Author: Veronica Toumanova

Why your tango teacher desperately wants you to dance but keeps teaching you steps

Veronica Toumanova

Tango is a dance, but learning and teaching tango is not like teaching and learning other dances. Partially it is and partially it is not. Because of the “not” part learning tango should not be compared to learning a dance, but to learning a language. 

Tango as a dance consists of two components: your own movement and the giving/receiving of the impulse. This is because tango is based on IMPROVISING TOGETHER.

When you learn a dance that you do alone in front of a mirror, you are perfecting your own movement and you are mostly performing choreographies. You are not inviting another person to follow your movement, nor are you learning to understand another person’s lead. In this, tango is much closer to contact improvisation. You can be an accomplished, say, ballet dancer and be totally hopeless in tango if you do not learn to communicate with a partner.

How do you learn a dance that is more like a language? In quite the same way you would learn a language. You will need vocabulary, pronunciation, grammatical rules and so on. So far nothing spectacular. But then comes the crucial point. In order to speak a language with ANOTHER PERSON you actually have to have something to say. And to be understood by others you have to be able to say it WELL. And that has nothing to do with the language itself.

You see, a language teacher can teach you a lot about structure and order. But the creativity in what you are actually saying comes from another place entirely. A major problem for tango teachers is that they have to teach you a language AND be literature professors at the same time. They have to teach you to understand, love and master READING in that new language. They also want to teach you CREATIVE WRITING in the language. Can a tango teacher teach you to say interesting things? And to say them well? Can a tango teacher actually teach you how to dance? Yes, they can. They CAN be a language and literature professor and creative writing coach in one. But they have to know how. Some of them do, and some of them don’t. Be patient with tango teachers, for theirs is not an easy task.

When you come to your first French class the teacher does not say: “Let me tell you what I love about that particular passage in Proust, when the light of the setting sun suddenly touches the spire of the faraway church and how it affects the main character.” What you learn in your first French class is: “Je m’appelle Marie. Comment tu t’appelles?” 

The most heard critic of tango teachers is: why do you keep teaching people sequences? They start dancing like robots. They just repeat the same sequences. They never get to the creative part. Why do you teach people complicated figures? Why don’t you teach people how to walk properly, to enjoy, you know, the SMALL STUFF?

You have to understand that, if steps are “words” in tango, the sequences are its poetry. Sequences are the haiku’s of tango, they are some dancer’s creativity made movement. Can you write poetry without first reading poetry? Yes, you can. But your poetry will probably become better if you read a lot of other people’s poetry. Sequences can be beautiful and not so beautiful, simple and complex, silly and serious, just like poems. It can be children’s verse and it can be Brodsky. The problem is not the sequences. They have to be DANCED WELL to really come alive. Tango teachers teach you sequences to teach you to DO THEM WELL and to nurture your own creativity.

You also have to understand that not everybody will write his/her own poetry. That the majority of tango dancers will keep repeating the poetry of others. And a lot of tango professionals, too. Is that a problem? No. Do we get angry with musicians for always playing that damn Bach again? Not if it is played well.

When a teacher says: “Look, you can only walk the whole tango and you are already dancing!” and then looks triumphantly at his/her beginner students, the teacher needs to understand that when s/he walks with his or her partner, the “conversation” they have goes something like this:

“Oh I love the feeling of having your free foot just at the tips of my fingers, so to say. – Yes, I know, I can feel how you control it, and I very much enjoy how you are sending the impulse right to my center from where, like a little lively fire, it travels all the way to my foot. – That weight transfer of yours was delicious. The way you first slightly caressed the floor and then sailed there, smoothly like a boat on quiet waters. – I know! And I love how you accompanied me in your embrace, as if I was a sleeping child.”

Whereas, when their beginner students are told to just walk, their “conversation” goes like this:

“Je m’appelle Marie. Comment tu t’appelles? – Je m’appelle Jean. Comment tu t’appelles? – Je m’appelle Marie. Comment tu t’appelles?”

Students need to reach a certain level of awareness to be able to understand and enjoy the SMALL STUFF. Before you can like Proust you have to read some children’s stories, some crap romance, some good romance, some thrillers, some chick lit, some Tolstoi. And some people will never like Proust. Some dancers will never like just walking. Some people will prefer playing with difficult figures to just sailing the dance floor. YOU as a teacher have had your fun with volcadas in those days when it was fashionable, haven’t you? Yes, the walk is the basis and the beauty of tango, but teachers, do not become caminata nazis, now and then give your students some other things “to read”. And then go back to what YOU like. Maybe YOU don’t like Proust that much, either. Do not judge your students for not liking (yet) the same thing you like. You have had some years to develop that preference, and they have not.

As for the creativity issue, the critique of “you should not teach people sequences but basic elements” is only partially correct. You should teach people the correct use of basic elements in the context of sequences. You cannot tell a dancer: “Here you have a step and a pivot. Now have fun with it.” It’s like telling a beginning musician: “Here is a piano. See, lots of shiny keys! Now make some music.” Or, to keep with my initial metaphor, saying to a French class student: “Here is a dictionary. Write a poem and it’d better be a good one!”

