A good week

On Monday I proclaimed I was on a roll. Things were going well and could only keep getting better. I walked up Av. Scalabrini Ortiz on Monday night to Salón Canning feeling cocky and pretty damn pleased with myself.

Expecting that it might be busy because of the bicentenary holiday weekend I had telephoned and made a reservation. When I arrived the host gave me a front row seat, although it was in a corner so not as good as it could have been. By about 00:30 the place was full, the first time I've seen it that busy since I arrived in April. There were lots of porteños and long term visitors in, very few obvious tourists. For the first 2 hours or so I had a really good time, my cabeceos were accepted and I danced reasonably well. The floor was never less than very crowded. There was the obligatory demonstration dance followed by the singing of the national anthem.

And then it was like someone had dropped Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility over me. After a couple of hours with no dancing I gave up and left.

I didn't go out to dance on Tuesday, Thursday or Friday nights. On Wednesday I went to El Beso. It was a very quiet night, only about 50 people with a slight excess of leaders. It wasn't a good night for me. I danced one tanda and then most of the rest of the night became an exercise in frustration. I danced just 3 tandas in total.

My private lesson on Thursday with Maya went well. Lots more milonga and a little bit of tango.

On Saturday night I went to Los Consagrados again. I arrived just after 7pm and was given a second row seat half way down the leaders side of the floor. The guy in front of me left before 8pm so I effectively had a front row seat for most of the night. In contrast to Wednesday night I danced almost every tanda. In the 4 hours from 7pm until 11pm I think I sat out about 3 tandas, in each case through choice. I even danced a reasonable milonga tanda which included my favourite "la milonga que faltaba". A certain person will be delighted!

In other news, I had a little sight-seeing outing on Wednesday to Calle Lanin. In the Barracas barrio of Buenos Aires, Calle Lanin is a short street where the house fronts have been decorated with tile mosaics. They're quite colourful but not really in the same league as Caminito in Boca. Or maybe they're just in a different league. There are some pictures in my sightseeing and Calle Lanin sets at Flickr.

Most remarkable of all this week, I actually made a little bit of an effort on the castellano front. It's somewhat overdue since I'm nearly 2 months in and only have 4 months left here, but better late than never.

So overall, a good week. 

It's a bank holiday weekend in the UK and the start of half-term. True to form the weather there wasn't brilliant today. The forecasters predict better for Sunday and Monday, so for my friends back in the UK I hope they're right.

An exercise in frustration

The music starts. It is the first track of the new tanda. Classify it quickly and make a dance/don't dance decision. If it's dance then get busy with the cabeceo.

Your first choice is giving the mirada to one of the tango gods (the old milongueros who are recognised by sight, if not by name, by everyone and who can dance with pretty much whoever they want, whenever they want). Probably half the followers in the milonga are doing the same thing. Tango god is ignoring them all, happily chatting with his friend. At least this night there is only one tango god in attendance. If he decides to dance he can only dance with one of the followers at a time. If there are 3 of them in attendance then mere mortals like you have a proportionally harder time.

You switch your attention to your second choice and see her complete the cabeceo with one of your rivals.

Your third choice is obscured by a.n.other follower sat next to her and leaning forward to catch tango god's eye.

A quick check on your first choice and she is standing up to step onto the pista, her leader waiting in front of her.

Your fourth choice is obscured by a couple already on the pista. Time is marching on, cabeceos complete, contracts made, the pool of available followers is diminishing by the second. And you're only 5 seconds into this tanda!

Your fifth and sixth choices are already on their feet and out of the game.

Now, 10 seconds into the tanda 80% of the dancers in the room are on their feet. The dregs and those who chose not to dance are left sitting and you're one of them. There are a couple of extreme shorties but you're still exercising a height-ist partner selection policy, there's a miserable looking sourpuss slouched in her seat who no-one has danced with all evening and a few in pairs or small groups chatting to each other having given up on this tanda and waiting for the next round.

So what do you do? Act nonchalant, pretend that you didn't really want to dance this tanda. Make the most of the time: listen to the music, watch the dancers, learn and absorb as much as possible. Or order another drink, munch some peanuts or Tic Tacs, visit the little boys' room, dream about being a tango god, plan tomorrow's photo outing, ...

This exercise in frustration is exacerbated by the excess of leaders present but the situation improves a bit when tango god decides it's time to move on to the next milonga of the night.

Obviously this is written from a leader's perspective but a similar experience can befall followers too. Potentially it could be repeated for every tanda of the night.

On a roll

I had a really good weekend of dancing; Saturday night at Los Consagrados, and Sunday at Sueño Portenõ and El Beso.

