[Tango-L] Growing up an excellent man-dancer. How?

[Victor Bennetts]

Ron, you have put it so well. I know exactly the sort of 5 great male dancers Deby is talking about. Really they don't exist anywhere else in the world other than BsAs. When I first got to BsAs and was desperate to get dances I was really furious that some women only seemed to want to dance with these old guys. After a few milongas and a few dances with experienced followers (20 years plus) I started to realise that this is a really silly attitude to have.

Just to take one example, the way these followers would embrace you is so totally different to anything else I had experienced in tango I was amazed. There is such a concentrated seriousness and tenderness in the simple embrace, a beautiful thing and you have not even taken a step! So I imagine for followers it is the same deal except ten times more so when they dance with one of these guys who has been dancing for decades. Of course, these 'milongueros' are not all great. I also saw and experienced some truly appallingly bad dancing there as well from experienced Argentinians :-).

So I think visiting BsAs is really important for a leader's development, but there are also great leaders and teachers outside of BsAs. Really most of the things that I observed there were the same things my teachers had been going on about for the last three years back in Australia like lead with the chest, stay connected, listen to the music. It just makes a difference to see how far it can really be taken and what beautiful results you can get when you do actually nail it.

I was talking to one of these old guys lamenting the fact I had so much to learn and he looked at me with a wry smile and said, yes but you are young (hehe I love being called that at my age) and have years to perfect your dance. So I guess the bottom line for a middle order leader like me is that there might be a long hard road ahead but provided we concentrate on the things that are really important, then unlike many other things in life we will just get better with age :-). I find that a very encouraging thought.

Victor Bennetts


-----Original Message-----
From: tango-l-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:tango-l-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Tango Society of Central Illinois
Sent: Thursday, 11 October 2007 5:15 AM
To: Igor Polk
Cc: tango-l at mit.edu
Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Growing up an excellent man-dancer. How?

On 10/10/07, Igor Polk <ipolk at virtuar.com> wrote:
>
>
> So, my question is how to bring up those excellent tango dancers:
>
> How to retain promising beginners, how to provide a guidance of great
> dancing, how to motivate men not to stop in the middle. What workshops are
> possible to train great man-dancers?
>
>

The situtation Deby is talking about is Buenos Aires. The men she is talking
about are probably milongueros in the 60s or older. They have been dancing
for decades, perhaps as long as 40 or 50 years. It would be safe to say
most, if not all of them, did not take tango classes. They grew up enveloped
in tango, its music, its customs. They learned by observation and by
practice, the tango they found inside themselves developed, individual yet
always in harmony with the environment and culture in which tango lived.

There has been some comment about the quality of men dancing in the US. Yes,
there are quite a few men who have acquired a great deal of skill in
excecuting a wide variety of tango steps, leading women to follow a wide
variety of tango steps, mostly on an open dance floor. However, put them on
the crowded dance floors in Buenos Aires milongas and even the best American
tangueros cannot compare to the best Argentine milongueros. How can one
expect them to be as good? Very few men in the US have been dancing more
than 10 years, although some who have been dancing less than 5 are hired as
experts to teach at tango festivals.

What I see as missing in American tangueros (myself included) that is
present in Argentine milongueros is a way of interpreting the music which
such precision, with such subtlety, with such passion (and that doesn't even
do it justice) that only someone who has tango music circulating in their
blood, beating with their heart, breathing with their lungs, and riding the
waves of their nerves and muscles can do. It is so obviously different and
it is so difficult to emulate.

So, while tango classes taken from fellow countrymen who have mastered the
dance in 5 years may help you in setting you on your journey of producing a
good male tango dancers (provided it doesn't send you up some irrelevant
alley or off some tango-destructive cliff), in order to produce a better
American tanguero, you need to send him to Buenos Aires to observe the best
male dancers. He needs to dance a lot on crowded milonga floors. Any
progress will take some time. It will take repeated visits. Even then, the
best will still be apparent only as works-in-progress. It has taken a
lifetime to produce these milongueros.

In the meantime, be patient and enjoy the journey. Tango is a difficult
dance. It takes a lifetime to get good, 2 lifetimes to master.

Ron
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