Feeling stressed?
This may be coincidental, but in the space of a month, ‘stress’ has been mentioned as a factor (by followers) which is keeping them away from Tango at some stage.
Although a little surprised, I can fully sympathise with the sense of anxiety faced by beginners. It just so happens that I do still vividly remember, as beginning leader, the insecurity and perhaps the often-unfulfilled desire to “perform” on the dance floor all those years ago. However, perhaps at that time,
- only practicas were regularly held (milongas were were few and far between),
- people were pretty much of similar standards,
- small groups meant everyone got to know each other well after a while,
- goals were similar,
- …
these feelings eventually went away. However, I must say that at no point was ‘stress’ something that would drive me away from the dance floor.
After all, Tango is a social dance, as we have so often heard mentioned, no?
Simple yardsticks
With more and more people coming into contact with Tango, occasionally I get asked by beginners about “how to spot a good leader”?
Without going into a debate into which style is better which is a largely personal choice, or open vs closed embrace**, I think there is a few simple items a beginning follower can look out for.
Re-learning to walk
In March 2007, we organised a series of workshops by Hsueh-tze Lee. After hearing so much about her, finally got some first-hand experiences!
Here are some snippets of thoughts after the lessons, which (the writing, that is…) have stayed in incubation for the better part of a year. 🙂
Music and flow
Not so long ago, someone on a Tango DJ mailing list commented that bad music and bad arrangement of music could lead to chaos on the floor.
My initial reaction to this was: surely any chaos on the dance floor was more to do with the collective technical abilities of the daners? However, things started to make more sense as I started to recall a few instances where the inability to connect with the music meant things just “weren’t right” for the whole night. By way of an illustration, I attended a milonga a couple of months ago where no tandas** were used. Granted that there was a “legitimate” explanation for this particular community to dispense with tandas, I discovered that it was very difficult to relax and dance into a comfortable rhythm. Another example, perhaps less extreme, has already been described in vortex of hell before.