Sunday, April 5, 2015

Dreadful Fridays

The Friday nights are the least pleasant hours during a dance weekend! We are not able to fully focus on our partner and we are not able to focus on the music. A large part of our mental capacity is instead allocated on other things! We just arrived and are continuously scanning over the venue to get an idea what is going on and to adapt to the new pista itself takes also some resources. We scan the crowd to find old friends and to see new faces and we wonder how they could be to dance with. We are not fully present in our dance, in the moment.

Dear DJ what kind of music do we need in this situation? Help us to find the steps even this Friday evening when our focus is wildly wandering around the the venue and people!

Dear organizer give us some borders to keep us organized during this first night together, a border we can step over if needed!




                                                                (This picture is not from Austria but from Argentina)    

To create a beautiful ronda is about the dancers' individual skill to behave correctly on a tango event! But only partly! It is  also the crowds skill to adapt to  the other dancers' navigation styles effectively during a milonga.

I think a skillful DJ can help the crowd to find a more organized way of dancing sooner and the organizer can also take some actions to help the crowd to find the way to a nice and memorable dance event!

One mistake is that we today think that the respect for the rules is growing naturally without efforts. I don't think it was so earlier. I remember stories about persons who were walking among dancers and pointing out if someone was behaving badly and they had the power and position to ask for a change in behavior.

In the picture above you can see the yellow marks on the pista. A similar line was used in Austria during the Noches de Invierno encuentro where they had this virtual fence around us keeping us in place. The good thing was that this hence kept us organized but in same time it allowed the frustrated free souls to step over the borders when needed or for a moment of relief.

If there would be a stripe on the floor between the line 1 and 2 it would be easier for many people to keep the ronda lines. It would be easier too to pick up a conversation with a wild soul: Have you noticed the marks on the floor? You did cross the line 5 times during the last tanda. Do you think you could get a lower number during next tanda?

If there would be a sign at the door on the Friday night asking people to notice the mark on the floor - tape the mark there - and a text 'You may test to go over the line here but you maybe let it be in peace on the pista!


http://www.nochesdeinvierno.com/en/