ladysprite | Better Things

I realized recently that, while I talk a lot here about what's on my mind, as always, I don't talk so much about what's going on in my life. And that, when I do, I tend to focus more on the stresses, disasters, and catastrophes more than the bright spots and the highlights. So today, in an effort to remedy both of those shortcomings, I am going to talk about my tango class.

I love dance, in all forms, but some are more natural to me than others. There are dances that just come naturally to me, like contact improv, and flailing-around-a-club - while I can learn, and adopt other patterns, they just seem to suit my body and my personal style of movement. There are others that are just intrinsically hard for me, like Middle Eastern dance - they violate rules that I learned in other forms, or they ask my body to move in ways I'm not used to, but I find them fascinating enough that I push and persevere anyway. And there are the styles of dance that, when I start out, they seem impossible, but after a little while of frustrated pushing, they turn into my deep and adored favorites. This was the case with 16th Century Italian dance, and it's turning out to be the case with tango.

Tango is, in its movement style, very different from other forms of ballroom dance, which surprised me at first. I spent most of the first time through the class just learning how to balance my weight in towards my partner, instead of leaning back into the hold, and figuring out how to follow a lead that came from the torso and shoulders instead of arms and body. But it was enough fun that my friend and I decided to take the beginner class again, and the second time through is turning out to be purely amazing.

There's just a level of joy and delight that comes from finally starting to feel comfortable with the steps and the style, from being able to start the transition from thinking-about-steps to thinking-about-the-dance as a whole. There are the grins and excitement that you share when you realize that you maneuvered a new step properly, and the fun of trying to puzzle something new out on your own, even if it winds up with tangled feet and almost-toppling, and there's the sheer pleasure of movement, and feeling your body fit into the music and the rhythm.

Of course, it also helps that our teacher is apparently a slightly crazed Super Dance Hobbit, and that she sneaks us extra new steps on the side since we are now her Advanced Students, at least in comparison to the rest of the beginners. (Advanced enough that I seem to have become her demo model, even when she's teaching steps I haven't done before, but that's an entirely different source of amusement.) And it's always fun to have something to share with a friend, and to enjoy their excitement and happiness as much as my own.

Next week is our last class, and I'm not sure where to go from here. I don't want to just give up on tango entirely, but taking the beginner's class a third time would probably no longer be helpful. Our teacher runs an intermediate class, but it's on Mondays, and soon I'm going to be working until 7pm most Mondays. I'm looking forward to dipping my toes back into Middle Eastern dance once my Thursday nights are free again, but before too long I'm going to start having to look for a new alternate tango venue.....

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We'll definitely manage to find someplace to tango.

(And, who knows? Maybe Springstep will eventually have an intermediate class?)

I keep wanting to take tango again, need to convince Mr. Pants.

Dances that violate rules I've learned in other forms... this, I've figured out, is one of my biggest problems with swing. It's not phrased with the music, and that goes against both freeform rock dance and contradance. Both of which I've been doing for so long that I don't think I *can* learn to ignore that pull.

Hm... east-cost or west-coast Swing? (Or Lindy?)

I know that Foxtrot has two basic rhythms: slow-slow-quick-quick, or slow-quick-quick (though, in fact, any combination of slows and quicks is, mostly, allowed) -- and if one is phrased with the music, the other can't be. Some others (Waltz, Rhumba) have essentially no rhythm changes, and can stay locked to the phrasing of the music.

For Swing, a basic east-coast triple-swing (triple, triple, rock-step) is a 6-beat rhythm, repeated twice, this then synchronises to 3 bars of a 4/4 timed song. (east-cost single swing would be slow, slow, quick, quick, still 6-beat.)

Where I've seen more of an issue for violation is the question of how you move -- hips, shoulders, torso, etc -- what parts move together, what parts move seperately, how things isolate/don't. That is what I expect would be the big "difference" for middle-eastern.

Um... quack, quack? Sorry, but I have no idea at all what you're talking about. I was just describing my one or two failed experiments with swing.

