That was IMPRESS-Sieve!

Have you ever watched Impress-Sieve dancers?

They pull off amazing moves that you probably will never do.  If you try to copy them, other dancers most likely will wish that you wouldn't have tried (at least on the social dance floor).  That is what we can call very "Impress-Sieve."

I wish I had more tango wisdom as a young musician.  I worked too hard at being Impress-Sieve -- straining out the soul and body of art, leaving only the mind to be in awe of accomplishment.

You see, I wanted to play to impress others, but I did not know what art is all about until I learned from tango:  The Way of Tango, at least for me, is to be present within your own body and with the person with whom you are dancing.  Impressing others is a distraction from true art.  

One way to think about art is to consider the early Greek categories of Mind, Body and Soul -- three circles that entwined themselves.

• Impressing others is an expression of art that expresses technical genius -- this boggles our Mind.
• Deeply moving others is the area we call Soul.  If art moves one to sigh in awe, or if tears come to your eyes in spite of not wanting them, art has moved your Soul.
• Moving others so much that they wish to move or to dance out their feelings of joy or deep love is what we could call the area of art touching the Body.

A friend of mine told me that her daughter sang in church and she heard someone let out a sigh during the song.  Another person wept.  That same weekend she had seen musicians playing at an outdoor festival and some audience members just had to dance.  These are examples of art without a "Sieve."  They all can be technically wonderful, but that is not nearly as important as the balance of Mind, Body and Soul.

Just today, my sister-in-law sent me a video of my old self -- a drummer playing a solo that was truly impressive.  Well, I would have been impressed, but I wasn't.  The term, "Impress-Sieve," came to mind.  I guess that I have grown in wisdom from dancing tango.  The drum solo was truly Impress-Sieve.  I looked up the definition of a sieve:  "A sifter that separates wanted elements from unwanted material using a woven screen such as a mesh or net."  While being Impress-Sieve, he strained out the soul and body of his art.

I asked her, "Did anyone feel closer to their center (soul), or is anyone dancing because they are so moved by his drum solo?"

Musicians, or any artist who creates to impress, forgets what art really is -- something to move the soul, the body, and lastly, the mind. 

Gene Krupa

Any of those who know about the history of the big band period will know the great drummers and band leaders, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich.  These two men were known as the best drummers of their time.  Buddy Rich was an incredible technician, but Krupa made the people go wild with solos that made them want to get up and dance.  He often played far more simply than Rich did.  Please watch and listen to this Krupa video clip:  Notice that he uses silence and is not constrained to the drum stool in this video -- the man dances around!

I once emulated a Krupa solo* as my younger son, then age three, was with me in the music room, and he was dancing around.  He finally pleaded with me to stop because he wanted to stop dancing.  What a tribute to the power of art!  He had to dance.  His mind had lost its own volition to the power of art.  

I have said all of this for one main message to dancers-as-artists:  Dance from the soul and be totally present in your body.  This will not be Impress-Sieve at all.  Although I have watched many technically perfect dancers, only a few speak to my soul and body.  Most teachers have an eye for what appeals to the mind.  Only you can be in your own body and dance from the soul.

*Krupa solo:
http://www.drummerworld.com/Sound/GeneKrupaSingSing.mp3 

Photo Credit:
Sieve drawing

Da Vinci mind body soul

Gene Krupa

Dancing with a Porcupine

I am a porcupine, some have said.
At the milonga, I go where I want.
The bear tangueros leave me alone.
The prowling tigers choose their prey.
The hyenas circle, laughing at imperfect moves.
I walk them by, taking her by the hand.
We needn't give them a thought.
I am the porcupine!

I am not vulnerable to their glaring eyes.
The bear would not dance with her lower level;
The tiger would not prey on one so old.
The hyena waits for the day her technique betters.
But the Porcupine takes her by the arm, entering before her
Into the dangers of the dry swirling stream.

In the current of the room, we dance a vulnerable dance.
I am impervious to my wild friends' growls,
So I can be fully present, vulnerable to her.
I have no spines on my chest.
She melts more than close to me:
Through me, into me, a part of me.  Apilado.
Her face touches mine; I smell her essence.
I am fully open -- vulnerable with her.
She knows how the music moves me,
Revealing who I really am.
My soul has no spines.
I cannot hurt others but feel their hurts instead.

Sometimes I see a bear, tiger and even a hyena
Become a porcupine too.

Deep down they all wish to be ...
Vulnerable but impervious too.


Photo Credit link.

PS:
I asked my favorite milonguera if she would allow me to share a picture of her.  Ella es tan adorable.  ¿No?

Sharing Her Aura

Sharing Her Aura 
by Mark Word

We agree to meet -- a reenactment of love at first sight,
As a thousand times before when we dance.
No dance is just another dance; it is our first or perhaps our last.
As I arrive, I see her and sense that she has not yet danced.
I can see it in her face, her lack of light.

Others too, sit like ghosts, black and white, blurred, waiting to dance.
Those dancing have color -- the spectrum playfully dancing through their body.
Their auras mingle in a depth of color, sometimes shooting rays.

I catch her eye; she nods assent with her eyes that I may approach her.
As she waits, I savor our soul-through-eye-connection, until I stand before her.
The black and white hues of our hands meet and we watch the color
Fill in our grayish, charcoal-sketched outlines, starting at our fingers,
Color fills our hands, arms, and in moments our entire being comes to life in color.
Her amber hue fills faster than mine, as if her soul is thirsty from anticipation.
She admires, with a smile, how her amber goes so well with my purplish hue.
We walk to the wooden path, joining the orchestra with our body-instruments.
Together.

At the command of the di Sarli that plays, we embrace and listen to the pulse.
As we embrace, the spectrum of music dances in us like a flame from an ancient bonfire.
Like an ancient prayer that has been prayed countless times,
How often has this musical flame danced in this fashion
Between two connected hearts of embodied souls, I wonder.
Does the Music rejoice, happy that yet another two sojourners would join
These immortal tones, etched into the Universe's cerebral cortex?

