I wrote earlier this year about adopting a whole new attitude toward my following journey. Treating it more as play than as work, and accepting that it will be a years-long endeavour.
But a couple of recent experiences made me realize that I have actually reached an important milestone along the way …
Continue reading I just reached an important milestone on my leisurely path toward dual-role dancingIn tango, traspié refers to an interrupted step typically danced in milonga tandas – for which the literal definition is ‘to stumble.’
After six months off the dance floor, I got to enjoy one festival and six milongas before the return of symptoms suggested the surgical repair may have failed …
Continue reading My very own milonga traspié, and the power of the three PsThe fortnight leading up to the festival was among the most stressful and exhausting of my life. Short version: the place I thought was going to be my new home was withdrawn from the market on the day I made my formal offer for the pre-agreed amount; my plan B turned out to have hidden deal-breakers; and when I viewed my plan C, I discovered that the seller had decided to take the best offer by 5pm that day … and I got to view it at 4.43pm. And that’s skipping a whole lot of steps. What should have been a simple ‘Here’s my best and final offer, let me know’ deal on what became my preferred flat instead turned into some fast-and-furious negotiation, complete with an agent who went AWOL in the middle of it.
Suffice it to say that by the time the festival rolled around, if I hadn’t already been booked into it, I would happily have stayed home and spent the entire weekend sleeping. But I had a wonderful time last year, and suspected this would be the same. It was indeed, and turned out to be the perfect antidote …
Continue reading Another (mostly) wonderful Sheffield Tango Festival, and feeling really at home in my own danceMilonga tandas and I have had occasional short flings, but there’s never been much indication that we’re relationship material (not that I can claim any expertise on that topic!).
I actually began writing this as a section of the marathon, marathon post, but Scotty told me the WordPress engine cannae take it, so I had to split it off into its own post …
Continue reading Dancing milonga – a slow, upward spiral that has returned to playfulnessTechnically where my tango began was in my living-room, since my introduction to the dance was with Mariano in privates at home – followed by some group classes at Tango Garden. It was also at Tango Garden where I technically first danced in a milonga, after all of five lessons!
But it was at Tango Space where I found my first tango home, made a great many tango friends, discovered several amazing teachers, and where I first danced in a milonga with fellow beginners …
Continue reading A nostalgic return to Tango Space at the Shield: Where it all beganOne of the challenges in tango is that it’s really hard to be happy where we are. We always want to be at the next level, whatever that may mean to each of us. Even for me, an avowed ‘journey not the destination’ guy, it’s tough.
Tango is also never a straight line. It’s the very definition of two steps forward, one step back – and sometimes feels like the other way around …
Continue reading Feeling like my tango has finally levelled-up – after a very long plateauFilling the tango festival gap between the November and December Feasts was a new-to-me one: Tango by the Sea, in Felixstowe. I did have to take the ‘by the sea’ part on trust, as the furthest I got from the dance floor was a cafe about 200 feet away.
Actually, they refer to it as a house-party rather than a festival, as a way of emphasising the relaxed and fun atmosphere they want people to enjoy …
Continue reading Tango by the Sea: More festival heavenThis is a question I first asked myself so long ago that I can’t even find the blog post to link to: How far do I want to go in my tango journey?
Dancing a lot less than I was, I was finding that my weekly privates (alternating between Emma and Diego) were too much: I simply wasn’t doing enough dancing to put the work into practice in milongas …
Continue reading A pause in my privates, and thinking about where I go from hereA friend suggested I might get more sleep if I weren’t writing my blog posts. In truth, I’m buzzing so much when I get home from milongas that there’s no chance I’d sleep anyway if I tried going straight to bed. Writing is for me a way of winding down, even if I do also do it for a living!
I have made it to bed on previous nights, albeit sometimes at 5am. Last night, however, I was so euphoric that I might as well have had a nose full of cocaine for all the hope there was of sleep …
Continue reading Last ones standing: Closing Salon Canning at 4am (Video)I was going to say it was less than a month ago when I described my tangostential crisis, but as I caught a lurgy and was out of action for half of it, it was actually four milongas ago that I wrote:
I’m now at a somewhat odd stage in my tango – and I’m not quite sure what to do about it […] I feel simultaneously delighted with where I am, and frustrated with where I’m not.