The bicentennial celebrations have been playing havoc with the traffic in downtown Buenos Aires. The bus ride to Los Consagrados took about twice as long as usual so I arrived later than normal. The hostess was about to park me in a corner seat at the far end of the dance floor. It wouldn't have been a good place to sit. Fortunately Ruben saw us on the way past and invited me to join him. It's always a pleasure to sit at Ruben y Cherie's table - good company and good dancing. My castellano still hasn't advanced to the point that I can have a conversation with Ruben, and Cherie was feeling a bit unwell and wasn't there on Saturday, but they always have guests at their table and this night was no exception. Those guests are usually extranjeros, often English speakers and always friendly.

My dancing got off to a bit of a slow start but picked up nicely. About an hour before the end, as the numbers started to thin out, I moved to a table with a free seat about half way along the pista for a better cabeceo position. I've seen the guy sat at the table several times and assumed he was a local. It turned out he's another Brit and has been living here for several years. He came for a holiday and "forgot" to go home.

The bus ride home was more twisty and turny than Blackadder's most devious twisty turny thing. Lots of roads were closed and I had the impression the driver was making it up as he went along. It took even longer than the journey to get there and would almost have been quicker to walk.

On Sunday I tried Sueño Porteño at Boedo Tango. I've only been there on a Wednesday before, when it is always very busy. I wasn't sure what the numbers would be like because of the bicentennial celebrations and because of the torrential rain that started at about 6pm. I don't know all the locations in the city where there are special celebration events so decided to use el Subte (subway) instead of los colectivos (buses), figuring the journey time would be unaffected by any road closures. When I arrived a bit before 7:30pm it was only about one quarter to one third full. My friend arrived a little while later and we actually got a front row table. I guess they reached about half capacity by the time we left at midnight. By then I'd danced lots, watched an enthusiastic amateur bicentennial celebration dance by some of the regulars and sampled the Boedo Tango pizza. There are a few photos from the evening in my  milongas set at Flickr (and also a couple from the chacarera tanda at los Consagrados on Saturday).

While waiting for the bus home I got an invite by text to El Beso. The night was still young, there was still 3 hours of dancing to be had at El Beso so I went. When I arrived it was standing room only. Standing at the bar gave me much better cabeceo options than I'd had from a seat on Thursday night and I danced lots.

My first dance was with a French girl, Octavia, who arrived just a couple of days ago and is here for 6 months. I commented recently on Mari's "Proper" tango shoes post that I don't care what shoes a follower is wearing so long as we have a good dance. We danced a good tanda and afterwards I noticed that she was wearing an eye-catching pair of silver and black 4" stilettos. No, I haven't a clue whether they were CIFs or Payless. I really, really don't care. The point is they caught my eye and I watched her dance part of the first tango of the next tanda. When I'm not dancing and not trying to cabeceo someone I spend a lot of time watching the dancers' feet. Dancers will know what I mean. She had the most beautiful feet I have ever seen. Ever. Period. Dancers will know what I mean.

Anyway I stayed until closing time and rode home on the number 12 colectivo, buzzing after 2 really good nights of dancing. It feels like I've turned a bit of a corner after being here nearly 7 weeks. It feels comfortable, the crisis of confidence I had a few weeks ago a distant memory. I'm ready to learn new stuff, to improve (and maybe it will rub off on my castellano efforts too). I'm on a roll.

Diary entry

It's been quite a varied week or so on the tango front with 7 milongas in 8 nights. I've been to the gym just about every other day, still not doing enough on the Spanish/castellano, and generally lazing around.

Last Friday I started the night at Salón Canning. It was about ¾ full and I danced a lot, with tourists (a group of girls from Texas and another group from Brisbane) and porteñas. When the last of the tall followers left just before closing time (4am) I gave up and walked the 3 blocks or so to La Viruta where there is free admission after about 3:30am. I don't seem to do well on getting dances at La Viruta so only danced a couple of tandas and munched my way through a plate of medialunas which they serve from about 4:30am. After 30 minutes of not dancing I called it a night and left just after 5:30am. It was tempting to stay until the end because there is a panaderia on the corner of Armenia and Honduras – which I pass on the way home – which opens at 6am and which serves all sorts of deliciousness. Being a bit of a PC addict there was the obligatory email, facebook and blog checking when I got home so it was 7am before I finally got to bed.

I must be getting old, late nights like this wipe me out for the “next” day. By the time I got up it was nearly time to head out to Saturday's milonga of choice – Los Consagrados. I danced quite a lot and if it hadn't been such a late one the night before would have liked to go on to Boedo Tango or Salón Canning in search of more dancing.