RUSSIAN, TURKISH, CHINESE, CZECH, GERMAN, ROMANIAN, POLISH

October 22, 2013

Why technique in tango really matters and why often it really doesn’t

Veronica Toumanova

Does technique matter in tango? Yes. When you want to enjoy an activity, learning a skill and then perfecting it will give you more joy. Technique gives you – primarily – a certain comfort in what you do. It makes you move with less effort. It allows for a dance that is richer, more complex. It moves you to the next level in the hierarchy of dancers in your community. It makes you enjoy the dance much more. The formula “better technique = better experience” is valid. However, the formula “good technique = good tango” is incorrect. Or rather, it is incomplete. 

The remark I hear most often from a dancer about another dancer is this: “You know, I really enjoyed dancing with him/her. S/he might not be the best dancer in the room, or maybe even far from it, but s/he has a really nice…” (here follows an aspect of the person’s dance such as embrace, connection, musicality, presence, energy, passion, and so on). 

As you see, some of it IS technique, but most of it is not. Often people stress that it is enjoyable DESPITE a lack of technique. So what makes people want to dance with someone who might be below their technical level, or with hardly any technique at all? What makes them stick to the dancer they know instead of trying someone new? What makes them pick a new dancer from all the others sitting around? 

I call it the “human factor”. For me, the correct formula is “human factor + technique = good tango experience”. So, what is “human factor” in tango? 

First, it is the way you relate to yourself. The way you see, feel and present yourself. The way you like, dislike, love or despise yourself. The way you feel about your dance, your technique, your looks, femininity, masculinity, posture, level and so on. Human factor is about how much you love yourself and how much of this love shines through your presence. It is about how confident you are in showing yourself, because when you dance, everyone will see the whole person that you are. It takes courage to show yourself in this way. As one flamenco teacher said: “You cannot learn to move beautifully if deep inside you are convinced of your ugliness”. No teacher can teach you good tango if you don’t love your body. If you are struggling with technique, maybe the right thing to do is not to learn a better ocho, but to learn how to love and admire your body first. How ready are you to enjoy your dance, or are you only looking for errors? Did you bring yourself in a good mood before coming to the milonga? Are you taking responsibility for HOW YOU FEEL at any moment? 

The second important component in “human factor” is how you relate to others. Which is directly linked to how you relate to yourself. Love produces love. In specific tango terms this means: how able you are to embrace another person comfortably and stay with the person throughout the dance? How able are you to listen to another body, to another musicality? How sensitive are you to your own balance and his/her? How forgiving are you when the other person does not live up to your expectations? Do you use another person for your own pleasure only? The difference between just dancing and dancing together is the same as between having sex and making love. Both can be very enjoyable, but they are not the same. And yes, being sexually attractive (and attracted) to other people is also part of relating to others, part of tango, part of this experience. As is respecting the other person’s right to not want to dance with you. 

The human factor in tango is about connecting to yourself and connecting to the other. But there is also another important component: connecting to the dance itself. The connection to the dance happens through music. Dance is not execution of movements by specific body parts. Dance is expressing the musical imagery (energy, mood, texture, rhythm, melody) by your whole being. Some people have a natural ability to do this, and for them learning the technique will only improve this ability. Other people do not have this ability naturally, and for tango teachers the most difficult thing is actually not how to teach the correct movement, but how to teach people to REALLY DANCE. 

Can you enjoy tango with almost no technique? Absolutely! If you are an advanced dancer, this only means that as beginner you had enormous fun. Otherwise you would not have stayed. Do you have to learn technique to enjoy tango? Let’s put it this way: no one has ever suffered from an excess in technique, but I meet dancers suffering from lack of it every day. But a good teacher will help you improve both your technique AND the human factor. As dancer and teacher Eric Franklin writes: “The most important technique in dance is love for the dance.” 

An old friend once told me: “You know, I remember how we first met, all these years ago. You were this new pretty girl watching the dancefloor, mesmerized at all those cool dancers. I was one of them, I was cool, I was experienced, I had been dancing for so long – two years! I felt so old that I was starting to forget why I should enjoy it. I invited you. You were so obviously a total beginner, you didn’t even know what an ocho was. But dancing with you made me understand what I was looking for in tango. There was so much dance in you. You were so intense, you gave yourself so fully. I remember coming off the dancefloor saying to myself: from now on, THIS is what I want.”

