Here’s a post from the old blog that I never published for some reason… I wrote it back in March. At least it’s about tango. It was titled “Tango Weekend – Part III”.
The perfection of the perfect tango. The perfection of the perfect connection.
All I know is that I know it when I feel it. And when I don’t.
The milonga Saturday night was “okay”. I was in one of my moods. The woman I felt the connection with in class earlier – let’s call her “Miss Sublime” – it turns out is not from Atlanta. Bummer. It’s rare for a woman to pique my interest that much – that much to put me in a mood when I find out the possibilities are limited, or precluded, by geography. It wasn’t just this that put me in the mood, though. It was the spirit crushing thing from earlier in the week that came back and started slapping me around. Bitch slaps.
This milonga is hosted by personal friends, so I’m sensitive about what I say and how I say it. It was a great milonga – not as many people as I expected – great music – great floor – great set up with tables around the floor – a few munchies – nice people – good floorcraft & navigation. That said, the energy of the place is a little off for me. Remember my post a little while ago about the ballroom at Palazzo Parisio?
I asked the question “would tango, danced in a place like this ‘feel’ better?”. In the instance of this milonga, I think this was true. In other words it felt “less better” because of the place. At least for me. There is something about the energy of a place, where it is in the city, the neighborhood, the other buildings and businesses around it, the building itself, the decor and furniture inside it, the other activities inside it (primarily a ballroom studio), that for me, combine to form the “energy” of a place.
This one is in a strip center. For those who don’t know this term, it’s a strip center or strip mall, built in a long “strip”, usually along a road or highway, usually with some “big box” anchor stores like Home Depot, although in this case it’s just small businesses and restaurants. They typically have a life cycle of about 20-30 years, fall into disrepair, and are either renovated or torn down. They are an abomination of the American landscape, economy and culture, a prime example of our cheap and disposable economy and mindset.
But I digress. I am going somewhere eventually with this, but I will come back to it later. In another post.
For me, and I again emphasize that this is an Alex thing, a favorite idiosyncratic diatribe of mine – the energy here was off in this milonga for me – just because it was in a strip mall. I know I’m being too picky. The energy was friendly, but bland. Banal. Plain. Vanilla. White bread and mayo. The tango did not seem juicy enough. I left early and missed meeting some new folks that I ended up meeting the next day. No doubt if I had engaged (rather than mope in the corner), and stayed, I would have had a better time.
With Miss Sublime, I had my one perfect connection of the evening and that was enough for me. I had a couple of other nice dances. That’s it. Nice.
Then I went and embarrassed myself. I walked over to ask a beginning dancer to dance. (Cabeceo was fairly non-existent, as it often is in small U.S. milongas.) A milonga tanda started and not wanting to “not” dance, I asked her “how is your milonga?”. She looked at me with the deer in the headlights look. I should have waited for the next tanda. After the first few steps, it was evident that her milonga vocabulary was at zero on the dial. Perhaps less than zero.
Milonga is a strength for me, and in the past I have been able to lead it with women who have never done it. I figured that I could lead her just fine. I figured wrong. Try as I might to put her foot down, she would always take a side step. I would slow down and lead it more strongly, over-leading, over-exaggerating, over-emphasizing, but she would still take a side step when I wanted a weight change. We were having fun, but struggling a bit. I started to teach (a little) on the floor. I say a little because we didn’t stop moving, but I was still teaching while dancing. Talking and dancing.
As you all know, this is a big no-no. BIG. I am the one who really frowns on guys who do this. I want to call them outside and kick their ass. (Those who know me know that this would never, never actually happen – that I am a gentle giant. I have never been in a fight in my lifetime. Being a big guy has its advantages. Except in 7th grade when I called my friend Sammy a liar. He was a fat kid. He threw me down on the gorund and sat on me. I had to punch him repeatedly to get him off of me. If you want to call that a fight.)
But it does piss me off when guys do this. I was pissed at myself, and embarrassed for/of myself afterwards. It’s not like we made a scene or anything, and it’s possible no one else even noticed. We still had fun. I had fun. She had fun. That’s the important thing. Now I had something else to bitch slap myself about.
She asked me to keep working with her in the next room – to show her more about milonga. The guy she was with joined us. He was a young college kid. I spent five or ten minutes with them – showing them the milonga rhythm and the basic milonga step. Basically a box step, with or without a traspie element. She was still having trouble with the concept of putting her foot down in place – changing weight – and not taking another side step back the other way.
Then they wanted me to show them how do a follower back high/hip gancho. Or, more accurately, the kid asked me how to lead it. You know the move, the follower hooks her leg backwards around the leaders hip. A high back gancho. I don’t know what else to call it. Got it…the “doggie style” back gancho. “Gancho del perro.” I know, I know…I’m bad. But at least you get the picture now.
I told the kid that after 3 years of dancing tango, I don’t know how to lead an element like that. I was trying to be emphatic that it takes a long time to get to that kind of stuff. I told him that it’s not something that is done on the social dance floor. I was trying to be emphatic that most people never get to that kind of stuff. The kid has been dancing less than a month, can’t even walk yet, and is wanting to learn to lead a stage/fantasia element. What is it with these youngsters today? It’s the mentality of not wanting to study and make good grades in high school and college, but wanting to make $150,000 a year and buy a Beemer when they graduate. They want all the benefits without all the hard work. I could see the kid veering down the nuevo path.
I pulled a disappearing act just before eleven and crawled into the big, wide, cool expanse of my king-size hotel bed. I needed to sleep off my bad strip mall energy bitch slapped embarrassment. I fell asleep thinking of Miss Sublime.
Stay tuned for Part IV.
Posted in on milongas, on tango
