Having danced ballroom for some years, I found argentine tango much more addicting. Assuming that this was true for you what are the elements that you think contribute to this "special effect" that tango has on people?
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SF Bay Area
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Unsu...
Re: Tango addiction
Fri, September 7, 2007 - 11:43 AMThe main difference with tango is that required a more tight "binding" with your dancing party. The phisical distance is much smaller that any other ballroom dancing activity :) -
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Re: Tango addiction
Fri, September 7, 2007 - 2:05 PMFor me, it requires a total surrender/ LISTENING with my body that no other dance form (yet) asks. I have to BE the woman. BE the passive one. The lines are so clearly drawn, and for that, I love it.
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Re: Tango addiction
Sat, September 8, 2007 - 11:10 PMI want to be careful of being a complete snob, but on several levels Tango strikes me as being a more profound dance. The connection, the greater latitude for improvisation, more rhythmical variation, the variety of embraces, the developed use of cross system of walking, the capacity to express a larger range of emotions, the cultural richness of Tango's origins and its continued cultural growth, and on.
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Re: Tango addiction
Sun, September 9, 2007 - 2:13 AMWhat I am really getting at is not so much the beauty of tango, rather the elements that make people get "hooked". For example, it feels a lot like a very exclusive "club" one feels drawn to be admitted to. There are moments of real "high" one wants to experience again, but which happen fairly rarely, expecially at the beginning, so one feels compelled to take classes and attend as many milogas as possible to recapture those feelings. It reminds me of a psychological experimenent with mice and food pellets. The mice press a lever to get food, but they do so even more intensly when the pellet comes only once in a while.
Of course the combinationation of human touch, beautiful movement and interesting music are the source of the "high", but I can't help thinking that there is something more to it... -
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Re: Tango addiction
Sun, September 9, 2007 - 8:57 AMI think I hear what you mean...while I always thought tango was fascinating and I dance many dance forms in general, what "hooks" me to tango is that, for me, it's almost like therapy in a way. I'd never really felt like I needed therapy or anything like that before taking tango, but after my first class, I felt like through this dance I could truly self-explore certain key issues to make myself a better person.
In partner dancing generally speaking there is that sense of lead and follow, but in tango it's more than just that--you have to TRUST your partner. For someone who has general trust issues, trusting a complete stranger, in particular a male one, is a HUGE deal!! But like you were saying, my "high" feeling of trust, and even acceptance, was really rare at the beginning, but I knew it would be more common if I kept going back, and the more it happened while dancing, the more it would happen in my life in general. -
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Re: Tango addiction
Sun, September 9, 2007 - 10:14 AMHowever, there IS more to tango than just dancing, and tango IS
elite and exclusive. Ask any of us who , after five years at the same milongas, get totally ignored when attempting to converse with the other women who are sitting out a dance.
I found that even if I danced every dance, and I danced with some of the Best leads in the game, I would drive home and ask myself-did I have a good time? was it fun? is it worth the hour drive home alone in the middle of the night?
And it wasn't. -
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Re: Tango addiction
Sun, September 9, 2007 - 11:50 AMPrecisely, Quatana, and sometimes I think that it is the conbo of highs and lows that creates its own kind of hook. From a leader's point of view there is the follower who will still not dance with you after you have taken hundreds of classes and attended hundreds of milongas, and the follower you took classes with, and who, although she is at you level, now waits to be asked by the best leaders... (see my blog "the vanishing intermediate follower" on this: tango-silvano.blogspot.com/). These situations make you want, on one had, to quit, on the other, to get a lot better just "to show them" - I'm sorry to have to admit to such "non noble" feelings, but I find I am fighting them all the time and wondering whether I'll nod back when she will finally look my way... or I'll look the other way like she has been doing to me for so long...
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Re: Tango addiction
Mon, September 10, 2007 - 5:11 PMHmmm...I wonder if that depends on where you go, or at least to what extent it effects the experience. In comparison to the salsa community around here, the tango community here is one of the most warm and inviting. The feelings you both describe I have yet to feel with tango, but that exclusive, unbearably snotty attitude amongst salsa dancers is what pushes me to and pulls me away from the dance, but I wonder if someone who hasn't spent a lot of time in the salsa community here would feel differently about the tango one.
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Re: Tango addiction
Mon, September 10, 2007 - 5:38 PMThe difference being, if one follower turns you down there will always be someone who Will dance with you. Big difference from no one talking to you when you're not dancing. Remember, we don't not dance by choice.And we spend a Lot of time Not dancing. -
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Re: Tango addiction
Mon, September 10, 2007 - 6:36 PMI hear you. Which makes it even more astounding that some women will come out night after night and not dance much at all. From a leader's perspective it "hurts" even more when you have seen her sitting there for a while and she *still* turns you down! Or she will accept.. but just to go for the ride, with her left hand firmly planted on your right biseps to keep a distance, and her eyes looking all over the dance floor. At that point I fight the temptation of saying "thank you" right away and I focus on doing the best I possibly can, hoping that she will actually start dancing at some point. Sometimes it works, and it helps to have the "tanda" tradition to build up to it.
A reminder that it is actually OK for the woman to get up and ask. I have never turned down a follower who asked me to dance.
W/r to salsa, another dance of devotees, I've taken a lot of classes in a club, but after class time I could easily go around and ask 5 or 6 women to dance and they would all turn me down. The feeling I got is that the climate was much more about "hooking up" than dancing...and, alas, I wasn't a good candidate (too old for most yong latinas ...) . With tango I will regularly dance with followers all the way from 20 to 70 years of age... and that's one more aspect I like about it. We should start a thread comparing the typical devotee dances, like Tango, Salsa and Swing. -
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Re: Tango addiction
Mon, September 10, 2007 - 6:39 PMThere are a few leaders I will turn down, mostly because they have been rude to me. But it is not about their skill, generally, I learn from almost everyone.
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Re: Tango addiction
Mon, September 10, 2007 - 6:37 PMI treasure those friendly people! the snobby behavior of a dancer reflects badly upon them.
umm, I spend a lot of time talking at milongas, to men and to women; I also tend to go to "friendly" milongas like Allegro and Danceasy. At least for now.
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