LimerickTango

Inspired by, if somewhat tenuously, There’s Nobody to Dance With by Johanna and Who Do You Like to Dance With? by Tango Pilgrim.

An old bull and a young bull were standing on the crest of a hill gazing down on the herd of cows grazing on the slopes below them.
The young bull turn turned to the old bull and said, “Let’s run down there and mount the best of them”.
“No”, replied the old bull, “we will Walk down there and mount the lot of them.”

It is all too easy to rush out onto the floor, like a young bull, seeking nirvana in each dance. It takes an entirely different attitude to slowly proceed with patience, like an old bull, and take each dance as they find it or to know that tomorrow the dancers will still be there.

My Maestro di Arma taught with a mantra of “Form, Tempo, Intent”. For their attacks to be effective a fencer should have good form. For that attack to to pose a threat it must have intent and it must be executed at the right time, tempo. It is a mantra that I keep bumping into the essence of everywhere, nowhere more so than tango.

Let us start with a quote from E. Santos Discepolo lifted from Tangri-La

“Tango is not about what is done, but how it is done”.

The form of tango is easily identifiable, its posture, its moves, its mechanics, the cogs in the timepiece, the what. Tempo is, of course, the beat of the music, the tick of the clock. With those two components you will have something that looks like tango, will move like tango, but it won’t be tango.

For it to be tango there must be intent, there must be a desire to connect, to communicate, there must be music (for music is much more than just the beat). Intent is to beat and to mechanics what the concept of time is to a watch. Without the concept of time a watch is a mere trinket or bangle, with the concept of time we can be desperately lost in the absence of that mere trinket.

Saturday night was an annual event which once upon at time was my first full floor, lots of people dancing, tango experience. While I am not particularly worried about the milestones I pass I find them useful points to turn around and look back at the way I have come.

Way back then I was a green dancer. Now, while there are still a few patches of green, I am a hardened organiser*. What was unusual was that for once I wasn’t bothered about the social machinations, whether the playlist was any good (actually I ended up DJing the first hour to let the host go and get changed) or whether a wild bull had just been set loose upon the dance floor. For once in a long time I came away not wanting to play zero 7s - This fine social scene.

I pretty much danced with who I wanted to dance with and was fairly happy in accepting the requests that I did get. I had one or two extended tandas with an old tango-buddy anad we both agreed that it had been far too long since we last danced together. I finished it off with a very nice last tanda with someone who the last time we danced it was not at all pleasant due to a floor that was as tacky as hell and bad shoes, so the quality of this tanda was a pleasant surprise.

All in all it was a nice night because I wasn’t bothered.

(I think I shall place my quibbles about my own dancing in another post)

*I am inclined, at times, to watch the entire floor and what goes on around it as much as I am a single couple.

Published in Dublin in 1734 the translation of The Art of Fencing or The Use of the Small Sword by Monsieur L’Abbat contains a list of simple advice.
Exchange step for thrust, partner for enemy and dance for assault and all applies very well to tango.

1. Make no wry faces or motions that are disagreeable to the sight.
2. Be not affected, negligent, nor stiff.
3. Don’t flatter yourself in your lessons, and still less in assaults.
4. Be not vain at the thrusts you give, nor show contempt when you receive them.
5. Don’t think yourself expert, but that you may become so.
6. Do nothing that’s useless, every action should tend to your advantage.
7. Lessons and assaults are only valuable when the application and genius make them so.
8. Too good an opinion spoils many people, and too bad a one still more.
9. A natural disposition and practice are necessary in lessons, but in assaults there must be a genius besides.
10. The goodness of lessons and of assaults does not consist so much in the length as in the manner of them.
11. Before you applaud a thrust given, examine if chance had no hand in it.
12. Thrusts of experience, and those of chance are different, the first come often, the others seldom happen, you may depend on one, but not on the other.
13. In battle let valour and prudence go together, the lyon’s courage with the fox’s craft.
14. To be in possession of what you know, you must be in possession of yourself.
15. Undertake nothing but what your strength and the capacity of the enemy will admit of in the execution.
16. The beauty of an assault appears in the execution of the design.
17. Make no thrust without considering the advantage and danger of it.
18. If the eye and wrist precede the body, the execution will be good.
19. Be always cautious, time lost cannot be regained.
20. To know what you risque you must know what you are worth.
21. Twenty good qualities will not make you perfect, and one bad one will hinder your being so.
22. Judge of a thrust rather by reason than by it’s success; the one may fail, but the other cannot.
23. To parry well is much, but it is nothing when you can do more.
24. Practice is either a good or an evil; all consists in the choice of it.
25. When you think yourself skilful and dexterous, ’tis then you are not so.
26. ‘Tis not enough that your parts agree, they must also answer the enemy’s motions.
27. The knowing a good without practising it, turns to an evil.
28. Two skilful men acting together, fight more with their heads than with their hands.

Part of the training of a Special Circumstances agent was learning a) that the rules were supposed to be broken sometimes, b) just how to go about breaking the rules, and c) how to get away with it, whether the rule breaking had led to a successful outcome or not.

Matter, Iain M. Banks
Orbit Books, 2008
978-1-84149-418-0

The Good-Time-Boy. He has bucket-loads of charisma and applies it liberally. Likely to buy every one drinks ’cause “it’s the economy, stupid”. Will flirt with anything in a dress and then go to great lengths denying it ever happened. No one remembers what the dance was like because once Slick Willy turns on the charm forget about it.

He’s confident, oh dear Jesus is he confident. So much so that he uses it to cover it up his ineptitude. Nothing will be thought through, it will just be done. He will launch into things that he can’t get out of leaving him precariously balanced with his leg wrapped round your arse. Of course because he is so confident he thinks the world, apart from one or two oddly strung followers that he is out to get, loves him and there is nothing you can do about it.

He leads and directs with a cold steel grip. His route around the dance floor is performed according to a five year plan and will be executed no matter what the cost or the obstacle. You are required to affectionately refer to him as uncle Joe. Any form of passive leading will be strictly punished and if you step out of line you can expect to be banished to the gulag of the back row of seats never to be heard of again. He will also have a number of satellite leaders in his thrall subject to his whim.

The male role in tango is commonly referred to as that of Leader. Well to be a leader implies leadership and the various qualities required. Much has been written about leadership, unfortunately badly and directed at middle management David Brent types.

In this series I am going to describe the various types of tango leader one can encounter in terms of world leaders.