My essence stays mostly purple, hers mostly amber as the music stops.
But as we return at tanda's end, I see my paths of purple go through her,
And her electric, golden strands move over me with amber rays darting from my shoulders.

This is why we come, time and time again.
To share an aura or to find ours again.



Photo Credits:
Eye spectrum
Aura angel

Music: Not a Spectator Sport

Waiting for a dance in Juarez

Sitting and listening to music is stressful.

Okay, it can be kind of nice.

If you are absolutely exhausted.

Having a broken leg is also a good excuse to sit and watch music.

It's rumored that one of the worst torture techniques used during the Bush administration was tying people down and playing tangos until they lost their minds.

As I was a musician, I didn't understand that I was a dancer inside.  I hardly could stand watching people playing music.  I felt I had to do something.  But I thought it was that I merely wished I was playing instead of watching.   But now I know what it was.  The "Do something!" that I felt inside was to dance.  I thought for years that I was impelled to play music, but what I really needed to do is get up and dance.  At the time I just did not know what was going on inside of me.

In 2007 I was playing Latin percussion along with a salsa DJ.  I was in heaven.  Playing music.  Nirvana.

Then a salsa came on and I put down my timbale sticks.  Sure, I  could have played the tune, but I just had to dance.  That's the day I realized something I really did not know:  Dancing is a higher level of Nirvana than being a musician -- at least, it is for me.

If it is true that music is not a spectator sport . . . then tango teachers really need to do a better job at changing the way they teach!  We are torturing all those tangueras by having them sit way too much.  Most don't have broken legs, I have noticed.

The gender imbalance is a complicated issue, but there are solutions.  Part of the solution would be to stop the blame-game-tango-teaching against men that goes on presently.  Here are a few solutions:

• No-Fault Dancer Solution:  Men are only 50% responsible for every dance.  50% if it goes well or not so well.  If it goes well, the woman did not make any obstacles for me and I did not create obstacles for her.
• The Music as Entertainer Solution:   Men are not responsible for giving the woman an entertaining ride.  This is the biggest mistake that teachers make -- giving a sense that you need to learn this $100 move to keep her satisfied -- or worse, that one should entertain the people sitting (who are already distressed because they are sitting and not dancing).  The music entertains us and motivates us when both are taking 50% responsibility for the dance and staying within their respective roles.
• The True Leader Solution:  The music leads, not the man.  Are both listening to the music?  If not this could be Tai Chi for two, or acrobatics, but it isn't dance. 
• The Body Language Solution:  Men have to listen to the woman's body and understand her level as much as a woman has to do the same.  If only the woman has to listen to what men are "leading," then the men are from the start at a disadvantage.
• The New Analogy Solution:  If it is not "lead/follow," then what is it?  Men have to learn how to follow the music as much as women.  However, their embodiment role is quite different:  Men are the musical note; women are the musical rest (or pause) -- neither of them are leaders. 
• Keep It Simple Solution:   How about men not having to be an encyclopedia of steps?  Do we really have to learn steps?  When I have danced well, the music has inspired some move.  I remember a tanguera saying something about me having an encyclopedia of moves.  I know that it may have felt as if I have a bunch of steps, but really I had stayed pretty basic but very much to the music. "I can't get no satisfaction," are pretty banal lyrics. Put to music and sung with energy, those lyrics suddenly seemed magical.  We don't need steps!  Both men and women have to learn how to move their torsos, shoulders, legs, feet -- bodies in such a way that it communicates to one's partner where we are in our feeling.  And then when the music says something, we can respond immediately to that.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the way women teach me steps all the time.  The music inspired her, and I listened.

No-blame dance instruction would revolutionize tango.  Too many women are sitting for a very good reason.  Let's fix it instead of blaming this problem on men.  

It may feel to women that the man led so perfectly, that she "merely" followed.  Not true.  It may feel to the man as if he really had really led the dance when it goes well.  Not true.  Think about it:  Surely, there are times when a man has done his very best, and the dance was not magic.  Perhaps the music the DJ put on really didn't lead the partner well because the DJ plays for himself and not for the dancers.  Perhaps the woman was not present -- looking at the mirror or at who was watching.  Perhaps the man was nervous, thinking that he is finally dancing with a woman who never had looked his way, and he is trying to show her everything he knows.  He "dances" well, but it doesn't go with the music.  Perhaps, he is angry and distracted by a tanguero who has put his partner in danger a few times, and he's contemplating how he should end the evil tanguero's life in a tango fight, just like the old days. :-)  At the end, the man led.  She followed.  But they had a torturous dance.  The music must lead.  WE must follow.  The music entertains us, not each other or the audience.  The music itself is a mix of notes and rests; so are we -- a mix of yin and yang, a mix of notes and rests, a mix of male and female.

Music is central.  Without it there is no dance.  Music is not a spectator sport:  It is la voz de los dioses.  When the music plays it leads us to get up and dance.  Just don't stop there.

Let music's divine voice continue to lead.





Photo credit:  Ladies waiting for dance.

Do us a favor. Don't teach!

ave you ever found an old letter that you wrote?  



It is amazing to go back to that moment.  There's a good chance that the relationship with that person is now totally different.  But what if that letter was to yourself? Chances are that the relationship with yourself has changed.

Today, I was looking for something else, and I came across a letter-to-myself, telling myself that it would be ill-advised ever to become a tango teacher.

So the good news is that I have taken my own advice not be a tango teacher.  Well, kind of.  If I fail at being a Master Beginner, then I will default into being "one-up," and start teaching.  I do not want to say bad things about teachers!  It's just that I don't want to be one.  I have had amazing teacher/mentors in all departments of my life.  They all had a special quality and expertise.  I appreciate all who endeavor to bring others forward this designation has many more poor examples of helping others than good examples.


