When
we talk about tango we want often to define the true tango, what tango
really is and most of the time I agree with the descriptions! Still, I would prefer to present my experience of tango as a
path the dancers are advancing on, a mental landscape I am passing through.
When I started out the tango
WAS about steps and ochos and turns and figures for me. Fast music urged me to
move fast forward and a slow song gave me more calm steps. To manage
the difficult figures made the joy burst hilariously out and l was
looking for more challenges! My dance was external and the music
expression was external! Everything in my dance was easily visible to
others!
The paradigm shift was the change from the external dance to an internal one!
One
day my partner was rising tall at the end of a musical phrase and I
felt that it was the most beautiful thing ever! For me, this was the
first time I clearly experienced the external movement and its internal
equivalent. During the external years, I had developed the internal
equivalents for tango and an ability to recognize them within me. Now we
could just stand there with small movements released by the music and
enjoy a tanda! The best ever! :)
Today I can fall off to a
totally external dance during a fast milonga but a heavy Pugliese could
tease me down to the most internal dance instead!
Tango keeps
surprising me! The sources of joy during the first years were different
compared to the delights now. The scenery of today will change and the
path will run through different landscapes during the coming years and I am
curious! It is wise to find pleasure from every period of tango, from every section of your path!
I
started leading as a nuevo dancer with open hold and large,
space-consuming steps. That developed by the years to a close embrace
dance with enquentros as my home events. However, I still felt that the
more dynamic, figure-rich dance was calling me to come back home. Not to
nuevo anymore but to tango salong.
My early hopeful idea was to
squeeze down the large nuevo movements to salong size and via this short
cut to reach my goal fast. But no; it did not go that easy!
I
know that in March 2018 one of my followers and I were working on a
number of figures from Torres and some other teachers keeping our eyes
on the tango salong goal. By practica hours we managed to learn figures
but then there was a clear halt. A few obstacles which I had not
anticipated at the beginning, turned up!
Challenges
One of the challenges
was the power of rewards the old style of dancing could bring us. When a
wonderful tanda started how could we continue training with no reward
in sight compared to the bliss the old way could take us to for sure!
Another
challenge was the routine followers and I had developed during the
years - we had our best abrazo which we fell into so naturally. It felt
nasty to - even if done in the most gentle way - to push her slightly
away to a more salong type of abrazo. It was my project and my
responsibility but it was hard and I failed often.
There was also
fear of losing something during the change process. A renovation or
rebuild of one room has often an impact on how happy you are with the
rest of your house. It could be some delicate change in my musicality,
or some other valuable aspect quietly disappearing forever.
Thoughts in solitude
My
goal was and is to maintain the old way of dancing with all its positive
aspects and add the new salong to it. The new questions my mind is
elaborating on now are about how to choose the style for a tanda? Should
I choose the style according to the music or prioritize the follower's
style? Shall I fit the Milonga or to the mood of the night? If followers
see me dancing differently with others do they have some interest to
return my cabeceo or will they avoid me? At the end of the day, I don't
think there will be real problems to place the new dance but these are
some of the questions my brain is tumbling around during this year of
isolation.
Inspiration!
History
The renovation of Tango House I wrote about in 2019 has taken this form now!
This is only about skill! There are a great number of other aspects
adding to tanda experience.
But not this time.
The skill
differences have an impact on our tanda but these issues are difficult
to discuss. I like figures/numbers and math so the idea here is formed
as a calculation! I suggest that both dancers have a maximum number of
resources to offer the partner for building up the enjoyment. Lets set
it here as 10. The maximum enjoyment value for a dancing couple is then
limited to 20 during a tanda. That's the ultimate heaven!
If you
are an experienced leader, well trained in technique the scores get
nicely up. We say that this leader has an estimated score value 7 so he
can give a beginner follower an enjoyable tanda of 8, (7+1). If this
leader is able to relax and smoothly lead a follower he can maybe offer a
good tanda to a partner at the highest level, a fully developed
follower at 10. The enjoyment will hit the 17 bar for this couple!
