Tango Community Survival Manual

When I first started dancing the tango I was confused. I did not have a regular teacher, and the ones I did have often gave me contradictory pieces of advice and lectures.

I guess that many of the beginners are in a similar situation. That is why I decided to formulate some of my experiences into the six most important pieces of advice for survival in the tango comunity.

Tango is not a standardized dance. There is no right way, only a way that may or may not work out for you.

My point is this – when you dance your aim is to make your partner enjoy the dance. Everything else you do has to serve this purpose.

Here are the six things that everyone beginning to dance in general or to dance the tango should be aware of:

1. Be your own teacher – Your doctor can establish a diagnosis and prescribe you therapy, but it is up to you whether you will take their advice and what you will do in order not to get sick again. Tango is similar: your teacher may tell you what to correct in your dance and provide you with directions, but it is up to you to what extent you will apply it.

Sometimes not even your teacher can tell you what you need because the most important things in tango cannot be seen from the outside. It is great to have a mentor and to follow them, but it is even greater to be your own mentor.

How to become your own teacher? Here are a few recommendations:

- Ask – Ask the more experienced dancers what they think of your dancing, ask your partners (be careful not to overdo it) and ask for honest constructive criticism. Ask questions to define the best characteristics of your dancing and how to make it better. Taking this into consideration, define what you need to work on. Ask your teacher how to fix it.

- Read – Tango happens in the head first. The right mindset, the right thinking about what you do is the base for everything. That is why you should read as much as you can, watch interviews, think, compare, search for answers to the dilemmas you may have.

- Watch – People are mimetic beings – that means that most often we learn by copying what we see. That is why you should compile a collection of your favourite videos and watch them from time to time. Learn by copying, put yourself in your idols’ shoes, do what they would do, think the way they would think.

2. Build your own style – When you dance it is very important to be recognizable. Think of how you would like to be remembered by those that you dance with. As the guy that dances milongas beautifully, the gentleman that fills me with positive energy, the girl with the soft embrace, the lady that does a wonderful giro? You may dance unbelievably well, but you may sink into the grayness of mediocrity if there isn’t a single thing that you will be recognized by.

It goes without saying that you need to know to dance to all types of music and to have all the elements to be complete, but you only need one element to be recognizable. After choosing what you like and what you have a talent for, focus on it to perfect it better than all the other dancers. In this manner, everyone will always want to dance with you.

3. Give selflessly – You cannot hide anything in tango. I am not familiar with another human activity in which every detail of the soul becomes so apparent. If you hold fear or frustration while you dance, they emerge to the surface; if you are in a good mood, it can be clearly seen; if you have had a bad day or if you are tired, you cannot hide that from your partner.

Irrespective whether any of the above examples apply to you, one thing should never cross your mind – to be selfish. What does that mean?

Tango is a dance for two and it can be truly wonderful provided that these two people connect to one another and dance together. If they are not able to do that, the dance becomes as pointless as the conversation of two people that don’t listen to one another, but think merely of what they themselves are saying.

Thus, always dance for your partner. Give, help, do everything in you power to make them enjoy more. It will come back to you multifold.

At this point I would like to point out the opposite case: when you think about your partner too much – in this way you are blocked and can’t enjoy. If you don’t enjoy yourself, you can’t give joy to others.

4. Hygiene comes first – This is a continuation of the previous recommendation. If someone hasn’t taken the time to shower before a milonga, or brush their teeth, and has come to dance like this, then they are selfish. I rest my case.

Nowadays there are thousands of personal hygiene products and it is absolutely not allowed for one to reek of sweat or their last meal odor. I’ve heard all kinds of excuses: ‘I come directly from work, so I couldn’t find the time’, ‘I’ve been to a pub’, ‘You will have to excuse some people, they just smell more’ etc. There is no acceptable excuse.

Smokers are a distinct category that comes to dance, wearing their smoky ‘ashtray’ smell with them.

5. Accept people the way they are – There isn’t a single tango community without clans, groups, fractions and other divisions. People divide based on many factors and quite often they speak against each other.

I know many people that gave up tango dancing because they were bothered by these divisions – these people expected that the tango community would be an idyllic family whose members love each other and always hang out. This is an illusion. Just like any other group of people, there is personal animosity, past relationships, future relationships, ideological differences and the like.

My recommendation is to learn to keep a certain distance from these things and not to idealize. Mesmerized by the sweet sensation of dancing it is easy to get charmed and suppose that people are better than they are. Tango is such a phenomenon that helps people’s hidden passions come to the surface, no matter whether they are good or bad.

Thus, stay close to the people who are close to you and establish fair communication with most of the group.

6. Travel – You can’t truly feel the splendor of tango without traveling. This especially refers to communities that are small and closed. That is why every experience abroad may give you new impetus and inspiration.

Additionally, traveling abroad may help you get a new perspective and new understanding of how things stand at your tango scene. Tango trips are not always expensive. The organizers of different events will help your trip to be cheaper, and often the friends you have met at different events may prove quite helpful.

What is your experience? Which of your past experiences may serve others, especially newcomers to the tango community?

translation from Macedonian: Jana Nichota

No birthday if not tango-birthday

Last week was my birthday. I've never been specially excited for my birthday celebrations. This time also - just some foggy feeling of alertness, like you wait every moment someone to enter the door and to bring good news. Know that feeling?

But that is not the point of my post. What I noticed is that, that feeling of alertness is much smaller in comparison to 27 february, which I celebrate as my tango birthday. To some people it might seem funny, but I know exactly when and where it happened. And I know it happened around 23h that evening.

