Musical Adventures

In August I will D.J. my first small tango event, a coffee house milonga. Grimaldi's Coffee House in Issaquah, the 'burb east and south of here a few miles. It may be a bit off the beaten path, but it is charming, has some good coffees and wine and gelato, and in good weather dancing indoors and out on the deck. Patty Leverett teaches a small class ahead of the dancing, and she is the hostess of this event.

I created tandas and cortinas and just put this music on for parties, 'cause I like to play my favorites and I like to make the party people happy. At these parties, people have seemed pleased. I began to pay attention to the selections and to the "flow" of energy at the milongas, and to build tandas of my own. I have tandas for about three hours. I can see now that this is not just about playing some music, but about an ongoing self-education into this magnificent musical lexicon. I was going along and making notes of the dates, as the tandas work better if they are not only the same orchestra and artist, but the same general time period. This gives the tanda (the three to five piece sets) a coherence in tone and mood. During this exploration into time periods, I noticed that a great deal of what I like is from 1943-45. This a sweet spot in the arc of the music's development. There is so much to know and I don't claim any special knowledge or sense...just the desire to learn. So all you critics out there, (I know you are out there) go right ahead, just tell me what you like or don't like, and then, as I do with my art, I will ask the questions of my inner guide, and go from there.

I am a baby beginner here and I know it. I intend to stay open and to take all the advice that I can get. One of our local D.J's, Anton, has been very generous and responsive in providing music and knowledge. There is a wealth of information, just as there is in tango, the dance. But this is a journey that has to be made (for me) with a trust in intuition as well.

There has been a recent blogger discussion about people who "quit" tango. There might be a time when it is most graceful to stop doing certain things, mindful and self aware about dignity, reasonable expectation, place in the universe, and ability. I begin now to consider these things seriously. But whenever I cut back on tango, I end up listening to the music, then I realized just how hooked I am. Screwed really, just taken and carried away. The music has been around and alive for a long time. A good run. I can always be a part of that continued good run. The long gig. Lucky for us, tango does not know age, only spirit.

Show up if you can.

Seattle Tango Magic, winding down...

General: We had very hot days and nights here in Seattle during our annual festival. This is the first year that I have had enough dancing to make it truly fun. After five years we have dance friends from far and wide, and that makes a huge difference. I could not dance back to back tandas in the heat. The room for the main milongas was the hottest place in town, and not in a good way. For some reason the ventilation is very poor. However, seeing the stunning dress worn by performer, Patricia Hilliges, cut down to there, in the back, was worth the price of admission! (Note to Self: Sign up for those pilates classes again, fast.
But the main milongas venue...just too uncomfortable, and 25 bucks to get in.
I know that all these people need to get paid, but the venue just has to be better.

Fun: We have new tango friends. How else would we have ever met them? For some of these hot nights I sat with people for a tanda or two before dancing so that we could cool off. I had some of the best connection I have ever had while dancing and between the dances. Always being reminded that tango is so much more than that time on the floor. It really is about the people.

Classes: How would I know? Almost all of the teachers are flashy performers. At this point I am waiting for the visits from milonguero style dancers. They were not represented in the visiting teachers this year.

There is the eternal divide, and sometimes union, of open and close styles. I would say more about it, but enough has been said. I only have one more thing to say about it. The difference between close and open is the difference between holding your baby tenderly, and dangling your baby off the balcony. You might enjoy either one, but the baby definitely has a preference.

I only went to three milongas. Had reasonable fun at all, but especially at the outdoor milonga. There is never enough sitting around on the lawn with friends. We narrowly avoided getting arrested. The crime was related to "grape juice." Looking forward to eventually getting back to normal, whatever that is. What is it anyway?
See you all later, I have all the undone household stuff, and people to take to the train station, a hideously fried garden...god.

Seattle Magic

Tango Magic is about to begin and Seattle is having a stretch of heavenly weather with a light breeze off the water. This time of year we try to stay in town because there is no place we would rather be. Friends in town are making up extra beds, putting in groceries, thinking up treats and suggestions for out-of-town dancers. This will go on for a week.

I used to really be confused and upset by this festival. As an early learner it seemed to be full of exquisite creatures who danced like gods and goddesses. My friends from class either did not show up or would not dance. My partner and I were like deer in the headlights.
In the next two years I got mad that my regular partners danced with out of town women and seemed oblivious to my presence. Then I started to meet some people in other places and started to extend myself in welcome and friendship to visitors, lead or follow. We have developed some traditions around the event and none of us would miss this for anything.

I used to dislike "The Magic" also because all of our favorite venues close down...and the Magic venues are huge and chaotic and good dancing is difficult for local follows to find. That at least has been my experience. Well, now I enjoy the performances, the shoe vendors, the scene. And now, after five years, I enjoy seeing people we have met in other places, people who return, people we like. Our gatherings include local friends mixed with new friends and it is purely social. I don't plan to stay home, but also don't plan to dance much, no all-nighters, no angst, no problem. I recognize that the festival is a business, the organizer has his goals, I have mine.