Now, the problem I have with most international dance is much simpler -- I can't think about my arms and my feet at the same time! So either I get the arm movements right and miss the steps, or get the steps right but my arms don't move. In contra, if you have to do anything with your arms it's sort of obvious, and otherwise it doesn't matter.

I think what they're saying is that while East Coast flavor of swing is phrased in 6 counts to 4-beat music (so that 1 pattern takes up 1.5 bars of music), so you start the pattern on the strong beat 50% of the time. The other flavors of swing are 8-count, so they do fall on the phrases better, but of course are also complicateder, and can throw in 6-count patterns as well just to mix things up.

I personally think that a lot of proper swing music is phrased to accomodate that, although what gets played at a lot of swing dances is not quite swing music. (I _can_ swing to rock-n-roll, it just doesn't make me _want_ to the way big band does).

Yes, that's about it.

And, I agree, you can swing to some rock-n-roll, but actually swing tends to work better. Big band is a good example, but I have found others.

Oh, certainly, there's plenty of things that are perfectly swingable, I just largely meant that the stuff that really makes me want to jump up and dance the most is big band.

I think we're agreeing. Loudly. :)

Hmm. In terms of divisons, there's also hesitation waltz steps (which will usually cut across two measures).

The hesitations I've done in Waltz take two full measures. But, that isn't unusual -- a basic box in Waltz also take two full measures. In fact, multi-measure patterns in any dance are pretty common. And, even the hesitation doesn't break the Waltz phrasing. In fact, Waltz is one of the most solid to its phrasing out there.

A box breaks along measure lines, though. And four steps of 6-beat swing fits solidly within 6 measures (of 4-4), if one is aligning to the phrase.

Hesitation, as I was taught it in Waltz, also break along measure lines.

Actually, you only need 2-sections of 6-beat swing to aling into 3 measures of 4/4.

I've learned hesitations that don't break along measure lines--particularly one that puts a long hesitation between the first and the other two steps of a turning (new) waltz--such that movement when repeating a bunch of them ends up being ..2-3-1...2-3-1

And sure, but 3 measures of 4/4 isn't always phrase-aligned, whereas 6 measures usually is.

Mmm -- sounds like fun. I definitely understand the subtle joy of finding that a once-hard form has integrated itself into your mind and body somewhere along the line. (Most recently for me was a few years ago, when improvisation in 15th c. Italian really clicked for me: not so much a new movement idiom as a new way of thinking about dance, that elevates it to a different level...)

I've not done Argentinian Tango (which is what I think you're doing, right?), but regular ballroom tango. But I've found most ballroom is better lead with torso and shoulders, rather than shoulders and arms. In fact, if I lead with shoulders & arms, rather than body & shoulders, I will tend to lead wrong/poorly or in a confusing way.

Yeah, the classes we've been taking are Argentine tango, and I'd really love to learn the difference between that and ballroom tango.

That said, I can't really imagine other ballroom being lead with the torso in the same way. Waltz is more of a whole-body lead, and swing (I know, not technically ballroom) the hold is so open that I don't think I could follow it that way. It's hard to explain with words; I don't quite have the right vocabulary....

Yeah, Swing is, technically, a latin dance rather than ballroom -- and it is lead more with arms and shoulders -- but, again, they work bettter if it is body initiating, rather than shoulders initiating.

As for ballroom Tango vs Argentine, I don't know enough to tell you clearly. I know that Argentine tends to travel less, and tends to involve a lot more fancy footwork for the lady -- hooks and stuff like that.

So how _do_ you balance forward? (If you can verbalize it, of course).

Hm. I think it's a matter of practice, trusting your partner, and realizing that the posture doesn't have to be quite as exaggerated as I had originally been aiming for.

I should get formal Tango at some point. I think the only tango I've studied since high school is 1920s tango -- which seems to lack a lot of the structure it got later (and I haven't spend that much attention on that).

Better Things

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