Limerick Tango

Of all the lists of neo-tango or alt-tango song suggestions I can’t remember one that I listened to¹ that I jumped at going ‘that’s a tango!’.

One example would be Maroon 5’s Secret

I just don’t get the tango in that. (Now I might if it was three in the morning and I had danced every tanda since I’d arrived).

I, personally, am fond of The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver by Elbow. But that is because it provided an a-ha! moment. Also Guy Garvey’s singing is two fingers to those who say that only tango is sung with emotion. I play it when doing exercises.

My point is neo/alt-tango is very much something of individual taste. You might like a particular song and think it is danceable but you may have had the song on repeat for the last month. Not everyone is going to hear what you hear.

¹There may be ones out there beyond my reach that do work.

Tango music is more than a “toon“. It is the score to the film of the dance. As we know a film score is more than incidental background music but is an integral part of the story panning out in front of you. On this basis the most valid criticism of dancing to electronic-tango is that by and large it says nothing and goes nowhere. Equally it can be said of the musician centric tango-nuevo of the seventies and eighties that it says too much and wanders all over the place.

My attempts to “de-sequence” myself have had a side effect.

I have learned to forget.

It does wonders for my dancing but has introduced difficulties in attending workshops that involve sequences. I can look at the sequence, go ‘that’s nice’ and then be incapable of reproducing it because I have no interest in reproductions.

Oops!

I have written before about Dr. Temple Grandin in relation to the embrace. The other connection I make between Dr. Grandin and tango is with regard to venue selection and layout. Dr. Grandin is a designer of livestock handling facilities and a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. She feels that her autism gives her insight into how an animal thinks and views the world. In her view an animal hangs between fear and curiosity constantly wondering “will this eat me or can I eat it”. To this end in North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a centre track restrainer system that she designed for meat plants.

A lot of her work is based on simple observation of how the animals are reacting to the handling environment. How animals are fearful of shadows. How a piece of rubbish in a cattle chute will distract the animals and disrupt the operation. Simple things such as noticing that cattle prefer shallow steps as opposed to a ramp with cleats.

What has this got to do with tango? An Irish euphemism that is applied to night clubs is ‘meat market’ or ‘cattle mart’ and really I wish their designers would pay as much attention to detail as the designers of actual cattle marts do. Dark, dingy, with pointless steps up and down, random changes of ceiling level (which is annoying for those of a taller stature) and in general uncomfortable. Which is why, when I have gone to tango events in such venues, I find them to be not the best. If getting to the floor is an ordeal then you are going to spend the half of the first song getting comfortable with yourself before you turn your attention to getting comfortable with your partner (who may have already written you off by now). And constantly as new people are getting up to dance more unease is being added to the floor. Usually this unease exhibits itself as floorcraft going to pot and soon the floor descends into chaos¹.

Dancers may dislike being compared to livestock but there is more to good husbandry than people think.

¹For various values of chaos

Seeing as how I went backward ochos then a mordida, which is somewhat based on backward ochos, and last week was forward ochos I think the ocho curtado thingy fits in nicely here. It is also an opportunity to introduce little variations in rhythm given that it involves a check step/half beat.

If I haven’t been publishing much of late it is because I am a) grappling with some really awkward posts and b) Ireland is enjoying its indian summer at the moment so I am out enjoying that.

Its a word with many connotations in tango.

To be heavy: The way the majority of Argentine teachers describe having connection with the floor. Where ballroom dancing seeks to glide above the floor tango dancers seek purchase and make the floor their friend. In this way the partners communicate the presence of their feet.

Heavy: Sometimes used to describe someone’s embrace indicating their ability to communicate the heaviness of their lower half through their embrace.

Heavy: Literally being heavy and pulling or leaning down on your partner. Extremely incorrect technique.

Heavy: Being sluggish and unresponsive to the lead. A mistaken interpretation of the notion of resistance in the embrace.

Formerly Preparatory III the walk with forward ochos got bumped a week in the shuffle.

Eight weeks later I am still of the opinion that the delicacy of forward ochos makes them difficult to teach. They are however an excellent point to introduce the concept of disassociation. For the leader to understand that what is important is where her feet are going not his. To this end I added in joint forward ochos. Both the leader and the follower ocho out to the open side.

It’s an old chestnut, boyfriend and girlfriend sitting in silence when she turns to him and asks “what are you thinking?”. He usually runs scared at this point. Either he was thinking of something he shouldn’t have been (who’s hotter: Angelina Jolie or Daphne from Scooby Doo?) or wasn’t thinking of anything of signifigance at all (a much enjoyed state of being of the male of the species). In both cases he is in trouble because he’s not thinking about her, which is what she wants to hear. Walking up to someone and asking “what are you thinking?” is probably the least effective way of learning someones thoughts. You might as well stand at the rivers edge and ask “where are you going?”¹

So too with following. There really is no point in trying to get inside his head (there might be nothing in there). Better to follow the stream of his thoughts, you’ll have a better idea of where he’s going that way.

¹As best used as the closing line of the Coupling episode “The end of the line”.

Rather than teach backward ochos one week and forward ochos the next I swapped in mordidas instead, which used to be preparatory v. The two classes segue nicely from one to the other while at the same time not making it necessary to have taken the first class.

He just finished eating dinner
and stepped outside the cave to smoke
A cigarette he’d made from rolled up photo paper
They were pictures of things back on earth
He looked out on the greyish white expanse of
Uninhabited terrain he now called home

He’d seen plenty of mirages and imaginary visitors up until then
So he wasn’t sure what to think when he saw swans
And they were wading on the shores of a pale white lake
That he’d never seen there before
And it was quite beautiful and it was far away
Cause everything beautiful is far away

He knew he was as good as gone
But gone was somewhere he really didn’t mind going to
Since the shuttle had crashed many years had passed
And the pictures of his loved ones
That he drew on the walls of the cave had finally faded
He put out his smoke and proceeded toward the lake
Repeating to himself everything beautiful is far away.

Grandaddy, Everything beautiful is far away, 1998

These lyrics echo a sentiment found in tango lyrics that to an emigrant lost on the far side of the world everything beautiful is far away.