Limerick Tango

One of the problems of being a man of many parts is that every so often one part collides and gets in the way of another. In this case it is my camera and 3 tonnes of fireworks colliding with the Cork Tango festival. It just so happens that the National Lottery Skyfest fireworks display, to be held this year in Limerick, and the Cork Tango festival ball are both on the night of Saturday 13th March.

That being said the fireworks will probably be over by 9 and the ball doesn’t start until 9.30-ish

Dear God I needed that.

How can a society that created The Rules have a problem with Codigos?

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.

One of the nice aspects of tango and tango events is that it can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of age. I’ve been at events where I’ve danced with a legend of tango¹ and where fathers dance with their young daughters balanced on top of their feet. But that is the cauldron of tango where we are all set to rise and fall in our turn.

In contrast I was at a suburban party at the weekend that made me feel my age. An enjoyable party but with a far narrower age range, I don’t think it helped that I spotted someone plugging in a baby monitor, and shockingly suburban. Either way I felt the cold chill of the eternal footman at the door once or twice.

All this will pass but there will always be seat next to the dancefloor.

¹ Admittedly it did feel like dancing with my mother.

“Your bunny ears are interfering with my devils horns.”

But then again it was a fancy dress milonga.

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

Sunday morning radio is great. A strange mix of farming reports, international stories, what the papers say and discussions about nothing in particular. The discussion that drew my attention was one about the laws of attraction. At that point they had been talking aboutthe importance of eye contact, actually they had now reverted to calling it eyeballing. The thought that crossed my mind was whether the cabeceo used or hijacked the same mechanics as those of attraction?

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.

All I can say is that when I got home I polished off a bottle of scotch.

(OK there was only a generous dram left in the bottle, but it’s the mood and the intention that counts.)