of how one’s mind develops over time. Fascinating.

I believe some people don’t understand some of my actions. I have been fortunate to get dances from what are generally perceived to be (among US tangueros that is) top-notch followers. I am grateful for it, believe me, I am. And that is all good.

Most people expect me to be dancing much more with the best dancers from my city, namely, with the younger crowd that have worked really hard. They are – in all honesty – technically formidable to dance with. And I like dancing with them. Alas, not as much as they would like to. All this would be fine if this didn’t have any social backlash. However, as my fellow readers know, this is after all, first and foremost, a human affair. An interaction of sorts. I have never discussed these matters with anyone except my closest friends in tango world. They’re not that many and not very prone to talking it seems, as I still feel misunderstood by a lot of people.

What most people don’t get is that I don’t want to always dance with a great follower. I don’t always want to show her and myself how far we’ve come along in our tango journey, padding ourselves in the back and holding each other as if we were the answer to humanity’s tango (wait, what?) if a war were to kill every tango dancer in the world except us. What I want is to have meaningful dances with people that I believe are nurturing a mutual respect and passion at that precise moment, to dance that tanda. I want it to move us both forward, either in our friendship or in providing us a new insight into what tango is all about, or even, life.

I cannot repeat over and over on this blog how much I love dancing with people that are truly happy to be dancing. At all. Some have had so many misfortunes in their lives that they feel the luckiest person in the world to even be able to walk, let alone dance. You feel it. You feel that thirst for the dance and how meaningful and fulfilling it is to quench it with your heart, with your humanity. You better be at that precise moment the best human being you can be because the whole interaction is raw. The dance becomes raw and real; it may hurt and mutual trust reigns for lack of better way to handle the whole thing.

Javier Rodriguez says at a point in a interview for some tango movie/documentary I can’t remember now that dancing with an old milonguera is special. It’s not a simple dance. You’re really just not dancing with a friend casually, you’re dancing with “80kg of tango!” (free translation). And this is my message. Don’t just dance with someone’s technique. Dance with someone’s 20 years of sadness due to a lost son. Dance with someone celebrating their cancer survival every day of their life. Dance, dance a lot. But with them, for them and by who they truly are.

And just like that, spinning alternative music at the last tanda, he screwed up the energy of the practica. Everyone will go home thinking about how dancing to his lame, slow and overplayed cheesy songs sucked. Thanks DJ, you rock.

I am always amazed at how fast people dance a lot of songs. I believe this normally stems from lack of dynamics in the dance as well as from the phobia of doing too little. I’d like to talk a bit about what is – for me, a mere humble beginner – the most important technical aspects of a dancer: dynamics and plasticity.

First of all, I felt like writing this post after watching this youtube clip from Virginia Pandolfi and Fabian Peralta. Feel free to watch it before, while you read(!) or after.

Now, what is more obvious to me in this clip is that they’re both taking their time. Fabian is keeping a constant communication – invisible to the more naïve eye – and giving her time to feel the music. Yes, this whole dancing thing is about the music. Now, their dancing is artful to me because while there are slower moments, they’re not really pauses. They’re just full of dynamics, just like in music you can have staccato, portato, marcato, legato, etc. The notes can be the same, but it’s all about how you connect them, how you travel from one to the other, in this case, how you finish a turn or how you resolve – or not – a cross.

In my mind, plasticity is one’s ability to change the quality of the dance in a continuous way. In physics, there are phenomena that are discrete, such as energy layers in atoms: there’s only discrete and determined energy values that electrons can occupy and change between. On the other hand, you can also have much more non-discrete events – or that have the quality of – such as a spring: you can push it more or less depending on how much force you’re aiming for. Plasticity is, then, the quality of being able to work under a wide gamut of dynamic possibilities but – even more importantly – to change between these regimes in a gradual manual.

The more cunning/experienced of you will point out that this stems for the ability of being relaxed, connected to the floor, sensitive to the leader/follower, etc. Yes, all this is true. However, I feel that a lot of dancers are cultivating technical skills without an encompassing goal that puts them together and builds a newer quality. For me, these two are ultimate technical quality/skills to achieve for.

Today I understood a bit better a move I have been working on and off at practicas for some months now. Not that it’s insanely difficult in the sense that only a handful persons in the world can do it. The thing is that it’s so intricate and with so many options that I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to understand more deeply some of the nuances of the whole thing.

Today was different because somehow I could make better use of one idea that Melina and Detlef taught at a workshop some months ago. When thinking more about the concept and applying it, a lot of things and options suddenly opened up.

Morale of this story: Even if you don’t feel or foresee the benefits immediately after a class, don’t despair. It may come and dawn on you later on in your tango life.

I’ve never seen any other type of dance discussion fall back so much into semantics. I wonder if that’s due to the wide range of approaches to the dance as well as concepts floating around by so many teachers.

Enjoying the bliss of temporary happiness before the next funk.