Every problem in tango turns out to be either far simpler, or far more complex, than I imagined. Fortunately in this case it was the former …
Continue reading Four milongas later, my tangostential crisis is over (for now)Having been given a potential solution to part of my tangistential crisis, Tango Terra tonight offered an opportunity to at least partly put the theory to the test.
It wasn’t a particularly crowded milonga, but Terra does have one characteristic which proved useful in the circumstances …
Continue reading A small but encouraging tangistential test-run at Tango TerraTango highs and tango lows are familiar to anyone caught up in the clutches of the dance. Days when we can do anything; others when we can do nothing. After a time, you just get relaxed about that – or at least come to accept that there’s nothing we can do about it, so there’s no point getting stressed.
But I’m now at a somewhat odd stage in my tango – and I’m not quite sure what to do about it.
Let’s start with the good news …
Continue reading A heavenly Nacimiento, but a tango existential crisisI kept saying, throughout my extended tango high, that there had to be a crash around the corner. It was a surprisingly long time coming, but when it did, it was an impressive one.
Let’s start with the good news …
Continue reading A tango crash after the high, and a wonderful new teacherI’ve written a few blog posts with self appraisals of my progress. The differences between six, nine, twelve and eighteen months were dramatic! For me, the real watershed point was when I could Just Dance, without having to think about figures.
Technically, I’m now 2.8 years in, though the pandemic makes such measurements less precise. But now is clearly the right time for a slightly early three-year appraisal – this time taking a somewhat different approach …
Continue reading My 3-year appraisal: Beginning a whole new levelI had to be almost bodily dragged to Negracha. I’d heard people talk about it, and seen a couple of videos, and it was clear to me that the level there was far too high for me.
But the visit turned into something I couldn’t have dared hope for. There are a couple of pieces of context needed to make sense of what follows …
Continue reading A truly magical experience – and a rhythmical breakthrough – at NegrachaI wrote last time about the excitement I feel, at finally feeling like I might start to enjoy rhythmical tandas as much as lyrical ones. But there’s also the other side to this, which is why I choose the above image for this post.
There are times in my tango journey where it feels circular: Oh, this again! But it’s of course really a spiral. We learn something on one level, then we return to it later and explore it on another level. And we continually get deeper into each element – like revealing the fruit beneath the peel. (Hey, this metaphor is worth what you paid for it!)
Turning my attention now to rhythmical dancing is like revisiting everything from scratch …
Continue reading Rhythmical dance is bringing me back to basics in a whole new way
It’s been quite some time since my last blog post. Lessons obviously had to stop during the stricter lockdown, and it feels great to be able to resume them. Even with regular practice, long gaps in teaching do make me nervous!
But it seems I didn’t have too much to fear. I do have work to do to restore my tango posture, but my fluency seems to be mostly intact …
Continue reading Resuming privates, and seeking out complexity!
I wrote last month that I was feeling like I’m on a roll now. Things that once would have felt complicated now quickly feel straightforward; things I would once have had to think about now feel obvious; I’m able to think about how I want the follower to move, rather than my own steps; and finding exits to new things is now instinctive …
Continue reading A tale of two cities, tango edition
This evening’s lesson with David began with more technique refinement and texture.
On the former front, for example, David approved of my collecting my feet fully in the side-steps when leading ochos, but wanted me to ensure that I was dragging my feet along the floor, not lifting them …
Continue reading Feeling like I’m on a roll now
I’ve given myself appraisals at six, nine and twelve months. I thought another one would fall due at 18 months – but then at 16 months, the world stopped.
I tried a few video lessons, but in the end that grew too frustrating. I had a six-week break from tango before the opportunity arose for both in-person privates and practice, albeit in compromised form …
Continue reading My 18-month-ish appraisal: Stage One improvisation unlocked!
Practicing giros and contra-giros yesterday, something clicked. I was able to enter the giro directly from the side-step, forward ocho and back ocho – without my customary ‘side-step then outside walk’ entry – and I could no longer recall why I ever felt the contra-giro was any harder than the giro!
