Limerick Tango

A Mordida.

Simple case of lead a backward ocho or two. On her backward ocho to the closed side stop her and catch her foot with your right. Sandwich her foot by placing your left foot on the other side of her foot then step back with the right leading her to step forward with her right across your left foot.

Its a nice step, more importantly it is an opportunity to show changes of pace and timing. From the moment she is stopped to when she is invited to step forward there are numerous variations in how he can time the placing of his steps. Also it introduces to her the notion of the pause as something other than the result of an error.

Limerick Argentine Tango Night
Venue: The Bank, 62 O’Connell St, Limerick
Date: August 16th
Time: 9pm to 1am
Cost: €15

At this point I would like to thank Alexander Zabara of zabara.org for the original picture.

Much is made of the Codigos of argentine tango and the various attempts to transplant them to tango scences outside of Buenos Aires. This is not a post about the merits of the codigos but about why it is pointless in throwing a hissy fit if they are not a carbon copy of the salons of Buenos Aires.

I’ll put it this way in the Irish tango scene, at least the scene outside Dublin, people tend to dance as many tandas as possible, there are no cortinas (how can you have tandas if there are no cortinas, don’t ask) and the floor begins to move on the very first bar. So when I have to give you the evil eye to get you to move out of the way because you are still chatting to your partner on the dance floor don’t begin your defence with “Well in Buenos Aires…”. Take a look around, we are not in Buenos Aires. We are a fair few thousand miles away and we are not going to get there overnight. It takes gentle nudges and pushes to get a social scene to drift in the right direction. Talk of the imposition of the codigos, etc outside Buenos Aires reminds me about the joke about the Canadian coast guard and the aircraft carrier.

Canadians:  Please divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid collision.

Americans:  Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians:  Negative.  You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans:  This is the Captain of a US Navy ship.  I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians:  No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans:  THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES’ ATLANTIC FLEET.  WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE  DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT  VESSELS.  I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15  DEGREES NORTH–I SAY AGAIN, THAT’S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH–OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians:  This is a lighthouse.  Your call.

When in Rome, do as Romans do. When patrolling Hadrians wall, wrap up warm.

Is possibly what Jules Jacob could have called his seminal 1887 tract that established the epee as a distinct weapon from the french foil. He didn’t. Instead he called it Le Jeu De L’Epee but his reasoning and his reception weren’t too distant from those of the Nuevo-Tangueros. Some welcomed his work as the future and as an innovation. Others labelled it a prostitution and would have it nowhere near their salles.

Why and what had he done?

Jacob had gone back to the drawing board and examined the combinations and possibilities of movement with respect to the necessities of the duel rather than to those of tradition. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Paris was beset by a duelling craze. Every hot blooded young male who considered himself to have any bit of standing would seek to find himself on the terrain in the early morning light. From there being hardly any salles des armes in the city it went to there being too many. But what was worse was that during this craze a number of serious swordsmen lost to complete novices (most of these duels were to first blood, so nothing too significant in the injury stakes). They lost because the novice was given something along the lines of the following advice. “He is an academic foil fencer, he will guard his torso but not his arm, strike him there.” You see the serious swordsman neglected to observe that he was no longer sur les planches of his academic salle but on the duelling ground and did not adapt to suit. The foil fencer in him worried only about the academic target area of the torso. To the duellist fighting for first blood it doesn’t matter where the blood flows from so long as it isn’t from him. Jacob recognised this. His approach included the weapon arm, the forward leg and the head in the target area. He recognised that the fleurette had become too florid for use on the duelling ground. That tradition had become stiff and academic.

So too with tango. There is a facet of it that can be labelled traditional. It is all too easy for that ‘t’ to drift into upper case, for moves to be done because “that is how they have always been done”, for it all to become academic. It is a risk that anything having that traditional facet shares. For those pitfalls to be avoided the changes in terrain must be noted. Be aware that the young blood may not speak exactly the same language, their aims of expression may be different. To some extent nuevo tango is a search for a language of movement that suits that of the young blood. For the other side of the house this doesn’t mean that you have to change the moves to suit them. You have to change how you communicate the moves to them. Even tradition has to stay up to date otherwise it may lose more than first blood to the novice.