We love small dance rooms, elegantly appointed, with wine or snacks served at the table. This currently only exists in the imagination. One goes every week, sits in the same place, dances a few tandas with dear friends and sometimes with someone new, visits with friends, laughs, goes home in peace with a full heart and tired feet to sleep and to be refreshed for the next day....a fantasy world.

Well, maybe someday this will happen again. But in the meantime we do our best to create a little paradise on earth, using what we have. I hope visitors all enjoy Seattle for it's true beauty, and now, for it's ever improving and great group of dancers. Say hello if you see us. For all details go to: http://www.allseattletango.com/
Now I have to go make up some beds.

A comment worth posting as a blog entry:

I loved your post on the topic of women who quit tango, and have been thinking about it a great deal ever since I read it. It is clearer and clearer to me that I dance for personal fulfillment – with an intention to be able to create even a few beautiful movements – as well as connection. But the connection isn’t of the ordinary social kind – exchanging thoughts with friends, etc. (although some of that is possible at Milongas) it is of the soul-to-soul kind. Since that is my desire, I don’t feel badly about sitting for tanda after tanda. I don’t feel like a planchadora – I am just waiting, in peace, for the transcendental to come into the room. Perhaps newcomers see the Tango as a social dance, when it is really more of a meditation – with another person’s spirit in the mix to make things even more mysterious. And perhaps they quit when they discover they don’t have a vocation for it – for disappearing ego in the service of the beautiful, for suspending the need to lead, for manifesting someone else’s interpretation of the music, for learning to accept that you may not actually be able to control when the magic will come -- and that when it does it will be fleeting. Thanks for connecting me to my thoughts!

Besitos,



AND: From the same writer....

Hi E:

This is very interesting! We do have a great upsurge of girl leaders – you see them dancing and switching back and forth at milongas and practicas – and I have noticed more men doing the same – which can only be good for us as a community, since it will bring us to a deeper appreciation of what it takes for each partner to make the dance work. However – and this huge for me – Tango is the only place in my life that I don’t have to lead. When I put my “leader” brain into action, I develop a set of standards against which I constantly measure everyone else in the universe where the action is taking place. You know the kind of thing – would I hire this person, can this person be coached to better performance, can this person make a reasonable contribution to our enterprise, why did (s)he chose this moment to say/do the idiotic thing just said/done? I don’t want to get into a place where I am disappointed/critical/snarky about why there weren’t more giros led in this vals or why somebody is dancing to Pugliese as though it were a polka instead of manifesting the exquisite tension/release of the music. I already have enough trouble wondering why the DJ is playing Pugliese at 10 pm instead of after midnight, and why C never notices that his partners hate his stupid side drops and why all beginner boys insist on dancing too fast and why certain people have danced ten years without having ever discovered where the follower’s body is. So, for me leading is out of the question – I can lead a step or two in a workshop if needed when there is an imbalance, but leading anything beyond that is an invitation to the gates of hell.

BTW, there are some women I adore dancing with, because they offer me the same opportunity for surrender and for relationship that I have with the gents. Of course, their breasts must line up with mine in an over/under kind of way, but as long as that happens we’re ready to try to get to the tango zen place. J One of my particular favorites is a girl who has the same name as one of my daughters – she reminds me of all of the darling young women I have mentored over time and it is just a joy to share her musicality, her dance vocabulary and her lovely embrace.

I think this just ties back into the issue of why I dance. I do see many women leaders that I might not care to dance with – they dance in an open embrace, they are leading a lot of Nuevo-y kinds of things, and so their presence doesn’t necessarily increase my dance opportunities.

I think Clay is right in believing that the women have quit because they aren’t invited to dance (shortage of leaders paradigm) and so the situation falls short of their social/entertainment/validation expectations, but that is a bit like quitting fly fishing because you don’t get to keep the fish. If you aren’t there for the wading and the casting and the standing in the rain then you should get out of the water, sweetie, cuz it isn’t really about what’s for dinner.

Besitos


From Elizabeth: I love the fly fishing analogy...

Breaking Even

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=60ktTcp882Hkut7oTY_2fMTQ_3d_3d

The link above is Clay Nelson's survey directed at people who quit tango. You can scroll through and look at results without filling it out. A quick scan reveals trends that the big quitters are women over 45 who have been involved for more than three years, who felt that tango is cliquish, who have studied other forms of dance. They are mainly from Bay Area, Seattle, and Portland. Many state the reason for leaving as not having partners and some say that they would come back if they had a regular significant other who danced tango. Of course my summation is sort of unscientific, as is the survey. But there it is.


