The uncomfortable truth about uncomfortable dances

Let's get honest here.

​Sometimes tango can make me feel trapped in a very unpleasant position.

It happened the other day when I went for the first time to a local practica. I went incognito. That means that hardly anyone there knew either me or the fact that I’ve been on the scene for almost two decades, that I used to be a full-time tango teacher and a well-travelled tango dancer.

So I got asked to dance by the first leader. Then the second. Then the third, fourth and fifth. After that I could not summon up any more patience or tolerance. I do feel a bit bad about it, but, seriously, it was simply too painful to dance with three of them.

The other two were not hurting me, but one was an absolute beginner who was practicing the most basic step with a change of weight and not getting it after countless repetitions… need I say more? (It was a practica and that was the place to practice, true, but really… with a teacher? I usually call such service a private lesson and get financially reimbursed for it).

The fifth one was a beginner, but a talented one with dancing and martial arts background, so we could at least have a pain-free, although uneventful, tanda. We all were beginners at one point and we all needed to practice a lot to get us where we are today. I get that.

But my biggest issue are those three leaders I mentioned at first. I’ve been seeing them on the tango scene for the past 10 years, if not longer. That probably made them feel we are old-time buddies and therefore they felt entitled to ask me for a dance. It caught me by utter surprise that there has been no improvement whatsoever in their dancing. In 10 years. Seriously?!? Their basics were completely absent, so the embrace was all over the place, giving me no reference to the contact points that I usually need to decipher the lead. God forbid I’d listen to the music at the same time as listening to their scarce, incomprehensible lead. I would get into so much inner conflict that sometimes I would rather choose to remain still and not do the move I could probably guess they were wanting me to make. But when they then used the physical force and armwrestled me to the new position or, almost even better, told me with words what I should change to follow them better, it took all my willpower to keep a smile pasted on my face and the smoke contained inside my ears.

That’s one dance, or more like four dances in a row, because I hate being arrogant and disrespectfully drop them after just a single dance. Although, on a second thought, maybe I should learn to become arrogant and disrespectful. Perhaps instead I should call it kindness and respect for myself. Yet that is easier said than done. At least for me. I also have other sets of needs that are about being socially inclusive and tolerant and nurturing the community spirit.

It seems that over the years I have unconsciously developed tactics to make a compromise between those different sets of needs.

However, the said practica was a bit unusual. There were more men than women present, which almost never happens at our local tango scene. Many dancers just danced with one partner without changing. So there were a handful of hungry leaders eager to ask the two single followers present.

So my usual tactic did not work. You see, if I get stuck in a similar situation elsewhere, where the sitting followers abund, I simply turn into a leader and get some tango fun out of it.

I am not saying that dancing with beginner followers is not painful, to the contrary, it can be very hard work, but I have better chances at it. Even if after a few steps I realize that the follower is heavy or losing her balance or even hanging on my neck, I can take charge.

First, it is on me to simplify our dancing to the point of making it predictable and safe enough for her to manage to follow. Secondly, I can always kindly ask for a different position of the embrace if the first one is hurting me too much. I’ve never gotten unpleasant feedback asking for that; I suppose no one, and especially not the women, want to be a burden to their dancing partner. Having said that, a vast majority of beginning women have a much better body awareness and the ability to move in a dancing fashion than the beginning men.

But let me  get back to the question of how to fix the fact that dancing with certain leaders is uncomfortable. What can actually be done about it? I can see four approaches that could help leaders become less uncomfortable.

1. First of all, one needs to have motivation for improvement. I’m speaking here about those leaders who get stuck on a very humble, mediocre level and feel happy with themselves ever after. Yes, I know, there are many reasons why one feels happy with themselves after reaching a certain level. For those three leaders I mentioned above it is probably very likely just the question of supply and demand, The truth is that leaders in our local scene are so scarce that they get enough dances per night even if they stay on the beginner level indefinitely. They also get exposed to very few excellent role models, so the male competition gene does not get activated. On top of it, although I am just guessing here, probably not everyone of us possesses an inner drive for continuous learning.
2. ​But, if the motivation in the form of a strong inner wish for improvement is indeed present, then a tango student is still faced with many choices. Should he try out as many different teachers as possible? Should he learn just from native Argentinians a couple of times a year when they come for a weekend visit to our country? Should he stick with a local teacher for a while instead? Go to Buenos Aires for a month? Those choices are hard to make and probably until one tries out different teachers, one cannot know what approach fits one best. Yet it is definitely important to stick with a certain teacher for long enough to learn a consistent framework. It is also very important to dance with many different dancers, to travel as far as possible to open up one’s horizons and to frequently go back to the beginners’ classes to learn the basics all over again. Whatever we think we know already, there is somebody out there who can show us another nuance to it. Also, it is very much worth the courage to ask different dance partners for constructive feedback, hopefuly given in a kind and careful manner.  
3. Then there is a large responsibility of the teaching community to nurture good leading skills on the scene as a whole. There should be continuous self-improvement of the teachers, including both tango classes and classes on the science of passing the knowledge. Teachers should find creative ways of selling the basics all over again (even if packaged up in impressive figures). And the teachers should not forget to mention, over and over again, how important it is to be mindful of the partner. 
4. Finally, there is the question of open communication between the dancers. Yes, tango is the dance where you can find a lot of naturally introverted people - which makes communication a little bit tricky. But ideally, it should be as free as possible, respectful and creating space where we would feel comfortable giving and taking each other’s feedback.

Photo by Cris Tina (FB)