That’s a pretty huge step forward, and David declared my giros relaxed and fluid …
Continue reading Clicking giros; continuing variations; and leading with my breath
We’ve decided to make the lessons with David a weekly fixture during the tango famine, working on that same mix of technique, and variations on things I already know how to do.
We worked this week on the planeo …
There’s a Catch-22 with my plan to expand my core vocabulary. The stuff I’m now adding in to milongas feels less fluid, so I’m reluctant to interrupt the flow of the dance by using them too often – but unless I use them more often, they won’t feel more fluid.
That feels like a particular dilemma when I feel like smoothness and musicality are what I’ve got going for me right now as a tango dancer; if I put those at risk, I have nothing …
Continue reading Deliberately taking one step back to get two steps forward
While my longer-term goal is truly improvised dance, I am of course mostly dependent on figures for now.
But the two are in any case very closely linked: the more of my existing figures I can call upon in dance, the more experience I’m getting of different movement possibilities …
Continue reading A systematic plan for expanding my core vocabulary
Ever since I started considering dropping the Tuesday Tango Space milonga from my weekly schedule, just to calm things down a bit, it has been conspiring to prevent me from doing so …
I’ve often said that my primary audience for my blog is me. It’s a way of reminding myself of what I’ve learned in particular lessons, so I can revisit them from time to time, and of tracking my progress. Anyone else finding the posts interesting is a bonus.
More so than most, this post is a memo to myself …
Continue reading My parallel learning tracks: a particularly diary-like post
Scheduling challenges meant I didn’t have any private lessons last month, but now have three arranged for this month: two with Maeve while she’s in London, and resuming my regular privates with Fede and Julia toward the end of the month.
A lot changed for me in BsAs, so I realised I needed to take a fresh look at what I wanted to get out of my privates. Two elements are easy …
Why does no-one ever believe me when I say I’m only staying for the first hour of a milonga?
Today was the final Tango Space workshop of the year, a one-hour one billed as lessons Pablo and Anne had learned from their students, followed by Prosecco and mince pies – then the monthly Browns milonga …
Continue reading They make long hours at this time of the year
Tonight was my type of music, my type of followers, my type of dance.
Mara Ovieda was again DJing. There were a lot of lyrical tandas, and the more rhythmical ones still had depth to them. I only sat out a few tandas, and that was mostly because I was busy chatting …
It feels like I arrived only yesterday; it feels like I’ve been here forever. It feels like milongas are the real world, and London is some kind of vague dream.
Forever is also about the time it will take me to integrate everything I’ve learned here, both in lessons and from dancing in all those milongas – but let’s at least make a start …
Continue reading Twenty-five milongas in twelve days: lessons from Buenos Aires
My sartorial standards in milongas are respectable, but I’ve now given up on mornings. We just made it to the hotel breakfast room before it closed, and I was unshaven, with uncombed hair and wearing my Virgin sleep suit.
Breakfast was spent sorting out some more of our tango schedule. With up to 20 or so milongas from which to choose every day, it’s no easy task …
Continue reading Some reflections, some wanderings and an ‘entertaining’ milonga
When Fede said my dancing on Sunday was my best yet, he was referring to my posture and technique. Behind this was a single secret he’d been trying to share with me for some considerable time: do one thing at a time.
With a back ocho, for example, lead a side-step first. No more than that. Don’t enter the side-step deciding in advance that it’s going to be a back ocho, as that will lead to me blending the two, compromising my posture in the process …
Continue reading Six-point-three lovely tandas, and my one-year appraisal
I am officially now a giromaniac.
After a false start a couple of months ago, I’m finally able to fluidly lead giros and contra-giros in a milonga. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me feel! Partly just the relief of finally getting there after so long, but mostly because it completely transforms my dance and the crowded milonga experience …
Continue reading A giromaniac is born, and a whole new tango world opens up
As with Spitalfields, I’d first seen Tango on the Thames long before I danced; stood and watched for a while, and thought of it as one of those delightfully eccentric English things done by people who aren’t me.