So, the goal is not to be a teacher but a "Master Beginner."  This alternate term, Master Beginner, which I used in my last post, surprisingly does not appear in any Internet search engines.  The Zen term shoshin is a highly developed concept that speaks to the same concept of the Master Beginner.  However, as I understand shoshin (beginner's mind), I wish not to be the expert who uses a beginner's mind but to truly become the beginner and help other's to avoid becoming "experts" away from their center.   Many experts find themselves having to return to Square One.  My guess is that we should never leave our starting point.  And to remind myself I am not a teacher, I won't charge at the little studio who has invited me.
 
Back to my letter to myself.  I wrote this in Washington DC, back in Noverber 2010:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a letter to myself for the day that I get the (probably ill-informed) idea that I might be ready to teach tango:

Dear Mark:

Please remember these seven things, if you think you are now ready to teach, especially #7 --

1. Diversity is Good:  Respect the spectrum of tango (milonguero, salón, nuevo).  You don't have to do what theologians have done and start wars and kill each over our differences.

2. Help the Gene pool:  Have your students go to different milongas from different teachers.

3. Take care of your own soul:  Dance 100% with the person you are dancing outside of a lesson.  You have danced with teachers who examined you but were not truly present -- like someone listening to a Bach Cantata at a concert next to you, but not there with you.  Hold that woman. Make her feel as if she is the only woman in the world.

4. Practice the Art of Dancing for Yourself:  Dance with people outside your "stable."  It is amazing how limited teachers become and are unable to read anything they do not intellectually/experientially know. You can dance all night with all levels of dancers, and then a teacher cannot follow the same thing you have done with everyone else -- a true sign that they have been dancing within in their own studio too much.

5. Performance Anxiety Medicine:  Talented teachers help dancers from seeking blame when things go wrong.  The music is the leader ideally and both partners create together when the leader is fully acknowledged.

6. How to Protect a Woman:  Floorcraft is the science of many couples dancing together.  Ultimately it is protecting one woman and then protecting all the woman around you.  Their legs are exposed.  Floorcraft is the main subject in every class on social tango, right?

7.  The Real Subject is NOT Tango:  This could have been #1, but I saved it for last as it is the most important.  The real subject is not tango. What you are teaching mostly is how a person can enjoy themselves, love themselves,  reach out to others and feel the tender touch of another person.  An ocho cortado is only a way to get to this real goal.  The greatest teachers in history have inspired the student to thirst knowledge not to HAVE knowledge.  If your students feel depressed and you make them feel as if they know so little after your class, please consider just going back to dancing and not teaching.  Two towns that I know of that have an inordinate amount of judgmental tangueras, and in both cases this phenomenon is the teacher's misunderstanding of the Real Subject.

In a few words:  Teaching is a calling.  Mark, tango communities need teachers who are advocates for the love of primarily dancing not watching tango and the succor of a vibrant, local tango community.  Be a good teacher with the goal of making great tangueros/tangueras.

You will be a good teacher.
You will be a good teacher.
You will be a good teacher.
You will be a good teacher.

Note on this 2010 now on 18 August 2012:  My letter to myself was pretty good advice, but some things will be amended.  More on that later!   

The Body as Music Contest

How's this for a great contest?  The Body as Music contest.  Imagine trying to "hear" the music by just watching dancers.  Wouldn't that be a great contest?  This is what I think distinguishes this couple pictured above, Noelia Hurtado and Carlitos Espinoza.  La Música is in charge of what they do, allowing her to dance fully and for him to dance without hindrances of a woman who is waiting for the man to lead.  She is incredible with her keen ear to musical nuances, and he is the king of the tango walk in my estimation.

But back to my contest -- well, it's only an imaginary contest for now:

• The contestants listen to ten favorite tangos as the first step. 
• Each tango has about the same tempo but distinct characteristics.
• The contestants have ten guesses before the end of the song!

These rules for a Body as Music contest would be nearly impossible for contestants to distinguish music danced to waltz, salsa, foxtrot, or chachachá.  But tango's improvisational nature and connection makes this contest possible.   At least that is my theory.

Who should we choose to show the visual examples?  There are many to chose from, but this idea came to me after watching Noelia Hurtado and Carlitos Espinoza in the below video.  Notice the connection!  What a rare thing to see in performance videos.  Most performance dancers open up the embrace and lose the nuances that full connection allows.

I wish I had known about this couple earlier.  They were in Meze, France not too far from me recently.  Want to see more?  Here they are earlier this year in my back yard:





Photo Credit at top.

Psychosomatic Tango

Now that she has her own Guru, she melts into his close embrace.

We grow up hearing great wisdom from our father, but don't listen.  A guru comes from India, and while in the lotus position, we hear and listen to his great wisdom and it transforms our lives.  We yield.  Then Father dies.  Perhaps then we will remember his wisdom, but a little too late.  Dad was right.  Why didn't I listen?

Why does it take the magic of a foreigner or "special person" to introduce the same wisdom that a friend or a family member offered?  This is what I call the "psychosomatic syndrome."  Our ears do not hear (or listen, better said), until our psyche (soul) opens up to the messenger.  The Galilean Guru wisely said as his words and healing works failed in his own city: "No prophet is believed in his own country."

Now that I live in Germany, I am realizing something about perceptions helping or hindering connection from the very first dance.  Each region, every town has its own "tango accent."  Germany has a wonderful level of tango fluency, and of course, its own "accent."  Traditional tango is the rule.  Excellent music is the rule.  But I still see a change in connection when a new-to-me tanguera thinks mistakenly that I am from Latin America.  This is "psychosomatic tango."

Europeans probably account for a great deal of tango tourists in Buenos Aires.  No matter from where the tourists come, they all are looking for "tango wisdom."   And what do tangueras all over the world discover in Buenos Aires?  Tangueras sometimes are amazed at the connection, the surrender they feel in the arms of a tanguero from Argentina?  Did they have to go so far to discover this connection?  Perhaps not.  Did they have to go to the mountain to find their own part in the connection?

