The past two years, I’ve spent the whole of March in BsAs, and this year my hope was to stay for April too. Sadly, having my flat on the market, with no idea when it might sell, made it impractical to be away for two months this spring. I’m hoping instead to be there for October and November.

But if I can’t be in BsAs, there’s no other place I’d rather be than The Feast …

Ben vs The Train Gods

If you’ve enjoyed episodes one, two and three of Ben vs The Devon Train Gods, I present episode four of the ongoing battle.

The deities got off to a strong start, with a freight train breaking down midway across a major junction in Reading, blocking trains into London. That meant they had to delay my train by half an hour in order to fill every spare centimetre with people who should have been on the now-stranded Plymouth service.

The late departure, plus further delays caused by extra stops to match the Plymouth service, meant missing my connection. This would have left me arriving too late to collect my caravan key.

But while I bow to a worthy opponent, I’d taken precautions. The first of these was travelling down on the Wednesday evening, giving me a day in hand. The second was arranging for a fellow Feaster to kindly collect my key in the afternoon, so that it would be waiting no matter what time I arrived.

I also had Tina for company, who handily doubles as The Compensation Queen, and knew I could rely on her to ensure the gods had to pay for their fun.

So rather later than planned, but still 18 hours earlier than required, we arrived.

The amusement wasn’t over just because we’d arrived: on the return journey, we got as far as Exeter St Davids, where they tried to couple our train to another one – and failed. They retried several times before announcing that they’d put an engineer in a taxi from parts unspecified to see whether they could fix it. They decided to pass the time by making further attempts, one of which was declared successful with the confident announcement “that seems to have worked.”

Once we set off, they said that although the trains were physically coupled, the computer wasn’t convinced, so both trains were displaying carriages A to E, creating a perfect opportunity for an Ealing Comedy with seat reservations. Wondering whether the computer knew something the guard didn’t, I kept an eye out of the window in case I spotted the other end of our train overtaking us.

Never catch a train to or from Devon with me.

Recalibrating my following journey

One advantage to arriving the previous day is that I could snag a pre-milonga private with the marvellous Mabel; I’ve written a separate blog post about that.

I also took part in her follower technique workshop. The first time I did this, last summer, it had been three women and me. This time, it was one woman and four blokes. The Leading Ladies may have a considerable head-start on us, but the Following Fellows are at least out of the starting blocks.

Three of the leading ladies were kind enough to take me out for a spin on the practice floor during the event, and absolutely nobody died. (Well, I guess I had my eyes closed so can’t be 100% certain, but my leader would probably have mentioned it.)

I realised I needed to recalibrate my assessment of my following progress. Intellectually, of course, I know that I’m a super-beginner follower, and can’t expect to see too much result from around a dozen lessons and a tiny bit of practice – especially when viewed in the context of how long it took to learn to lead. Emotionally, however, it’s hard not to compare my following with my leading. To feel moments of excitement amid a general sense of the daunting scale of the challenge.

In particular, I was feeling frustrated at struggling with a small subtlety where pivots are concerned: figuring out in which direction the pivot is being led …

I mean, that much ought to be obvious, right? But it seems not. I’d sought advice from several experienced followers, and all of them had told me the same two things. One: “Oh yes, I remember that phase.” Two: “Hmm, but it’s so long ago now I can’t remember now what fixed it.” Thanks for that.

But three things shifted for me at the Feast. First, the feedback and guidance I got from Mabel, which I’ll talk about in that post. Second, seeing from the other men in the technique workshop that my struggles are not unique to me. Third, switching from focusing on what I don’t follow to the percentage that I do – and seeing that this percentage is increasing all the time. Slowly, for sure, but increasing all the same.

Chacarera and Zamba

I must confess that my interest in Argentine folk dances is limited to the fact that it goes down well in BsAs milongas for a foreigner to be seen to be giving them a go – however incompetently.

I’ve also found that ‘incompetently’ is very much the expected standard for Chacarera anyway, even among most locals. All that really seems to be expected is something which might perhaps resemble a very rough approximation of the dance when viewed from a distance of several miles by someone who’s never seen it before.

This standard is very much in evidence during the Chacarera interlude during the Sunday evening at the Feast. But there is much laughter by those giving it a go, and probably even more by those watching from the sidelines, so all is good.

This year was made even more entertaining by the visiting teachers, Giusy and Diego, taking charge and introducing some whole new variations, which increased the comedy level significantly.

Then there was Zamba …

I don’t generally do group classes. I’m not interested in sequences, and have zero ability to learn them within the space of a one-hour class even if I was. While I can generally find something to take from any class, I feel it’s not really fair on followers if they don’t get to try The Thing they paid for.

But a zamba workshop seemed too rare an opportunity to pass up. I had this optimistic view that it would be similar to Chacarera – do some vague arm waving, this time with added handkerchiefs. But no: it turns out that Zamba has a relatively complicated choreography (at least for a man with no memory for sequences), as well as a special step movement.