It was an incredibly hot day, 32C ambient, and more in the sun. We estimated when the sun would have dropped beneath the building line and turned up at around 7.15pm, which was perfect timing …
Continue reading Tango on the Thames tangasms, with giros and counter-giros – and accidental ganchos
I’d decided that moving fully into a Just Dancing phase – as in ceasing all lessons for a time – was just a bit too radical for now. In part because pre-milonga group classes are the best way to meet followers and decide which ones I’d like to cabeceo given the opportunity.
But my focus at present is very much on enjoying the dance, and worrying less about what I’m learning. Which also, I think, needs a new approach to the blog, but I’ll get to that …
Continue reading Kicking off the Just Dance phase, and a new approach to the blog
As someone put it today, it’s 37C in London and Boris has just been appointed PM: we have officially entered hell.
No more so than in the back room at the Shield Cafe, which is an oven at the best of times …
Continue reading Fewer classes, more dancing (though not in 37C temps …)
This week has been an eventful one in my tango journey!
On Monday, deciding to finally put Pablo’s actitude advice into practice, and set aside my inhibited Brit persona during dance – and immediately seeing how well this worked even in a class.
On Tuesday, verifying that I can actually do this in a milonga, albeit with some caveats. On Thursday, finally being able to drop maths from my tango syllabus. And today, a lesson with Diego which put into place the last piece in my ‘simple, musical dance’ jigsaw puzzle …
Continue reading Getting the last piece in my ‘simple, musical dance’ jigsaw puzzle
Sometimes a tango teacher will say something that’s blindingly obvious once they’ve said it, but which hadn’t occurred to me before then.
One earlier example was the times I was unsure where my follower’s weight was. The blindingly obvious solution to that, of course, is to lead a weight-change – then you’ll know where it is because you just put it there! And yesterday Irina Zoueva kindly messaged me in response to my previous blog post …
Now that I have a clear focus for my tango, and the necessary reassurance that it’s a good idea, it seemed a good time to look at where my learning should go from here.
At the end of the current Tango Space cycle, I’ll have completed it twice, at mixed levels …
Tonight was a real breakthrough for me.
Have you ever made a decision, carried it out and then got immediate and undeniable evidence that you made the right choice? That’s what happened to me tonight …
Continue reading Finally losing the future tense in ‘You’re going to be a very nice dancer’
Three months ago, I gave myself my six-month appraisal, and made what I felt at the time was a level-headed decision:
So I think that’s where I’m at with it. A year of lessons, culminating in a trip to Buenos Aires. If I call it a day at that point, I’ve experienced a whole new world, made some lovely new friends, and had a glorious adventure. But if I feel that I’ve reached a point where what I do in a milonga feels like dance, then I’ll stick with it.
Nine months in, things look very different …
Continue reading My nine-month appraisal – a rather different beast to my six-month one
This was originally going to be a post about vocabulary. What I have. Where I’m at with it. What more I need. My next, ah, steps from here.
But, as I started writing, I realised it’s about more than that: it’s about finding my own dance …
I began my tango journey at the end of October of last year, making today 8 months AT. In that time, there have been private lessons, group lessons, workshops, practicas, milongas, books, videos, forums, Facebook groups … YouTube pretty much assumes I only want to watch tango dances, and my Spotify playlists contain tango, the whole tango and nothing but the tango.
As for my schedule …
I talked before about the delusional phase most tango dancers get to enjoy.
In conversation among experienced dancers, someone said most people make it through the first couple of years of tango thanks to a healthy dose of self-delusion. By the time they realise they weren’t anything like as good as they thought they were, they are over the hump – or at least, too far in to escape.
I was complaining that having an advanced tango dancer as a life-partner meant that I never got to enjoy that myself …
Just under two months ago, I wrote my six-month appraisal. The bottom-line of what I wrote then hasn’t changed:
By one measure, I’ve come a huge, huge distance. From zero to being able to lead an enjoyable, if simple, dance … for a fellow beginner.
By another measure – the standard I see in milongas – I’m almost nowhere. I watch people effortlessly do these amazing-looking things, and I can’t even tell you what they are doing.
But three things have changed significantly …
Continue reading Two months later, and disclosing my internal dialogue
I wrote about one major milestone earlier this month: finally feeling like I have enough vocabulary to cope with a milonga where there isn’t much movement. That was followed by my first tangasm, and another really good experience in the Tuesday milonga a week later.
