Etiquette 101 - Navigation, back-leading and the stare from Hell.

I love this pic from Tango in your Eyes. 

There are indeed many faces to Tango and one of the most annoying is the Tango arrogant snob who's too good to bother with the line of dance and can't figure out that they're not alone dancing.

One word of warning: if I get bumped when we dance because you enjoy confronting other men, I will never dance with you again... and I am not the only one feeling that.... trust me on it.  Poor navigation skills is worse than poor technique or lack of connection. 

Surprisingly enough it is not always the beginner dancer who lacks navigation skills. Nope!  More often than not it is the idiota who's been dancing for years and looks down on the rest of us. 

Most festivals have classes on navigation and some schools here are starting with etiquette courses in the curriculum.  If you have not taken such class yet, TAKE ONE!  Trust me, no one is above it.

Navigation is not the sole job of leaders though.  As long as there will be idiotas doing anything and everything on the dance floor, followers will need to pitch in when it comes to navigating safely.  On a crowded milonga floor, navigation is team work.  It's not okay for followers to close our eyes and forget there are 50 couples around us.  I signal my partner with a light touch where danger is coming from behind him.  Now of course it needs to be done with some finesse.  One leader I've been dancing with calls it "back leading". I call it back-seat driving ;)

Anyways, I came a long way with that.  From being told that it was disruptive to now getting compliments about it. Pfew!  I have also developed a related skill:  the "Stare from Hell".  I know most leaders who are navigation-challenged in our community and when I spot one of them getting too close for comfort, I catch his eye and give him the "Stare from Hell." It works only 50% of the time as some just don't understand anything but it's often enough to cool off a few which lessens the workload for me.

I recognize that's something not everyone can do.  Years of teaching have endowed me with a natural authority and the ability to have grown men break into a sweat just by looking at them.  Thank God I have other stares in my knapsack, otherwise I'd be a very lonely tanguera :D

Happy dancing....

Tango mastercard

- Getting home from the milonga = 2am
- Showering and taking off make-up = 2:30am
- Soaking feet in ice water = 2:45am
- Eating a cranberry muffin 3am

Best night of your life: timeless

She summed it all up

"All I can say is every day that you wait to start tango, is another day you’ll regret not having started sooner." Mari on The Tango Blog

Pré-milonga 101 - Before the Milonga 101

Pour ceux qui débutent, la préparation pour les premières milongas peut paraître déroutante. Voici un petit guide rapide. Rajoutez vos étapes dans les commentaires

Étape 1- Salle de bain.
Douche chaude puis froide et on insiste bien sur les jambes et les pieds avec l'eau froide!
Deux rituels importants: les dents et le déo. Fil dentaire, brossage en règle et rince-bouche. J'ai 4 déos différents dans ma salle de bain, il m'arrive d'en changer avant même de sortir... Je sais, ça fait un peu obssessionnelle...

Ce que je regrette le plus, pas de parfum, ça peut en déranger certains. Désolant pour moi qui suis connu au bureau pour mon parfum.

Étape 2- Placard
Pas de couleur claires car la transpiration des hommes laissent de vilaines marques sur les chandails. Il faut du souple et du près du corps.
Si vous craigniez les marques de transpiration, on trouve des petits "pads" speciaux chez Pharmaprix et Jean Coutu. Il suffit de les coller à l'intérieur des vêtements et hop, ni vu ni connu! Juste pas oublier de les enlever avant de tout mettre au lavage.

Après il faut encore se coiffer, se maquiller... Il m'est arrivé quelques fois de ne pas aller danser juste parce que je n'avais pas le courage de passer une heure à me préparer.

Avec le temps j'ai réussi à réduire le temps de préparation de moitié, notamment en ajustant ma garde-robe et ne perdant plus des heures à trouver quelque chose qui me permette de danser confortablement.

Happy dancing...

Etiquette 101 - Codigos

Inspired from a post by Mari: "Trying to show a new move at a milonga is one of the most obvious marks of very poor dance etiquette."

I agree!!! Could we all agree to quit doing THAT?

Last Sunday I actually got scared as my partner (whom I had never danced before) lead me into a very deep volcada and then attempted to drag me across the floor! I wish the horror on my face had been recorded. He did that twice! So he's now on my little black list of "leaders who have little regards for their partner and prefer to show off than experience something genuine."

I don't mind trying new things but you have to be en expert leader to have a follower do new things at a milonga. I can count on the fingers of one hand the men I have danced with who managed to make me go "Wow! I did not know I could do that!"

Has that ever happened to you?

Dossier of a baby tanguera

*Désolée pour mes lecteurs français, exceptionnellement ce billet n'est pas traduit*

This is a little game that some in the blogher community have been playing. So if you are nice enough to pretend you're interested in me, keep reading. Otherwise, I kinda understand you have better things to do with your life....

You can also fill in the questionnaire yourself in the comments. You'll find explanations here and Tina Tango did her own too.


