Limerick Tango

As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

Jingo- Terry Pratchett

One of the lessons I use in fencing has a strange quirk. It is a chain of exercies that moves up through multiple orders of feints. The quirk is that people don’t perfect the first stage until they have perfected the last stage. The quality of movement that is exposed by the last stage is exactly that required to perfect the first stage.

In a way you could describe it as wisdom. “…I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor…” and this time I know what to say.  (Hindsight is all very well but it’s better when you can recognise what is coming down the tracks.)

I’m begining to think that this applies to the dancing of Tango¹. That your basics may never be great until you delve deep into the mysteries of the embrace. That it’s not just enough to make the journey but to return as well. That each layer of tango that you unwrap applies not only to itself and those inside it but those that came before it. It indicates the potential folly of ‘becoming Advanced’ and leaving those things of beginners behind. That in the end you have to walk the miles.

¹Note capitalisation, I’m not writing about the dancing of tango.

Sometimes we over-emphasise dancing the tango instead of dancing together.

This comes from a recent conversation I had with someone on the topic of ‘there are no bad teachers’. The thrust of his arguement was that there are no bad teachers just wrong teachers. Many of the ‘bad’ teachers out there have been labelled so because they dance a style not suited to their dissaproving former clients or use a teaching model that is at odds with how some people think. This largely explains how one mans genius is another mans git.

And oh if this were the end of the story.

But it’s not. Because littered amoung the understood and missunderstood good and bad there are the ugly. Those who should not teach. This cohort is largely made up of dancers who use teaching as a means of support and well meaning amateurs who view the exhibition dance as the pièce de résistance. Usually they dance well but lack the ability to communicate, or worse have no desire to improve their teaching methods, and retain students through strength of personality alone.

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Murphy’s Law dictates that ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong’. This is especially true of open air events, like that planned for Robert Byrne Park, where the weather will sweep in at the last minute and upset everything. So it is important to have a back up venue that you can fall back on should the inevitable happen. Thankfully the nice people from the School of Architecture @ University of Limerick leant us their exhibition space in St Munchin’s church. Initially I was informed that ‘there might be one or two bits and pieces from the previous exhibition’ lying about, but this turned out to be the entire exhibition! Fortunately we were able to clear out a corner to dance away amoung the pictures, plans, models and memorial plaques.

There was a strange kind of vibe. Part of it came from the fact that we were obviously on Plan-B and therefore winging it slightly. Another part of it came through having to pick our way first through a graveyard and then the scattered remnants of an architectural exhibition. All of this served on top of the quiet reverance for old disused churches. Either way people enjoyed themselves.

It was also the first time that I had tried using off-camera flash at a social dance event. I’ve photographed tango with off-canera flash before but the social scene is a totally different animal.

19:00-23:00, Saturday 18th July
Robert Byrne Park (opposite Curragower bar), Clancy’s Strand
Limerick. Map

4 hours of music and dancing next to the river Shannon
(Back-up venue: St Munchin’s Church, Church St. Map)

For further details and updates contact limericktango@gmail.com