Since I returned to Germany (where my children live), I had been conversing more in Spanish more than ever in my life at that time.  As a result I found myself talking German to Spanish speakers and Spanish to German speakers.  So I also have become used to the look that people give me when I am "code switching" into the wrong language.   Along the same lines in Germany, at times I  find myself hearing Spanish lyrics while also sensing that I am in a foreign land, and I get confused, disoriented.  Where in the hell am I, anyway!  Somehow this seems to easily allow my disoriented mind to be transported to the belief that I am in Latin America.  In this delusional state, while in a foreign country and hearing Spanish, I am suddenly transported to a milonga in Argentina.  This is not all that bad. My delusions are the cheapest way to travel to Argentina, and I can spend my vacation time with my children in Germany!

Besides being a cheap way to travel to Argentina, another positive result is that I have learned about Psychosomatic Tango.  When a German tanguera obviously does not understand my language, I quickly switch to German.  But because she now believes that I am from Argentina, she melts into my embrace and I feel the difference.  Although the standard of dance in Germany is much higher than in the US, German women "feel" different than French and Latina tangueras; so I do notice a difference.  Suddenly there is a psychosomatic change, and they dance with less of a "German accent."  What takes away their tango "accent"?  I think it is simply because they start listening to me in a new way.  They melt into me.  Their guru has arrived. From this experience I would say that when tangueros and tangueras believe that the person is Argentinian, they dance differently with their pseudo-Argentinian.  Isn't this obvious?  Do we need a sociologist or neuroanthropologist to do a study about it?  A scientific study would only prove what we already know about psychosomatic responses.

Interesting, I have heard over and over that tangueras rave about "Señor Fulano de Argentia"  and how he has such a nice embrace, or they experience this on a tango-tourism pilgrimage to the Mountain.  The embrace may be her own making to a great degree.  Entreguarse (surrendering oneself) takes two people (just as it takes two to tango).  I wish I had the time to go Uruguay to live in a country that speaks tango; so nothing is wrong with those who go there, but also the need to go is perhaps misguided.  There is much to be learned in your own psyche and in your own soma* and in your own town.  Sure, the mountain is indeed a good place to go.  But if you cannot, try bringing the mountain to your mind.

From these experiences in Germany, I accidentally have learned about Psychosomatic Tango.  I have a very practical application of Psychosomatic Tango:  It is best at a local milonga to begin a conversation in Spanish.  I just want an embrace that feels warm and genuine.  The language of tango is Spanish.  Pretend with me!  Live the delusion that we are in Buenos Aires, or better yet, in Montevidéo, free from the hordes of tourists.  Let's pretend.  The embrace is a good place to start, but it would also be nice if you didn't wear clogs and jeans.  With the right amount of wine or the magical belief that I am from the "holy land," she will listen to my body and yield to what I have to say.  Speaking Spanish is the "drug of choice" that allows my partner to allow herself to enjoy Psychosomatic Tango.  The guru has arrived, who through his magic, allows her to hear the wisdom-already-said-by-Father or allows a transformation from a local prophet's message.  Hasn't every local teacher already told their students about yielding to one's partner (entreguarse)?  Why does it take a guru to hear this?  Under the right delusion, my partner's psyche allows her soma* to melt into me.  If she thinks that I am a prophet from Argentina; so be it!  If she thinks that I have traveled long to be her guru; so be it!  Enter the delusion!

Come with me to the next local milonga.  Let's enter into our delusion, our psychosis, together.  We melt into our embrace and each other.  We hear the music.  It leads us to dance in a way that allows the dream to go on.  Even the tanguera from Argentina melts into the arms of a man who she has never met because of this same concept.  She deludes herself to imagine that he is the only man on the planet.  This is Tango itself, not just a phenomena:  Psychosomatic Tango.


* Soma is Greek for "body."


Photo credit at this link.

Tango's Goldene Schnürsenkel

These shoelaces are priceless*

One evening not too long ago, Norman gave me the "Goldene Schnürsenel" Award -- an unofficial award, but nonetheless, a veritable honor!

I had never heard about this "award" before, but it's a great idea. The "Goldene Schnürsenkel," translated means '"The golden shoelaces," and they are awarded to the tanguero who dances with more women in one night than any other man. The second criteria is that it only counts when the woman truly is happy that the man has danced with her. (If not, she is earning points towards what we perhaps could call "the Gold Shoe Strap Award").

In our little German city, Norman got the award all the time because he did not have much competition. Good tangueros are often sitting and watching, waiting for the right tango to play with no "insurance" that the next 3 tangos will also meet their high standards. Too many tangueras are bursting with energy to dance to the music they hear -- what I call "musical squirming," which is the best indication (in my assessment) that a woman will bring joy to her dance, close her eyes and truly listen to the music:

Musical Squirming

She sips her drink there in her chair.
The music starts; she flicks back her hair.
Now she's musically squirming with delight--
Dreaming of dancing throughout the night.

But the stoic tanguero only sits starring,
Blandly, straight ahead, apparently not caring.
Dance with the lady! The right thing to do!
She may be imperfect but so are you.

I sometimes am not able to win the prize over Norman. But we are so often so close we just proclaim that the other guy "won." And we are not really keeping good track. Maybe the tangueras are.

The really competitive male does not like this particular award. He might want the prize woman or the esteem as the best dancer. The golden shoelaces do not interest a Casanova at all. Casanova is dancing with just a few choice women, choosing one with whom he will later leave. This not the macho thing to do. The macho man is watching, afraid of dancing in public. Perhaps the competitive male might be the teacher-wanna-be, who waits for the right tanguera. She'll be a good "advertisment" for him.

The Golden Shoestrings award is made for the guy who sees the little girl waiting on the side who

wants to go out and play. Everyone would like a turn at the best fun in the world! Can't you see it in her eyes?