On Monday I was back at an only ½ full Salón Canning and apparently wearing Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility. Not a single dance in nearly 3 hours despite a front row seat.

On Wednesday orchestra Los Reyes del Tango played at La Garufa. I had heard they were good so went along to hear for myself. There are a few new photos in the milongas set at Flickr. Unlike a month earlier when ColorTango played at the same place there was a much smaller turnout – only about 50 people. I kept thinking more would arrive, and maybe the orchestra did too because they didn't play until about 2am. They sounded OK to me but I preferred ColorTango. With such a small crowd height-ism wasn't really working in my favour and I didn't dance much but the tandas I did were good. Sonya was there again and we spent quite a lot of time chatting about the multitude of group classes on offer every week.

I've been here for 6 weeks without a visit to El Beso, so on Thursday night I corrected that. The place was not quite full when I arrived at about 10pm; there were 3 empty tables in 2 of the corners. A corner seat isn't ideal for the cabeceo, especially when only targeting the taller followers, and I danced less than I wanted but had some nice dances.

Last night I went back to Entre tango y tango. Numbers were down on a month ago and once again there were more leaders than followers. Combined with my height-ism policy on followers the result was again fewer dances than I wanted.

My private lesson with Maya on Thursday went well again. As planned we spent most of the time concentrating on milonga. During a lesson like this I can switch between patterns and dance something not too boring for my partner. But as soon as I'm at an actual milonga my brain does a goldfish impression and everything goes out of my head. Maya is going to Europe for a few weeks soon and I'll be switching to lessons from Ruben y Cherie. No prizes for guessing what we'll be concentrating on.

One of the other things I mentioned in that post was the free drink at Niño Bien. I made some enquiries whether the same policy applies anywhere else. Apparently it doesn't and it only happens at Niño Bien. Shame!

By presidential decree it's a long (4-day) holiday weekend here in Argentina, to celebrate the bicentenary of the revolution in 1810 that lead to independence from Spain. There are all sorts of cultural events planned in various locations around Buenos Aires (and presumably elsewhere). Rather like a holiday weekend in the UK the weather forecast isn't brilliant but hopefully if the promised rain arrives it won't disrupt things too much. When I was here in December there was a big outdoor tango event planned for one Saturday evening which was cancelled because of rain...

Since I've mentioned the weather now I might as well add that the days of me sitting out on the balcony after breakfast (ie: somewhere between about 11am and 2pm) grabbing a few rays appear to be over. There are fewer sunny days now and the temperature is falling. Not really surprising since the trees are losing their leaves and we are well into autumn now.

Why so many?

Since coming to Buenos Aires I've had a lot of free time. OK, not just a lot, actually all my time is free time. I don't have to do anything at all and I do only what I choose to and when. It's an incredibly fortunate position to be in. One of the things I've been doing with some of that time is reading blogs, especially tango blogs.

Tango bloggers write on every imaginable topic. The tango-related posts generally fall into 2 main categories, which I think of as technical and observational. For some reason there are a lot of blogging tango dancers. By which I mean there are a large number, and (I believe) also a higher proportion of blogging tango dancers than blogging dancers of (many) other dance styles. I don't have statistics to support my assertion, and if I did then a sensible reader would take them with a pinch of salt anyway. Do your own research if you feel so inclined but to save you a few seconds here are some completely non-scientific search results from you-know-whoogle -

Obviously the number of hits on a search phrase including a dance style and the word blog is not the number of actual blogs about that dance style. However I think we can infer something from the relative numbers of hits and the relative numbers of dancers of each dance style.
 
I've been wondering what it is about tango dancers that seems to predispose them to blogging. Maybe they're we're (after all, I am one too) creative people. Well hang on, so are dancers of other styles. Maybe we're passionate. What, and other dancers aren't? Maybe we're egotistical? What, and other dancers aren't? Maybe we're more of those things? Could it be that we're just a caring, sharing bunch of people? Perhaps there aren't really (proportionally or absolutely) more tango dancers' blogs, it just seems like it because those are the ones I like to read.

I really don't know. There was one search I tried which produced a (considerably) larger number of hits than "tango blog" -

Ugh! Shudder!

There are links to some of those tango blogs in a panel on the right hand side of this page. Those are the ones I read often. There are many others I read occasionally. I may add a page containing links to them all (because the web really needs that redundancy!) at some point.

My reasons for blogging are given in my first post. If you're one of my friends who suggested I start this blog then I encourage you to go on a link-hopping expedition. Don't be surprised if you spend a big chunk of time in the process.