If I were the big wise grandma in the sky, and I could speak silently to all who would listen, probably actually no one, but just say if. Then here is what I would say:


Tango is not a good place to meet a significant other person. People who tango are primarily in love with tango.


Taking a partner or significant other person to tango is not a good way to improve your relationship or to have a shared "hobby". Women who drag life partners to tango are visible, and often audible, from a mile away and if your think people are cliquish it is just because they can't stand to watch the train wreck close up.

On the subject of couples. It is not easy to be a couple in tango, it brings it own problems that must be dealt with (just try to go to BA presenting as a couple and see how far it gets you). You are alone in tango. The only time you are not alone is in the dance and even then you will be alone a lot of the time, sadly. Tango is about loss, no way around it.
If only one of the couple is learning tango, then the couple will spend too much time apart, and the tango obsession can threaten the relationship unless careful negotiations are honestly made and adhered to.

Three years was the average quitting time. Three years is nothing in tango. Three years is time to become a passable beginner. Tango is sort of hard and it takes attention, and you have to be able to change yourself, your posture, your attitude, your spirit really. Leave your militant feminism at the door or just get rid of it altogether because tango is old, tango is traditional, and tango is about the real differences and what we can each bring to the embrace. You might like finding this, it might shake things up inside.

Tango can seem exclusive, and there are always little groups and people who stick to a teacher as though he/she were a guru, and strive always like high school kids to be a part of the teacher group. This is death to tango. Tango is a big, international, age-less, non-trendy, world. And if you want to be part of it you have to put something into that. Don't be all trying to get into the in crowd when you are 45 years old.

If you have been with one teacher for a long time, change teachers. If you have been going only to one milonga, change milongas. It will be scary. Scare yourself.

Finally, I have a little rant. I have a life and dance partner, and I know this is rare and so you might be thinking I don't really know what I am talking about. Anyway, I bring a partner, I try to convert my brother, my friends who don't dance, I try to even it out. There are enough leads in Seattle at the moment (probably because apparently all the women are dropping out). But that will change. I normally show up with a man. And I SHARE. So now it is your turn, lonely lady...bring someone. Take your friends to a lesson, take your dad, or son. Scare them too!

Being "over 45" is just a reality for many of us. It gives you experience, and nicely patinaed quality, and a worn out heart to bring to tango. These things are assets. You will see that the guys all ask the young girl who has two weeks of lessons to dance. Then they all try that out because they are men, god bless them. Then, they go back to the persons of any age who can dance. They do, because as I told you, they are in love with tango. You have my permission to make them suffer and wait as well.

Tango isn't going to give you a whole lot unless you put something in. It is the most responsive to Karma of any activity that I know. It is a part of it. And waiting, waiting.

Think up one gift that you are going to give to tango and just see what happens. I guarantee that you will find some magic in the return. No I do not mean that you buy yourself another pair of shoes.

I don't mean to sound bossy and like I know anything at all. I don't. I am trying to figure it out myself. I have considered quitting myself, and recently took a break. It is brutal sometimes. I told my partner I was thinking about what life would be like if I just quit, let it go. He looked at me for a long time, and then he said : "I have watched you go through this, and nothing you have done in all the time I have known you brings you as much joy as tango."

Summer Rambling

As we move into official summertime, and pray for rain....I watch the garden go dry. A newer area around the studio is created to be a "water-wise" garden and it is surprisingly lush with foxglove, lilies, grasses, a ground cover of thyme. At this point in the garden's development I only edit. There is copious re-seeding and propagation going on, and so I merely remove what is not wanted. This is the sign of a mature garden. We moved here eleven years ago to a garden looking much like a parking strip at the bank or at a community college...practical, boring, not yet grown, and certainly not reflecting any individuality. Individuality...is. so. messy.

I read somewhere that no garden really outlives the main gardener and that must be true. You can go all over and visit the famed gardens of long dead celebrity growers and see some of the ideas...but that signature must leave with the author.
There is surprise in the reflection I see of us in our garden. Alan made structure, I chose plants to support his theories of borrowed view, perspective created by tricks to provide vista in a relatively small suburban space. So here we are, the structure person, and the detail person. He leads, I respond, he leads again and appreciates.

In our dance too, and our home, and in the structure of our relationship...He makes the big decisions and I endeavor to make them work. Trust is the main ingredient. Plant the seeds, pull out what isn't working, keep what works and what makes sense and what provides a sense of space and color and spice, and agree to agree. Or not.

So I look forward to designing the little town house for us, designed just so that we would love it, (even though we may defer a decision about whether or not to live in it) and two others for some brave people who like to live outside the box and in it too.
And also, truth be told, I look forward to starting another garden....a teeny tiny one.

Above: Orange Flowers, large screen-print in thirty colors...including a variety of blacks.