The real award is that the Golden Shoelace Tanguero (GST) who dances with a wider ranger of talented women learns how to dance better. What a treasure to dance with the woman with the Beginner's Mind. The GST surprises himself with the ideas from the woman out of town. He is challenged to be confident over his self-doubt when the very selective woman finally looks his way.

The lone wolf dancer is perhaps a great dancer. He waits too long. Watch what happens at every "woops":

• Woops! She is dancing a lot and doesn't even see the Lone Wolf. 
• Woops! He is still waiting because although she is not dancing, he now does not like the music.
• Woops! The music is right, but she is not looking his way. 
• Woops! She is leaving because she has to work tomorrow early. .

Perhaps he dances well. Two tandas. Meanwhile good tangueras who only need a few enjoyable tandas a night to keep motivated sit there as he just watches, waiting, procrastinating with his pointed tomcat ears back.

The other night, Norman did not come. I still think he is the king of the Goldene Schnürsenkel. He is a great dancer, but the true value of the tanguero who wears these golden shoe strings is worth more than those shoe strings in the picture above (a "mere" $19,000 price tag).

He is a treasure chest full of gold for certain tangueras. $19000 is nothing compared to that.



*Photo credit: In an effort to be incredibly materialist one COULD purchase golden shoelaces for $19,000. But why? I suggest that tangueros get them for free as an award at their local milonga.  If you lose them, you get them back another night.

Don't Let me Go!

She holds her father, wondering if it will be for the last time

Don't let me go!

The brother within me holds you at the airport.  
I may never see you again as I go off to war.
The father within me holds you at my last residence.  
I overheard you say I will soon be in a better place.
The child within me holds you in the street,
I fell down and your embrace takes away my pain.


Don't let me go...


The tanguero within me holds you at the milonga.
You are the only woman in the world.
I only have a moment in time with you;
So don't let me go; we are entwined to our core.
The tanguera-sister-mother-child within you,
Craves an embrace more you than may ever know.

Entwined to the core. 

PS:
A note about the father-daughter picture. I don't know how the above photo strikes you, but it really moves me. It is on a website about faith, and probably no one that has ever visited that website ever has danced tango. I know one thing, her father doesn't want the moment to stop anytime too soon. I did embrace my father. I wish I had done that more, at least one last time before I knew it would be the last. With my mother, I had that chance.

The Advantages of Salsa

Many people I know in the tango scene would not know how salsa boils inside of me. There is a reason for this: I know the salsa repertoire as a musician. I know all the percussion parts, the bass and piano. I can hear these musical elements -- they are not just a blur of sound as they once were. Much of the music has a history of friends and magical moments (just as tango has now).  And still today, I see salsa as having certain advantages for those loved salsa first or learn it after learning tango first.
The Mood Advantage over tango: Salsa is mostly an upbeat, happy music, and in the right venue, people can be upbeat and friendly.  Tango can have deeply meaningful lyrics, but there is tendency of melancholy  even when the music gives no clue through the major key or happy melodic line underlying it. 

The one-song-one-dance Advantage: Tandas (dance sets usually fours songs) are great in tango, but in some respects I love having just one song at a time. The one-song-one-dance rule makes it possible to escape a torture dance or just continue dancing if you both agree. Also, women who are not dancing for a whole tanda are sitting (often unwillingly) for 15 minutes. 

The fast feet training Advantage: Anyone who is a good salsero will also have an advantage when dancing the milonga (a faster more rhythmic type of tango, which one will hear for about 7-10% of all songs played at a traditional tango party -- 3 or 4 out of 40 songs). 

The cultural Advantage: What? Yes, salsa also has it's cultural advantages: Dressing well is the rule at a true salsa bar. In Europe and America (the only non-Latin scenes I personally know), tangueros are nearly always dressed two to three levels down from the women. Not true of a good salsa scene. Tangueros would never dress 3 levels down from the woman on a dinner date!  In the best salsa bars in the US and Latin America, men wearing jeans wouldn't be allowed to come in the front door. If they slipped in the back, I doubt that a woman would allow him to dance with her. 

The Ubiquitous Advantage of Salsa over Tango: Salsa is everywhere. On Fridays in my middle sized town in German, it is 10 minutes away rather I usually must drive far to dance tango. The same is true in the US.  Because of the distance and price of gas ($9 a gallon), driving far has forced me to get back my salsa feet.  Now, because of tango, my salsa has alternative steps that we do as a result of the music. Dancing with someone that knows tango allows us to improvise to the music very much like tango. 

The tango advantage:  
Tango has so much to offer salseros because of the concept of the woman waiting. My role is to be the musical note or impulse; her role is to be the just-as-important musical rest. Music cannot be music without the distinct roles of note and the rest. 

Tango is an amazing dance that has transformed my salsa because tango has taught me to follow the music and how to portray what I am next planning to do with my partner. Tango has made me a much better salsa dancer than before, just as salsa helped me with the more rhythmic with the milonga's upbeat tempo.

The combination of salsa and tango.    
You will find many who were once salseros/salseras who now dance exclusively tango. That is not true the other way around.  Tango, once learned well, offers everything salsa has much more. I taught a young woman in a small US military community in Germany how to dance salsa.  Innesa learned lightning fast.  Soon I introduced her to tango, and upon returning to salsa and bachata, she was making stops and slow-motion moves in salsa/bachata with me.  Someone asked me,  "Are you professional dancers?"  Dancing musically looks professional and choreographed, but it is just normal in tango.  Later, when she did a tango demonstration with me at a dance school in front of teachers, they asked us, "Who did the choreography for that!?"  Even trained dancers saw the professional look and exactitude of musical steps as professional."  If tango can do that with any dance, then it truly is the dance of all dances.   Sure, salsa may have its advantages, but nothing can replace the power of tango to transform salsa or any other dance to be more musical and fun.  

Photo credit:  http://www.pinterest.com/pin/294422894360961160/

When the music stops

During the music, it felt ask if she would never let me go.