In writing this I am very aware that I am touching on a subject that I know very little about following. Most of my experience in this area is as a foil to Veronica as she was trying to work out a step.

Bad following covers a vast spectrum of things but it is entirely possible to be in ones axis, to do what is required, to follow the step exactly, and still be following badly. How? By being entirely passive and uninvolved. I liken it to being a good listener. Not one of those good listeners who sit there occasionally interjecting with a “he didn’t, did he?”. But one of those listeners who actually listens to what is being said, not just the noises and the sounds, but to what is being meant.

It is often said that lecturing is the method of transferring information from the notes of the lecturer to those of the students without the active participation of either parties brain. In the same manner it is entirely possible to communicate the steps over and back without either parties being involved.

Followers: be involved. Leaders: give them something to be involved in.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.

-Shunryu Suzuki

So many times I meet people who are daunted by the sheer infinity of possibilities in tango. (Hurray! for improvised dance.) Leaders bewildered by what step they should take next, racking their brains for steps they shouldn’t remember. Followers stuffed so full of combinations that they can’t distinguish a pause for being just that, a pause. Fear, frustration, anger.

Pour quoi?

Because the prevalent method of teaching is through the demonstration and repetition of steps, sequences, phrases… Throwing as many combinations as humanly possible at the dancers in the hope that something will stick and some will stay.

The beginner comes to believe that to be expert is to know many. The beginner is annoyed that they cannot remember all the sequences. Perhaps the expert does know many, but their skill comes in seeing few, to dismissing the unselected to the periphery of their vision, silencing their chatter and concentrating on the task in hand. Of being able to see the trees for the wood. (more…)

The walk and turns.

Beginning first with the structure of the turn, moving in a straight line. Changing to turns proper, focusing on the turn being led. That the continuation of the turn being physical momentum instead of mind or mechanics. Ending with stopping the turn.

I have changed my YouTube search methodology recently. Rather than search for particular dancers I have taken to searching for a particular piece of music to see how different dancers interpret it. The most recent search was for El Recodo, preferably by Biagi, which turned up the clip below of Mariano ‘Chicho’ Frumboli and Eugenia Parrilla.

I think it compares quite nicely to the clip of Adrian & Amanda Costa simply because most of what Chico is doing is simply a nuanced walk. The clip clearly exposes his background as a musician. He may be the standard bearer of avant-guard mile-wide-embrace legs-flying-everywhere neo-nuevo-what-ever-they-are-calling-it-tango but here you can see that he is faithful to the music. One foot then the other, maybe back again, but always with feeling and expression.

Slightly inspired by the previous post, and by other recent observations, I have come to the conclusion that human beings are not designed with eye-foot co-ordination in mind. Far too often one sees dancers crucify themselves by trying to watch their feet. The result is too often dis-improvement rather than improvement of their movement. Part of this is of course caused by the break in posture. A heavy head, the hips shifted back to give a clearer view, the feet brought forward of the weight, the feet should never be forward of the weight! The other part of this clumsiness is, as I have already stated, due to the fact that eye-foot co-ordination is not a part of our make-up. We are bipeds evolved, rather than designed, to stand on our feet and scan the horizon. The whole feet walking business is supposed to go on underneath without too much interference from us above. Take the duck on water, all calm gliding along above, underneath it is furious paddling, and you don’t see ducks with their heads stuck under water checking where their feet are going. Before you strike back with the suggestion that footballers (the non-American kind) have great eye-foot co-ordination I would like to point out that footballers do not spend the time with their eyes glued to the ball. Most of the time their eyes are on where their opponents and team mates are. They know where the ball is, that is called ‘ball control’. Quite simply you are not supposed to watch yourself walking, so don’t, let your feet do the walking.

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The reason for him to place his feet between hers, I can understand. His need to have his nose shoved in her armpit while doing it, I can’t.

From Leone in the Vuelvo al sur pool on Flickr.