I realised afterwards that another milestone has been achieved …
Be careful what you wish for …
In conversation among experienced dancers, someone said most people make it through the first couple of years of tango thanks to a healthy dose of self-delusion. By the time they realise they weren’t anything like as good as they thought they were, they are over the hump – or at least, too far in to escape.
In reference to my six month appraisal, I complained that I hadn’t been supplied with the self-delusion to which I was apparently entitled …
Continue reading My legally-mandated dose of self-delusion was delivered after all
Tonight was my best tango experience yet!
The evening began with the Tuesday improver’s class, on the cross in cross system. Yesterday I’d been having mixed success with this, as I’m new to walking in cross system anyway. Tonight was still mixed success, but weighted more to the success side of the scales …
I may have mentioned once or twice <ahem> the difference between the theory of tango as a walking dance, and the reality of crowded milongas with lots of people doing endless circular movements. All good fun if you have any, not so much fun if you don’t.
I devoted not just one but both of my private lessons with Diego to this, and today’s Tango Space workshop was the perfect complement: Dancing in small spaces …
Continue reading Finally feeling like an improver (and beginner)
Tuesday evenings are straight into the improver’s class, as that precedes the beginner’s one. After a warm-up dance, we started with outside walking and then moved onto the cross.
I hadn’t been happy with my lead of the cross. It felt sloppy, and followers often ended up in a kind of half-hearted one. But tonight it clicked into place, and the key was fairly obvious in retrospect …
This week’s Tango Space theme is dissociation, and my week began as usual with the Monday beginner’s class followed by the improver’s one. The difference this week is that the 10-week cycle is starting again, so this time I’ve done everything in the beginner’s classes once before. I was hoping that would allow me to focus less on the ‘what’ and more on the ‘how’ …
My usual approach to Tango Space lessons does seem to do the trick: do beginner, Practica and improver classes on Monday; then the improver class on Tuesday (with the follow-on beginner class in reserve if I’m still struggling).
The two classes tend to take different approaches …
Continue reading A plan to move beyond my Minimal Comfort Zone
It’s been said that it can be a good idea to take a break from tango every now and then, to allow things to consolidate,. I could see sense in that, but the fixed cycle of the Tango Space classes complicated matters. I wanted to wait until I’d completed the full 12-week cycle, and then pick a week with a topic where I felt sufficiently comfortable to skip a week.
As things turned out, I didn’t get any say in the matter …
Tonight was my final group tango lesson of the year: the Tuesday Tango Space lesson, also on the medio giro. (I have one more private lesson this year, with Maeve).
When I first decided to do two Tango Space lessons each week, I thought they were the exact same lesson, so I’d be doing each twice. For anything I found difficult, that would give me a second shot at it; for anything that worked the first time, it would be an opportunity to work on improving my technique.
In fact, the theme is the same for each class in any one week, but the exact lesson varies. So both yesterday and today were the medio giro, but the two classes taught two different versions of it – both of which were different to the one Mariano showed me. There are, I’m quickly learning, endless variations of everything tango …
Continue reading Last group lesson of the year, and the journey so far
Here is my idea of how learning a new skill should progress:
Start at the beginning. Do one thing at a time. Progress in a series of logical steps from ignorance to competence.
Here is a photo of what learning tango looks like in real life …
I throw myself into things. Between lessons, daily practice … books … blogs … videos. Why Tango. Tango & Chaos. Twelve Minutes of Love.
They give me a feel for the passion and romance. But also show me a world so far removed from my seven-lessons-in walk that it seems a crazy, absurd, impossible idea that I could ever aspire to set foot in a milonga in Buenos Aires, that year-away-goal designed to inspire and propel me forward …
Tango is just walking in time to the music.
The lie is compelling because we all know how to walk. Most of us have been doing it since before our first birthday, and like to think we’ve got the hang of it by now. The deception is of course revealed in the very first lesson.
‘Push from the floor with your rear leg, don’t reach out with your front one.’
‘Walk with a swagger, but not pushing your hips forward.’
‘Lead with your chest, but take your power from the floor’ …
ben lovejoy 