When the Music Stops

When the music plays, she holds me near,
Our bodies freeze in a moment of embrace
As the music comes to an end.
But the dance is not over.
The moment I crave:
She breathes out.
We find a moment to pause,
And then, as if rehearsed, a unison release.
Then I look inside the windows to her soul.
I notice her mouth, the sweat on her brow.

But tonight she pushes me away, a surprise
So unlike how she held me, so close.
I felt her heart pounding, but now she escapes!
She smiles nervously as we wait for the next.
I listen for what she might say, as if it were:
"Why did I ever let you hold me?";
"Why did I let you come so close?"

The music starts again;
She melts into my arms again.
I am confused at first.
But now I know not to blame myself.
I intuit far too much -- communicated by touch.
Being present and listening, takes me too far inside.
I tell myself that my intuition is wrong,
Trying not to intrude into her interior design.
I let her abrupt push-away be okay.
For one woman it is the abuse she endured.
For another woman,
She feels the searing, watchful eyes of others.

The one in my arms tonight is a woman, fully a woman,
But only in my arms, and only when the music plays.
When the music starts again,
When musical permission allows,
When musical hypnotism give assent,
And then she melts into my arms.

Querida Tanguera,
When the music stays within you.
You will stay a little longer in my embrace.
Let out a sigh and breathe out.
You were brave to allow me close.
Now, add the period to this phrase:
An embrace of another human being
May be the most important thing you do all day


Period
    Pause
         Release

            Look into my eyes.








Photo Credit:  Alexander Zabara - www.tangoimage.com 

After Years Away She Returns to Tango

The counterclockwise churn of the milonga's revolving door

¡Volver!  


After years away...

Tonight she again enters at tango's door,
A waterfall of sounds, a tango pours
Out millions of moments before her eyes.

Tango may be latent, but would never die.
It burns still inside her. As she sits to hear
As D'Arienzo brings her back to the years...

When dance was a way of being

And being a way of dance.

When eyes closed, a way of seeing,

And seeing, a way of trance.

¡Volver!  It echoed in her soul.  ¡Volver!

¡Volver!  It echoes in my soul.  ¡Volver!

Her years of tango-silence are broken
With her nod to my request unspoken
To dance again what once so moved her.

Strange that I, too, fought off tango's lure.

I had better things to do, I said. "Don't return
To that wooden path's counterclockwise churn!I'm tired of having nothing but dance to live for!"
Yet, soon I, too, am again at a milonga's door,

And I, too, hear the waterfall of sounds
Lifting me up from life's ups and downs.

It burns still inside me as I sit to hear
A familiar Biagi brings back the years...

For dance is a way of being,

And being a way of dance.

For dance is a way of seeing,
And seeing a way of trance.

A millennium of tango-silence is broken
With her nod to my request unspoken.

We give in to the dance -- its way of being.
We yield to touch and music for seeing.

We resign to the embraces we lacked.

I softly assure her, "Welcome back."

One of my favorite, cozy milongas in Germany: " Volver"
I'll see you at the door.

Photo Credit for the revolving door:  Karl Freund.   

Last Tango in Frankfurt

We only try to help the ones who come back from war.

The below poem was written for a group of mental health providers who knew Maria, a talented tanguera and caring psychiatrist, who upon bringing up patient safety concerns at the military treatment facility was badgered by the hospital leadership to leave.  She finally returned to San Antonio to be with a military hospital which had long valued her talents.

The group of people who knew her in Germany knew that the soldiers lost more than we did.  Her talent as a psychiatrist was amazing, and soldiers really needed her to help them to be weened from the over-medication they often receive from less experienced psychiatrists.  We are not desperate; some soldiers really are desperate for her care, experience and love soldiers.  She knows their stories --r these men and woman who have given far more than they ever thought they'd be required.  So desperate many have become that we our nation's Army is losing a soldier every day to a suicide -- that is not counting those who have already left the service.

Maria, and those she left in Germany only try to help the soldiers who come back from war.  That is all we can do.  Too bad that mission is not always held by those who lead -- or so it seems.


Last Tango in Frankfurt


I held Maria, knowing she would soon leave.
But the personal sadness I felt
Or the tears she sheds,
Or the melancholic cry of the bandonión,
Or the sad lyrics of tango cannot compare
To the silent screams out of soldier's hearts,
Weeping from the ravages of war --
The soldiers she could have helped.


That is the tragedy of her leaving,
And her desire to stay.
This was bigger than our own hearts:
The vast desperation of young soldiers
Trying to find help and finding too little.
Isn't this the center of sadness of our hearts?
...We who know who how to help.
...But too often cannot
...Because of those who tie our hands.

Four Cords and a Broken Heart

Maybe you will learn good technique only after you have a good reason

I have a friend who wanted to play the guitar well enough to sit and play at a campfire.  He started taking lessons at the music store where he had bought his $70-guitar.  His teacher did not understand his willingness to be a just-good-enough-for-the-campfire guitarist.  Eventually, my friend quit the guitar lessons.  Three years later after his girlfriend left him for another man, he picked up his guitar once again and started to sing.  That guitar nursed him through his depression.  He wrote a lot of really terrible blues tunes that would make any drunk man cry.  My friend only needed four cords and a broken heart to play his guitar, but as a result, he eventually became pretty good.  He still plays and sings with friends and for himself.

Tango needs the same thing as a start -- a broken heart and four cords.  It doesn't need technique like some obsessive compulsive tango enthusiasts would suggest.  There's no reason to argue with them about this because they are correct -- one needs technique sooner or later to truly enjoy tango and most importantly to help your partner enjoy dancing with you.  But in order to get to that place, you only need to pour your soul into this dance and allow the technique to come through the back door.

I think I am qualified to say not to worry about technique because I have had a life of the pursuit of technical excellence in many different areas.  I do not suggest my path:  In my early 20's, I traveled far, even hitchhiking on a freight train to take lessons from a drum teacher who had his students work hard on technique for years before revealing the "really cool stuff."

