[Tango-L] Abusing the available space

[Shahrukh Merchant]

"Brian Dunn" <brianpdunn at earthlink.net> said:

> Well! Quite a menu of things to reply to...

Hi Brian,

I'm not going to respond to every point in your mail--in most cases, 
we're actually in violent agreement. And (returning your "shameless 
flattery" :-)), I actually agree with most of what you write, and you do 
so so thoroughly and convincingly (and, I might add, with exemplary 
courtesy) that I find little if anything to add. I respond at length to 
very few posts on Tango-L, and when I do, it's because they are worth 
responding to.

> It feels to me like the "sentiment" you "read" has triggered a hot-button
> for you... I confess, I DO feel just a bit "projected upon".

Sorry about that; my projection was not intended to be on what you said, 
but how what you said could be interpreted. The hot-button that you have 
correctly identified the existence of is the following:

There is just

- SO MUCH bad navigation and inconsiderate dancing going on in Milongas, 
with
- SO LITTLE being done about it by the teachers (and perhaps, as 
Sandhill posits, the teachers' teachers), and
- SO LITTLE realization by those making the infractions that that's what 
they are doing (most are, I am sure, polite and considerate people, so 
they are surely not being inconsiderate intentionally)
- SO MUCH emphasis on the teaching of steps, figures and techniques that 
consume space, rather than those that conserve space, hence exacerbating 
the problem

that I see a statement encouraging "making full use of available space" 
(which in the context of your post implies using more of it) as giving 
further license to the perpetrators. I know that that's not what was 
intended, and that you undoubtedly have the skills to carry that out 
yourself in a balanced way (and the courtesy you demonstrate in your 
postings I am sure carries over to the dance floor), but it is clear 
from actual observation and participating in Milongas that most people 
don't.

To be fair, it's not a problem that is begging to be solved in most 
communities outside Buenos Aires, which may have a much lower density of 
dancers on the floor, though I have certainly been to crowded Milongas 
at popular festivals that were just disastrous, navigation-wise.

> ?freely using
> your share of available space without encroaching on anyone else?s space??
> Again, what?s inconsiderate about that? 

> When I'm with a dancer like
> that, knowing what's possible with such a partner, sure, I want to fully
> explore with her what's available in my share of the space without
> encroaching on anyone else?s space.  And if that space decreases as the
> Milonga gets more crowded (which did NOT happen in the Canning example I
> described) and the "open middle" disappears, well, the principle still holds
> in the now-smaller space

This is the part that I still have the problem with. One finds what one 
looks for. If one is looking for available space, one will find it, but 
it is those around you (and I mean "you" in the general sense) who 
decide whether their space is being encroached upon. And it is clear 
that there is a disconnect there. For example, I would not agree that 
when Canning is crowded, it does not change the traffic dynamics in the 
middle and that people can continue to do what they want there and be 
transparent to those around them. Any resemblance to isolated zones on 
the floor when it is sparsely populated breaks down *very* rapidly as it 
starts getting crowded. And Canning is the most generous example since 
it has a very large floor and it is square (not subject to the 
long-and-thin effect that some otherwise large floors have). In Niño 
Bien, for example, which has almost as large a floor, but a rectangular 
one, I would argue that there is no such "safe" central zone. In the 
now-defunct La Nacional (very thin and long floor), the "safe central 
zone" would surely have been a rectangle of negative width!

The figures of traditional Tango evolved over decades to adapt to the 
crowded conditions of the time. It is not that people then were unaware 
of the joys of long or expansive movements in unison with a partner. But 
nor would they just have been content shuffling along with the crowd in 
a packed Milonga; hence evolved figures that allowed good dancers the 
means to really *DANCE* in a compact way in a compact space. They were, 
indeed, making full use of the available space (but *without* taking up 
more of it--more on that below).

And there is no reason that this set of figures needs to be a static set 
and cannot be expanded over time by creative persons--clearly that's how 
the current set of figures used in traditional Tango came about. But the 
selection and survival criteria (in the Darwinist sense) have now 
changed--conservation and sharing of space in Milongas has different 
degrees of importance in different parts of the world, marketing of and 
exhibitionism in Tango have a different role than they used to (though 
arguably they always existed in some form), etc. Some teachers (from 
Buenos Aires) feel they have a "survival advantage" marketing and 
teaching exhibition figures that turn out to give their confused 
students a "survival handicap" when they try to use what they learned 
back in Buenos Aires. And secondary markets emerge to to address that 
(milonguero-style classes to "fix" the problem, "open-minded" milongas 
to embrace the diversity, etc.). And so the world turns.

"Making full use of the available X" in English can mean, ironically, a 
high consumption or a low consumption (of resource X). When there is a 
resource abundance, by all means use the expansive high-consumption 
definition ("use as much as you want"), but when there is a resource 
shortage, as in space in a crowded milonga, it is the conservative 
("make the most out of what you have") definition that needs to rule. 
Unfortunately, human nature being what it is (or perhaps Darwinism being 
what it is), under conditions of a resource shortage, it is all too 
common to see a third behaviour emerge, often unwittingly: "Grab as much 
as you can before the others take it all.".

I'm all for artistic and personal expression and exploration, and 
pushing the envelope--there would be no progress without that. But a 
milonga is, by definition, a social setting, and social considerations, 
that will often be at odds with personal expression, need to be taken 
into account.

Shahrukh