RUSSIAN, CHINESE, CZECH, ROMANIAN, ITALIAN, FRENCH, HUNGARIAN, POLISH

October 21, 2013

Why you should get out of the sandbox and start asking yourself questions

Veronica ToumanovaLeave a comment

During my years in tango I have encountered, and still encounter frequently, a certain attitude in dancers (both men and women, but more often in women), which can be summarized as follows: “people with whom I would like to dance don’t dance with me. They are not being social. They should be more open, get out of their little world, try a new dancer (me), accept me the way I am and enjoy what I have to offer.” The usual consequences of this attitude is that the person gets frustrated. Slowly – or quickly – the frustration overshadows other aspects of tango experience, the person feels rejected and a vicious circle establishes itself: the dancer feels others don’t want him/her, gets into a bad mood, and gets even less dances as a result.

You can agree or disagree with this attitude. I personally disagree, but the reason I am writing this is not because I want to judge it, but because, first, I want to understand it, and second, because I want to help change this attitude into something more productive. 

If you have never suffered from this frustration, you can now stop reading. If you, however, find yourself entertaining thoughts such as “why, why doesn’t he invite me/doesn’t she look at me” or “all these snobby little groups only dancing among themselves, I so wish for once they would poke their nose out there in the real world and see everybody else” – then what I am writing here might help you leave this frustration behind and find more joy in tango. 

When we start an activity, such as tennis or photography or painting, we somehow from the beginning do not expect our tennis coach to want to play with us for his own fun. We do not expect photography magazines to publish our first pictures or art galleries to come rushing to get our first paintings. It still might happen, but we all understand that this is an exception. In no other domain of life do we expect others to value and appreciate and desire us without some prior personal investment in our SKILL. However, as soon as a person enters the tango world, sometimes it looks like s/he forgets this simple rule of life, the rule of personal investment and of reciprocal interest.  

How come that intelligent, educated and otherwise experienced people come to entertain such an unrealistic expectation? The confusion lies partially in the misinterpretation of the word “social”. “Social” in tango means that you dance with another person in a couple and with other couples around you on the dancefloor. And that between tandas there can be “socialising” to help you do your “tango networking”. “Social” does not mean that other people will accept you exactly the way you are and dance with you only because you want to dance. “Social” does not mean that other people owe you something or are obliged to give you a good time. You don’t have this obligation, either. But they CAN give you a good time, and so CAN you. 

Where else in life are we accepted and welcomed exactly the way we are, without first having to invest in some SKILL, integrate in the environment, have something to offer first? Right: when we are little children with our parents and with other children in the sandbox. Our parents will accept and love us exactly the way we are, and it is in the sandbox that other children will play with us, unless we behave really unfriendly. But tango is not a sandbox, other dancers are not your parents nor are they other children.  

If you would like another dancer to dance with you, you have to ask yourself two questions. 

First, why do you like him/her? And second, what kind of dancer/person would you have to be to be liked in return?  

The answer to the first question is very often “because I really like how s/he dances”. Which usually means that you understood what tango is about, and your priorities are in the right place. It is possible that this person does not think the same of you. There is no objective “good dancer” and “bad dancer”, there is just a great variety of preferences. Don’t ask yourself the question “WHY doesn’t s/he like me”, it is not the right question to ask and you will never find the right answer because you cannot know that. Ask yourself instead: “what does this person seem to enjoy in people with whom s/he does dance?” Observe, notice, be aware. 

The answer to the next question (“what kind of dancer would I have to be to be liked”) can vary from “I have to be one of the top five dancers in this milonga” to “I have to be young, blond and wear a mini-skirt”. Remember, that every answer in this range is a VALID REASON TO DANCE WITH SOMEBODY. That a person likes to dance only with accomplished dancers does not make this person a snob, because if this person is a snob, so are you. YOU too want to dance with accomplished dancers. If the answer to this question is “blond and mini-skirt” than this person has other priorities and has a perfect right to. It may very well be that your priorities don’t match. If becoming blond and wearing a mini-skirt is against your principles, switch your interest to another dancer – or change your principles. If you understand that you have to become a more accomplished dancer, then find a teacher you like and start improving your dance. If you feel it is your social skill, or the way you dress, or the way you present yourself – then try to understand what other people do, people who in your eyes are more “successful”. Do not condemn them for being different from you, for they can help you. 

If you are a man and a woman says no to you, do not act insulted. Remember, you are not in the sandbox anymore. Be a man. Be worthy of the woman you want. Do not tell your male friends “this one only dances with the teachers” because when she will say yes to your friend, YOU will feel like an idiot. If you are a woman, do not judge other dancers for their preferences. Remember, you want this man to invite you because there is something of value in him, because there is something about him that you LIKE. Be ready to give, not only to take. Cultivate your skill, develop yourself, improve. Be generous, but do not dance with people you don’t want to dance with. If you dance with “whomever” just because you feel you have to dance, don’t be surprised that “whoever” keeps inviting you. 

It does not really matter WHY you desire someone in tango, but understand that the desire is an essential element and that is has to be mutual. If the other person does not desire you, you can either find something that will make you desirable, or find another object of attention. Ultimately, true tango is not primarily a meeting of two skills. It is a meeting of two desires. And from there on the rest is up to you.

RUSSIAN, BULGARIAN, ROMANIAN, POLISH

October 20, 2013