You may not be that dedicated to technical excellence.  Good for you.  What I have sometimes done has been really over-board and even dangerous in the case of hitchhiking on a train.  Come to technique in your own way.  It may be that four cords and a broken heart is the most reasonable path.



Photo credit link.

Dancing with the Enemy

Tango can be just a dance.

But it can be much more.

When I am "expectant" and present, I feel a transfer of information.  More than just a transfer, I feel an understanding, an empathy.

The following personal experience is one of the most powerful examples of this:  I was leaving a very tense job because I felt under attack by my boss.  A good part of the staff saw her as "the enemy." When I got a new job, I arranged a going-away lunch buffet and got a salsa and tango partner to come teach my colleagues how to dance a little salsa and merengue.  She and I demonstrated a bit of tango and then salsa as a warm-up.  Connie, my salsa friend, taught the guests some salsa, and soon the staff were all out dancing and having fun.

Most going-away parties with this group were absolutely boring, but my "dance-away party" was probably the best party I have ever hosted.  At the very end the the party after the staff was gone, my boss, asked if we should dance a going-away salsa.  That was the last thing I expected to come out of her mouth -- an invitation to dance.

It was a chance to dance with the enemy.

She asked to dance salsa. I countered, suggesting that we dance a tango.  Given the chance to dance for peace, I knew that the tango embrace would be the better choice.  During the party, my boss stood back and had not danced even once during the party.  She had been a ballroom dance teacher.  That was strange.  She was always distant with the staff.  The DJ, Connie and the boss's secretary were the only people present.  I had the DJ play a tango from Biagi. This was tango.  Close embrace.  Rhythmic.

By this time in my life, I knew about the healing aspects of tango -- the embrace to music -- but I did not expect the ensuing powerful effects from "dancing with the enemy." Dancing with her had a powerful and lasting effect on me because much was forgiven through our embrace at that moment.  I cannot easily tell you why, but it was as if I knew how she felt -- that she was a human with her own struggles too.  Maybe I saw myself too from her eyes.  From our dance, I felt an enemy had been destroyed through mutual compassion.  It took courage for her to ask, and it took courage to follow my intuition to suggest a tango.  Aren't enemies created from a lack of empathy in the first place?

A few days ago, a colleague asked about working for my former boss because she had been interviewed by my former boss.  I found myself being objective.  I suggested that she had learned some wisdom since her first years as a supervisor.  Also, I trusted my colleague's own wisdom to do well under my former boss.  After all, everyone has to walk on the hard path to wisdom.  Dancing cannot take away hard facts, but it has washed away any need to express unresolved bitterness.  

I got into a my car after that dance with my boss to drive to Washington D.C. and a new job.  I wondered if the feeling would last.  More than just last, this empathy has grown, although I know how much she hurt me and others, it doesn't haunt me anymore.  Dancing with the enemy will proabably always better than arguing with them.

Tango is only a dance.

But can be much more.

Buenos Aires is NOT the Mecca of Tango

Follow the line of dance with reverence for tradition.

There is no Mecca of tango. . .

Language sometimes hides the truth.  We should be careful about describing tango as having a "Mecca."  Buenos Aires is not a Mecca.  Not even close.  Thinking this way allows us to forget how fragile tango is.  Sure, at the moment it is doing fairly well, but statistically, tango is a precious but yet insignificant phenomenon.  In some ways it is only by chance that it has survived.  Maybe we should learn something here.

Tango's culture consists of a fringe of musicians and dancers whose numbers are insignificant in any major city in the world compared to the general population of the city.  Tango never had a Mecca -- except in our minds perhaps.  We may cherish the notion that we could go somewhere like Buenos Aires, and there we might find that everyone dances tango and listens to the music in the streets.  That's the great Buenos-Aires-as-Mecca myth.  Remember too that New York City still has streets of gold, right?

I suggest you go to Mecca!  (Well, how about imagining a trip to Mecca?)  That holy city is a concourse of many languages and peoples, but pretty much everyone there is to accomplish the same thing.  Tango doesn't have such a place.

But while you are at Mecca in your imaginations, notice a few things that tangueros could learn:  The floorcraft in Mecca is amazing -- imagine the harmony of so many people circling the walls of the Ka'bah.  


There are indeed medical emergencies at Mecca all the time, but not a single case of misplaced ganchos or getting spiked from a frivolous boleo.  Perhaps the danger of bad floorcraft is getting stoned (with rocks), and that might be a hindrance?  [Milonga organizers:  I am not suggesting anything here for your local milonga.]

Tango is fragile.  There are only a few believers.  Embrace each other.   Greet a stranger with kindness at your next pilgrimage to a milonga.  Give alms to the poor (beginners) who need a mentor.

If your milonga feels like Mecca, perhaps you have achieved at least a moment of heaven on earth.  But sorry, it isn't Mecca.  It's a milonga.  Compared to the overwhelming personal dedication and the power in numbers at Mecca, your milonga is small with many semi-dedicated "pilgrams":  Fragile.  Insignificant.  Even in Buenos Aires.

Take care of this small oasis of your life.  Tango's "pilgrams" amount to a micro-ecosystem like an oasis, not at all like a flood of Islamic pilgrims on their way to Mecca.  Your oasis can dry up and disappear.  Care for it.  It is so precious.

Dance as if you were 90 years old

Choose Option "D"  (visit photo artist)

The wisdom often quoted is that we should "Dance as if no one were watching."

That is not wise at all without some qualification to that statement.  Dancing as if no one were watching could be problematic and unwise.  Who dances like that, anyway?