Back to my assertion. What do you think? Are there really "more" tango bloggers, and if so, why?

Crisis of confidence

I've not had much to say on the subject of tango in the last couple of weeks. There were several nights when I didn't go out, and some when I went out but didn't dance much or even at all. The reason was a crisis of confidence. It wasn't the first and may not be the last. Happily I seem to have overcome it.

I have tried a couple of new (for me) milongas this week; loca! at Chalmers Club on Sunday and La Catedral on Tuesday. 

The loca! venue at Chalmers Club is rather nice, a bit like Práctica X but not so cavernous and with a proper bar and food available. The floor is polished concrete tiles, not as slippery as Práctica X and with a few rough spots. The dancers were mostly young, in groups and very good. Not quite as intimidating for me as Práctica X but close. I went with Maria, a porteña friend, and we both enjoyed it.

La Catedral was an experience! It's on the first (or second if you're American etc.) floor of a converted church. It had a distinctly bohemian feel. It was very dark with a high stage at the end you enter, a medium size dance floor with settees/couches down one side and rough tables and chairs on the other, a larger seating area at the far end and a bar beyond that. There was a separate room behind the wall with the settees which had tables and chairs and comfy seating and a bar serving food and drinks. Most of the people were in groups, having a night out with friends. There wasn't really much dancing going on and some of that was truly appalling. I saw several leaders attempting very badly to lead moves they couldn't lead to followers who couldn't follow them. The dance floor was wood, very uneven and not somewhere you'd really want to be wearing stilettos (although a few brave followers were). I saw one guy dancing who obviously knew the music inside out, back-to-front and upside-down. He was hitting every accent in every tango but so over-doing it that he looked completely crazy. The music from the DJ was pretty good. There were 2 live acts, the first was so bad I thought it had to be a joke (but the locals enjoyed it) and the second, an orchestra, were quite good. It was far too dark to use the cabeceo, strictly verbal invitations instead. You can probably tell it made a bit of an impression on me. Somewhere interesting to see but not somewhere I'll hurry back to. There are a couple of pictures in my milongas set at Flickr.

On Wednesday I went to Sueño Porteño again and managed to get my confidence back. Lots of dancing and even a compliment from a porteña - so much better than a "disculpe" and having them walk off mid-tanda! I enforced my blatant height-ist policy and enjoyed all my dances.

My private lesson with Maya yesterday afternoon went well. I think next week I'll ask if we can concentrate on milonga. I really struggle with milonga tracks, usually getting stuck in a pattern and unable to get out of it. The result is I'm likely to bore my partner to death long before the end of the track, never mind the tanda. There is one particular milonga track I hear here quite often which I really like, it's called "la milonga que faltaba" and reminds me of watching Bonanza on TV on Saturday afternoons as a kid. There are lots of videos using it on YouTube, this was the first one on the list. I have a couple of tanguera friends from home, Jo and Sam, who are coming out here in August. It will be nice if I can dance a half decent milonga tanda with them, hopefully including this track.

I planned to go to Nuevo Chiqué at Casa de Galicia after my lesson, then get something to eat and go on to Niño Bien. In the end I was hungry after the lesson and decided to skip Nuevo Chiqué and eat in instead.

It's obvious from the number of people in the (tourist-circuit) milongas that we're out of tourist season. A month ago Niño Bien was full, last night it was only about three quarters full. And there were more men than women. I heard one tanguero complaining that May and June are dead months. Height-ism reigned again and it was another good night for me. And I made an interesting discovery - the entrada at Niño Bien includes a free drink. Simply exchange your entrance ticket for your first drink order. Why did no one tell me that before? I don't know if the same thing applies elsewhere but I'll be finding out! If you happen to know other places this applies feel free to comment...

Enjoy the weekend!

Clarity and castellano

It's a good job I'm not a professional writer. Apparently some of my posts have been open to misinterpretation. They lack the clarity I thought they had.


So just in case you thought otherwise, my teachers in the UK have not taught me to tango in a hurried “Anglo-Saxon” way, or to dance without regard for my partner, or the music, or the surroundings. When I had some private lessons here with Cherie y Ruben last December they complimented me, and therefore my UK teachers, on not having been taught any bad habits. I hope to take some more lessons with Cherie y Ruben soon.


Clarity is required in tango too. It sounds obvious but a leader needs to lead. I have to communicate to my follower what I want them to do. Sometimes I forget to do this physically and try to do it telepathically instead. And then things go wrong! Doing it physically doesn't mean being aggressive but it does require a degree of assertiveness. There's the equivalent of a volume control on the assertiveness. Too much volume is uncomfortable for the follower, too little volume means she can't hear me and things go wrong again. The way they go wrong depends on the follower. Sometimes she'll do something other than what I intended, sometimes she'll just freeze and wait to be lead. Occasionally I think the volume is OK but the follower still does something other than what I intended.