Name:
Steph (for most people)
Raphaël's sister (for anyone who dances tango)
Zazagabor (on blip.fm)
Professor (for those poor students who have been taught to confuse respect and ranking. No matter how many times you tell them to use your first name, some can't do it)

Looking Glass Powers:
The ability to laugh loud and clear
The ability to synthesize huge amounts of information and create half-ass theories on the fly
The ability to give others ideas on what to do with their life
The ability to see the bigger pictures while recklessly overlooking the details

Dress-up Closet: (signature items in my wardrobe)
White and red wrap dress, Vietnamese silk dresses (Ao Dai), Chinese silk Kimonos used as coats (if I could remember when I get out), yoga and running gear, more tango shoes than I can use in one night.

Disguise:
Red slutty tango dress and silver CiF. Black track suit with Mom.com T-shirt

Go-To Gadget:
Pink camera-phone, ancient iPod, USB keys, Anis de Flavigny

Vice:
White wine and anything with cachaça or rum or tequila.

Magic Potion:
Earl Grey with soy milk

Battery Recharge Hub:
Tracey's Asanara yoga class on Mondays at Ra'da. Studio Tango milongas.

Bratty Spoilers:
Watching Bolt with my son, and Pho

Owner's Manual: (What defines you in print, what illuminates you)
Anything by Maya Angelou. Belle du Seigneur by Cohen.

Weapon: (What is your tool, your device, your method)
Wit that goes straight for the balls! Natural defiance of social order. Optimism and energy.

Nemesis: (What are you up against, what challenges you)
People who hurt kids. Bikers on sidewalks. When my son blurts out clichés he heard in school. Beginner tango dancers who ask for "steps" or don't dare dancing during milongas. Tango snobs. My balance and my axis. Procrastination. Passive-agressiveness.

Secret Ambitions: (What would your six- year-old self say you should grow up to be)
Doing anything I feel like without thinking twice about it, staying fearless.

This is driving me crazy - Milonga Vs. Tango

So I get out of a Milonga class. Pablo Pugliese - yup, son of... and Noel Strazza -yup, ex-partner of Pablo Veron (Oh yeah baby, Montreal is one star-studded place, I tell ya) teaching. So not exactly average teachers who don't know squat about tango but think they can improvise themselves as such (yup, we also have a bunch of those here...). Anyways... Pablo and Noel ask us what is the difference between Tango and Milonga. We venture guesses and I (idiotically) say "rythm? tempo?" Some of you would have guessed the same right? Well it appears not so!

Then Pablo played Milonga del Angel which, indeed, is just so slow I always thought it was a tango (that just goes to show how much of a beginner I am...). He then explains that it's the melodic line behind that makes the difference, not faster rythm. Damn! The anal-retentive in me was unsatisfied with that answer and I started digging.

Now, mind you, that happened yesterday so I was not able to ask all my tango friends but I will do just that at tonight's milonga.

Meanwhile, I really need your help here. According to what you heard, read, seen, danced, what is the difference between a milonga and a tango? Leave your comments below and I'll agregate them in a post.

As food for thought here is what I found on the web (and that's very little)

(from this site)
"Chronologically both Tango and Milonga coincide. Both come from the black
dance Candombe, but while the Milonga is the dance from the compadritos
orilleros according to Vega and other writers of the time (1880-1900), Tango
is the preferred music by the urban compadritos. The most vivid difference
between the Tango and Milonga is the rhythm. The Milonga is faster and cut,
which gives way to dance it with cortes and quebradas. In this dance the man
shows up his abilities greatly and in second order does the woman. The Tango
is slower which also allows to be danced with cortes and quebradas but with
less frequency, and at a rhythm more adequate for dancers of less expertise.
The Tango allows both man and woman to show up their abilities equally
without differences of gender. The Milonga orillera was for the ones who
danced very well. On the other hand, the urban tango allowed dancers of
lesser dance skills or those called medio pataduras to participate in the
dance"

That actually just contradicts what Pablo said, I know and I'd be more tempted to believe him...

Here is something else:
"The Litmus Test is the rhythmic pattern.

Listen to the Habanera from Bizet's opera, Carmen. The habanera rhythm is identical to the rhythmic pattern of a milonga. However, a habanera is slow and a milonga is fast.

There's a historical connection between habanera and tango. Indeed, old tangos (the kind that people feel inclined to dance "canyengue" to) often use the same rhythm as the habanera.

Did you ever watch the old TV show "Dragnet"? The first part of the Dragnet theme is the same as the habanera rhythm. (DUM da DUM DUM) That might not mean anything without musical notation, but that "dotted" rhythm (it's called a dotted rhythm because of the symbols that are used to notate it) is repeated non-stop in a milonga.

Contrast that with a tango, which aligns more with 4 heavy beats per measure (we tend to walk on every other beat). This difference in feel is why people tend to like dancing traspie in a milonga. That DUM-da-DUM-DUM, DUM-da-DUM-DUM repetition lends well
to double time steps to accommodate the tiny "da".

Did that help? Or did that obscure things more? Listen to that Carmen aria."

This may hold the final explanation but I can't understand music stuff in English ( I learnt it in French...)