Let's look at the possibilities of people who dance as if no one were watching:

a.  Children:  great improvisation, freedom, absolute joy, no guilt or shame afterwards, floorcraft with damage to things but not other people, parallel playfulness.*

b.  Drunk people:  great improvisation, freedom, absolute (drug-induced) joy, bad floorcraft, a hangover and shame to review the dance from the subway video camera replay while in jail with your lawyer, floorcraft that included damage to things and people before the police arrived, liquid-induced solitary playfulness.  [Yes, a few poor souls also dance at milongas as if they were drunk but are not.]

c.  Crazy people:  great improvisation, freedom, absolute joy, erratic floorcraft before the ambulance came, not enough sense to even consider shame as an option, solitary playfulness.

d.  90-year old tangueros:  great improvisation, freedom, absolute joy, great floorcraft, aware that other are watching but worried about stranger's opinions, excellent partner-playfulness.

Of the above four possibilities (there are more of course), I try to choose "d" when given the chance to dance one more time before I die (every dance as if it were my last).

When we are 90 years old we won't wonder why we hadn't been more circumspect.  You probably won't tell yourself, "I really should have worried more about what total strangers thought of me!"   If we are still active and able at 90, we will be glad we danced in the street among strangers without a care of others' opinions.

But why wait to be wise?

Why do people wait until their 90's to regret that they didn't dance in the street more?  The answer is easy:  Perhaps because they did not want to be seen as (a) childish, (b) drunk, or (c) crazy.

I learned something important as I learned to ride a unicycle with my children at age forty-nine.  I really looked awkward -- actually hilariously stupid -- learning to ride the unicycle.  But I vowed that I would pretend that people could not see me.  Now my children and I still enjoy going out and playing street hockey on our unicycles because I refused to worry about what others might think.

Below is a video of Maria and I in the streets of Strasbourg, France after one of the greatest milongas we have ever gone to the night before in Kehl, Germany (a boarder town to France).  We were acting like 90-year old tangueros who were trying to catch up with all the dancing-in-the-street that we could!  Notice please, how stupid I look in my extremely bouncy walking shoes!  Look at how Maria cannot keep her clogs on her feet and is laughing:  Great improvisation to excellent musicians playing a tango for us; total freedom of spirit; absolute joy and tenderness, great floorcraft with no collisions with dogs, children, goal-driven tourists; no shame afterwards (¡sin vergüenza!); excellent partner-playfulness.

 

But why am I telling the world?  What a paradox!  Am I truly dancing as if no one were watching and then posting a video?  Really, I am not telling the world but a few readers, and I am writing notes and posting a video in case I have a bad memory when I am 90 years old.  :-)   No, seriously, this is not a performance or something to be proud of.  I just am happy to be dancing as if I were 90 years old and hope you will join the rest of us who no longer worry about who is watching (or even hope that someone is watching) -- that's immaturity is for youngsters under 90.  Join the "Over-Ninty Dance Cub."  You can join early if you choose "D."

Did I say 90?  That is just the start.  Please enjoy the 100th birthday dance for Carmencita Calderón!




*Parallel play is a term for developmentalists who chart when children go from parallel play (play next to each other but not with each other) to the next phase of partnership play.

The End of Tango

One day "tango" may be just be a car or
a sushi bar not a dance or muisc

The End of Tango

An old English proverb says that all good things must come to an end. Tango is good. Will it come to an end?

The proverb is depressingly negative and at least in part incorrect. Many good things have been around just as long as anything. Like love. Like kindness. What about movement to music? They have been around for a long time. They seem to live on and on.

However, even in your lifetime many very good things have come to an end, right? Will tango be one of them? Perhaps if tango doesn’t last very long in your life or in history itself, my guess is that tango’s demise would be caused be two major things:

(1) Tango would become so complex that people new to it would be awed by it but not become tango dancers, and
(2) that dancers with bad manners (“snotty dancers”) would become so common place that beginners would almost immediately give up and even veteran dancers would tire of the tango scene.

This scenario of a dying tango community is already here in certain communities. Just one night of bad manners for the most avid dancers makes us wonder if it is worth it. Surely you know of some community which started and has already died. We could really learn from history of how to delay a good thing from coming to an end!

Although most tango teachers fancy themselves as promoting tango, I would wager that the majority of teachers are actually promoting the demise of tango – unwittingly of course! Again, it is because too many teachers promote the two things that will destroy tango: Rarely mentioning the “manners” of tango and making it far too complex.

It doesn’t make sense that teachers would destroy their own livelihood, but that is exactly what they too often do. First, there is a tendency to sell the idea that there is much more to learn. Then they want you to have fun! So let’s not mentions etiquette or rules. Rules and manners take away instant gratification (fun) in all things. My son says that the computer game, “Grand Thief Auto” is fun because one can break all the rules. So it is with tango. If you start dancing with rules, you may destroy your own perusal of instant gratification. It takes space to accomplish that new, high-speed thing you learned in the 8-week course you took on volcadas/colgadas with an enrosque-cherry-on-top. Teachers want to bring fun to tango and engage people to return. Talking about rules and manners, then, is the low on the list for many teachers.

In my last version of tango etiquette, I realized something that had never occurred to me before: Manners are for everyone else. Our instant gratification is subdued for the gratification of others and thereby our own delayed-but-enhanced gratification. This is a great philosophical and theological truism made true by the simple practice of traditional tango: Whether it is tango, driving a car or sexual ethics, rules and laws get in the way of what we might like for immediate gratification. But in the long run, ethics and rules allow a greater good and the more wonderful pleasure in all things.

All good things DO Not come to an end. Good things may transform, yes, but they do not come to an end. The good of tango is that human beings love to move to music and the beautiful synchronicity of tango’s music and dance may be replaced by some other music but the close embrace and the nuance of movement to music will always remain. Let the open embrace and showmanship of tango, the snobbishness of a tango click ruin it in your community, but tango will live on in some form and perhaps with a different name.

All good things live forever. Like love. Like kindness. Like movement to music. Tango will live forever, just with a different name. If you want to live with the name tango longer, then be nice, be kind, dance close as close to your partner as you can and as close to the music as you can. Tango may never die if you do that.

Photo Credit:  Tango sushi.