On
the internet and the talks around the pista are continuously
complaining about the leader skill levels. There are also followers who
have a strategy not to pay for their learning. They expect that the
leaders will for free teach them all they need to know for the local
pista. They are also totally confident to tell the leaders about this. I
suppose that this drives followers to chase tandas with leaders a lot
of levels above their own. It's because this maximizes the learning, the
enjoyment!
I wrote earlier about the training needed to stabilize
and make your tango movements, forms strong and endurable. This was and
is the advantage of dancing with partners at different skill levels.
Keep in mind that your skill level is always depending on your own
personal effort. You work with your technique at home, you take lessons
and get experienced by hundreds of hours at the pista. You maybe get
your skill very easily, by a few hours, compared with me who needs
countless hours to get some progress. But a dancer needs profound,
personal own skill to contribute, a way to add your personality to a
tanda.
You never get to the highest heaven by riding only on the
partner's skill but you need to develop and offer your own stable and
independent skill and personality to the tanda.
Your personal skill impacts the tanda enjoyment calculated below!
Some
workout channels on YT advertise sessions put together for people who
get easily bored. These workouts had new movements all the time keeping
my attention at a higher level than comfortable for me. It really wasn't
my favorite workout! Obviously, there are individual differences and it
could be useful to think about your personal style and if it has an
impact on your learning. So what is your way, your actual style to get
bored?
Do you get easily bored?
There is a need for
repetition when you want to grow your muscles, brain structure, or nerve
paths. In tango, many skills need quite a lot of rehearsing and if you
get bored on those drills before you reach your goal it will keep you
back on the tango path. If this happens often on your projects take a
look at the situation and find a way around this hindrance. There are
for sure ways to push your boring limit later!
Bored at the correct moment!
There
are definitely situations when boring is just a correct indicator that
you are not captivated by your goal and it is maybe best to skip the
training! Or it just indicates that you actually have reached your
learning goal and your mind cannot find anything interesting left to
explore on the subject. It's time to move on!
Or do you get bored (too) late as I easily do?
Hard
to get bored is not necessarily a good alternative either! I have
noticed that I easily continue repeating things far beyond the moment I
made the last active effort to learn something new on the subject. When
the repetition has an air of exploring I would continue or if I feel
that there is a stabilization process of the knowledge or a movement,
going on I would continue. On contrary, if the repetition is just a dull
rolling on a daily routine it should be checked out. I have learned to
recognize these change points but earlier I was continuing too far and
losing time!
Move sideways or push deeper when you get bored!
During
an ordinary training with TangoTools milonga steps, (which are easily
added to a training routine without any preparations. I'm just saying!) I
became aware of something new. I do not remember the exact clip but it
was one similar to this.
Usually,
I change to a new video on Sunday after a number of repetitions during
the week. Normally I was doing the steps reasonably well so the shift
was ok, based on the fact that I couldn't find any new details to add to
or correct on my repetitions. A stable routine to grow my basic
step-pool!
Then for some reason, I continued to repeat the old
video longer than usual. In the middle of a later session, I suddenly
noticed that my steps were not clean!. I didn't just land on my feet but
there was also a tiny little flex, an extra movement I had not been
aware of earlier. I remember that some teachers had talked about a
problem with my walk but at that time I didn't get it. - I wasn't aware
of the flex at all, but this simple, repetitive movement pushed my brain
to find something to work with and it started to track the detailed
step process deeper and new information about the movement became
available.
The thoughts about the student's boring points were
inspiring but not bringing any radical change to my mind. On
contrary, the idea of my possibility to choose at a certain level of
boringness to advance sideways or drill deeper has became a new instrument
in my learning toolbox!
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend: Noun 1. boringness - extreme dullness; lacking spirit or interest dreariness, insipidity, insipidness dullness - the quality of lacking interestingness; "the stories were of a dullness to bring a buffalo to its knees"
Merriam Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boring bor·ing | \ ˈbȯr-iŋ \ Definition of boring : causing weariness and restlessness through lack of interest : causing boredom : TIRESOME a boring lecture