Whenever a follower does something other than what I intended I try to adapt what comes next to suit and keep dancing. I'll usually try to lead the same thing once more a little later in the dance. If it still produces not the intended result then I don't try it again with this follower in this tanda. Also I make a mental note to review and maybe to change the lead for whatever it was.


If the follower just freezes that's a clear sign to me to turn up the volume and lead with more clarity.


Sometimes I wonder if I'm generally not leading “loudly” enough. There are often hot and sweaty leaders coming off the pista at the end of a tanda. Unless the room is overly warm I'm not one of them. Maybe this has more to do with the fact that I prefer dancing to the slower tangos and usually find a way to dance the faster tangos slowly too.


If something goes wrong in a class or practica situation and the follower apologises to me I always reply with “Just assume if something goes wrong it's because I lead it wrong, even if you think I didn't”. It seems most likely to me that I lead it wrong because when I have been in a follower position with a teacher in a group class or private lesson there is no doubt at all what the response should be to their lead. In general I subscribe to the view that a good leader with a relaxed follower can lead just about anything. By implication, if the follower fails to follow then the leader didn't lead properly. However, Mari presents a different perspective in this post.



The opposite of clarity is ambiguity. Ambiguity is imperfection and that irritates me. Context sensitive languages are ambiguous and the irritation that creates inside me is a very real barrier to learning. Castellano (Spanish) is very context sensitive. Here a few examples:

• si – means “yes” or “if”
  
• si no – means “otherwise”
  
• sino – means “but”
  
• hablamos – means either “we are speaking/we speak” or “we were speaking”. The 1^st person plural of an ~ar verb conjugates the same way in the present and the preterite tenses.
  
• fui – means either “I was” or “I went”. The verbs ser (to be) and ir (to go) conjugate identically to each other in each of the 6 (in Spain) or 5 (in South America) positions.
  
• por – means “for” or “by” or “through” or “per” or “in”
  
• que – means a multitude of different things depending on the construction it is used in.
  

Castellano is also supposed to be a phonetic language – words should be pronounced the way they are spelt and vice versa. Yet the porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) often aspirate the final phoneme of a word and speak so fast as to run one or more words together. Attempting to decode which words they have spoken, and then decoding the meaning from the context to work out what they actually said is hard work.


And when I try to talk to the locals and they look puzzled and say “¿que?” - because I haven't worked out how to create some of the phonemes correctly, let alone pronounce whole words and use the right aspirations and spew the whole lot out at 200 words per minute – that is just plain frustrating.

Those are my (admittedly not very good) reasons for not working hard enough on learning castellano. So the promised 1-month blog post entirely in castellano will not be happening this week.

This post may also lack a bit of clarity, but if I try to make it perfect it will never happen!

Sightseeing

I had a touristy afternoon yesterday. It was overcast and a little hazy, so not the best day to be out taking photos but undeterred I went for a walk along Avenida de Mayo from the Subte linea A, estacion Peru, to Congreso Nacional and then along Callao to Subte linea D, estacion Callao.

The photos are at Flickr in the Sightseeing and monochrome sets.

I'm generally cooking for myself and eating in most nights. While in Salamanca last year I discovered I rather liked tortilla española. Last night for the first time (ever) I made it myself. My landlady, who is a bit precious about her kitchen was rather worried by the idea and assured me it wasn't easy. It was a bit time consuming but not difficult. There are loads of recipes on the web, I used the one here but halved the quantities to fit the frying pan I had available. A (much) larger frying pan would have been useful and would have cut the cooking time by 15 minutes - I had to cook the potatoes in 2 batches because they wouldn't all fit and cook in one go.

It was delicious. My landlady agreed.

Those who know me won't be surprised to hear that I had the same thing again tonight. I was going to add some mushrooms and ham to the mix but couldn't be bothered to go and buy them this afternoon. Next time... (which won't be tomorrow!)

As expected I did suffer a bit with DOMS on Sunday. My plan to go to the gym on Saturday was thwarted by it being the May Day holiday, and just about everywhere was closed. I went out for a walk instead which probably helped reduce the DOMS effect a bit. I was back in the gym yesterday morning and this afternoon. And the aches are all gone now.

There's still not much progress to report on my efforts to learn castellano. Mainly because I'm not making anywhere near enough effort. There is another reason which I might write a blog post about.

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