The bad news is that I walked out of the room with the same level of Zamba-dancing ability I had when I walked into it. The good news is that I now have enough understanding to be able to learn the choreo from YouTube, and practice the not-quite-quick-quick-slow step pattern, sometime between now and my next visit to tango Mecca.

Regular readers will know I’m not generally a fan of performances: I’m the grumpy guy waiting impatiently for the performers to get off my floor. But I have to admit that the Zamba and Chacarera demos were a lot of fun!

And now back to tango

As always, the biggest problem at the Feast is having so many wonderful followers that even 3.5 days doesn’t feel long enough to dance with all of them.

Which may have been why I went crazy in my attempts to do so, exacerbated by the fact that I was trying to cram a month’s worth of BsAs substitute into one long weekend. I danced almost non-stop on Thursday night, Friday afternoon and Friday night.

I woke up ridiculously early* on Saturday morning after less than five hours’s sleep, mostly because the seagulls wanted to get in on the dance action, and were holding a tap-dancing workshop on the roof of the caravan. They were about as good at it as I am at Zamba.

*Read: any weekend hour with a single digit

When I crawled out of bed, I felt like I was about 400 years old.

I managed to calm down on Saturday, doing the zamba workshop and then dancing only three hours of the afternoon milonga, but the cumulative exhaustion and sleep deprivation was still ‘cumulating. I knew that if I went to bed for a nap, I’d never get up again, so I determined to stay awake until the evening milonga. This determination proved insufficient; I did at least catch up on sleep.

When it comes to the different experiences of leaders and followers, it always feels like the very definition of First World Problems to talk about any downsides of leading. I’m acutely aware that we’re in the enviable position of being able to dance as much as we like – and very occasional experiences of not being able to do so happen just enough for me to remain deeply appreciative of this fact.

But that’s not to say there are no drawbacks. Chatting to one leader, he said something I realised used to be true for me (and is still true for milonga), but which isn’t true for me any more in tango. He said that while it’s wonderful to be able to dance all we want, he does reach the point of getting bored with his own dance.

Followers, he said, get to dance a different style every tanda; leaders spend every tanda dancing their own dance.

When he said that, I remembered feeling the same – and had to think about why I don’t any more. I realised it was two things.

First, even with a follower who enjoys a Pure Following style, every follower feels different. I could lead exactly the same movement to exactly the same moment in exactly the same song … and it wouldn’t be the same, because each follower delivers a unique sensation in their response.

What’s particularly notable about this is how I don’t have a singular view of the ‘best’ sensation. I dance with some followers who feel so grounded that I can lead millimetre by millimetre, and not a single cell in their body will get ahead of the lead. I dance with others who are so ballerina-like in their lightness that I can lead them using nothing more than telepathy. Each of those styles feels delightful – but in a totally different way.

Second, most followers at the Feast are active followers, so it’s not just my dance, it’s very much our dance.

Often I’ll actively invite that. One of my favourite things is to invite a follower to walk around me, but leave the pace and timing completely up to her. (It’s just coincidence that I most often do this in the fastest and fiddliest parts of the music, where I would have no clue what to lead.)

One follower will step on the beat. Another will do double-time steps. Another will mix the rhythm. Yet another will do forward-and-back steps. It’s never the same. (Ok, and occasionally I’ll get a WTF response from a follower who thinks I’m just incompetently leading a giro!)

Other times, I’ll lead a pause and then create the space for a follower to take the initiative if she wants to.

And there are also times when a partner follows what was led, but either slows or accelerates the movement in a way which communicates ‘Ok, my turn now’ and I then follow her until she hands back the lead.

I realised this time that there’s now a bonus element to my enjoyment of the different following styles: beginning to wonder what kind of follower I want to be, once I get far enough for the question to make sense.

My friendship with Biagi continues to blossom. Now that he and I have negotiated a fair deal on the way he ends his songs, I’m really enjoying the fun to be had in giving a sharp or smooth texture to exactly the same steps in different parts of each song. I dance every Biagi tanda now, and am beginning to think his music might catch on.

Speaking of orchestras, is it just my developing tastes, or is there a real trend of playing more Laurenz now? I’m absolutely adoring his music. It even made me forgive that Prime chap his dodgier songs in the alternative tandas.

The Sunday evening is my absolute favourite time. It shouldn’t be: some have left by then, so we’re missing some dancers, and the survivors are all tired, so I don’t think any of us would claim our technique is at its best. But maybe that’s part of it: none of us expect too much, or have the energy to work too hard, or the mental capacity for critical analysis of our own dance.

And perhaps we’re just all blissed-out by then, so every tanda feels like a bonus. The evening absolutely flew by, and I danced almost every tanda.

The dancers were wonderful, the organisers fantastic, the DJs a dream – but I’m saving the highlight of the festival to the end. He was always the star of the show, but couldn’t always keep up with the pace of demand. He’s obviously been taking lots of privates, however, as he’s now instantly responsive. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause please for the plumbed-in tea urn!