Yes, people should chose what day to celebrate as their birthday. To chose something that make them feel alive, and to celebrate the day when they started to do that. Because when you start to feel alive, that is the point when you are born. And for me it was when I started to dance tango.

DJ-ing on Linux - my first impressions

DJ-ing on Linux works better than Windows

As I promised, I write today about my first impressions of using Linux - how it effects my work on DJ-ing and organising my music library. Well, I'll organize what I have to tell in few short notes:

1. Mint is very elegant - Whatever I do, I want nice ambient, and the Linux distribution I am using called Linux Mint offers me just that (its tagline is "from freedom came elegance"). The theme I am using reminds a bit of Mac OS, but what is important to me is its simplicity - as you may noticed from the design of this blog, I prefer simplicity. For me less is really more.

2. Apps work just fine - The biggest concern I had about Linux is its usability as a primary working environment. Would I find all applications I need to do my job? Untill now, I have all I need. In Windows I used Foobar 2000, here VLC is player prefect for the job I need. The default file browser is perfect for checking music and I set Audacious to work on my external sound card to listen to the tracks before I play them. It works just fine. VLC has very good sound adjusting options and good equalizer.

Even before Linux I used Audacity to edit tracks and prepare cortinas - so this is perfect solution for me. I regret only that I wont be able to install Sound Forge and to learn to use it, since I've seen my radio technician made miracles with damaged tango tracks.

Downside is also that I will have to learn Gimp, photo editor - all these years I got used to Photoshop.

3. Sound is perfect - I cant really talk about sound quality because, first, I don't think I have enough qualifications, and second, I changed my laptop. But, as I know the quality of the sound depends mainly on the hardware. I already played 3 times (on one international event, and 2 times on my milonga) on my new laptop on Linux and I can say the sound is perfect. I give credit for that mainly on the busted sound attributes on the model of laptop I chose.

4. Rock solid - What I feel really good about is reliability. The system and applications are rock solid. No crashes until now. I experimented with many applications, and didn't had problem.

The applications are also set to give you exactly what you need - I mean the chance on accidental clicks are almost zero, thing which happened to me in few occasions on milongas; I also saw other Tango DJs have problems with this, and its very embarrassing to interrupt tanda just because DJ accidentally clicked where he/she shouldn't.

Overal impression is that the changing from Windows to Linux is step forward. I feel more stability and better sound comes from my sets, and I work in simpler and more elegant environment.

Supermarket códigos

What a huge topic I am starting today! This is just the tip of the iceberg. I will start today with what I call "supermarket effect". Since about this topic I will talk in more posts in the future, I wont enter in detailed descriptions - just this: it is when men in milongas act like they are in the supermarket and they go around to pick up girls for dance as a customers with a basket, as girls are passive objects on the shelves. Said that, I want to notice - this practice has nothing to do with cabeceo.

I gave this short introduction just to prepare you - I was being sarcastic when I wrote those rules. I had to do it becouse many men really follow this list of instructions.

So, the "supermarket códigos":

1. man should stand when he invites. This way he shows that he is a man of action. No-one notices a sitting man. Sitting on your chair means you don't want to dance

2. men should move around to search for their favorite dancers. The organizer have to make possible for the men to invite from every point in the venue

3. if cabeceo from distance doesn't works, you never go directly to invite. Simply sit near to the lady (you probably know her from before) and talk to her. After five minutes chat she is ready to dance with you

4. be aware of the inviting points. Milongas usually have inviting points, standing there around other men who go there to invite means you are available, ladies usually looks towards inviting points. When you are standing at the inviting point try to be in the front row, this increases your chances

5. it is always good to have a lots of ladies friends with whom you dance. Your social skills are the key factor in arranging dances, we dance social tango don't we?

A new post? Oh finaly!

Its not that I don't have what to tell, nor that I have lack of time to write... Its just I don't feel "the itch" on my fingers to write down what I want to say and to click publish. For some things I believe the best way is to let them ferment, and after a period they will get on the surface - one way or the other. When I started this blog I was aware of this, so I didn't made any promises.

What happened in the meanwhile? I have little more experience from the encuentro world, learned some very important things about musicality and, of course - for me very important, I bught a new laptop, said goodbye to Windows and transfered completely on Linux. I promise you new post about my first experience in DJing on Linux.

... So, see you next post!

There is no disputing about tastes

Hugs and friends and gentle music... One could very easily believe that writing about tango is idyllic project. Its not! It can be very stressful and very dangerous activity, and tango bloggers and activists should be honored and protected for what they do. How come? Well, as I told you in my post about "Tango and chaos", people react and comment publicly and more often behind the back, and you should have very very big balls to tell people the truth in their face. Sometimes this, having big balls, could be named being stupid, but, some of us have this superpower called stupidity, like it or not.

I am speaking now about how dangerous is to comment about what people prefer in tango, about tastes and about styles. I tough that those Latin people when they said "De gustibus non est disputandum" (In matters of taste, there can be no disputes) were very wrong. For what should we dispute if not for the tastes? Hm, maybe I was wrong. Let me in the following sentences explain why.

See, the taste could be defined as a pattern on which we chose things in life, normaly when we have more options to chose from. Being so, the taste defines the core of what our personality is. Denying or criticizing the taste is perceived as attack on ones personality and it is in most cases very bitterly defended. Being criticizer and attacking someone's taste can get you in a lots of troubles.

Maybe this is the reason why people have the impression that there is a lot of ego involved in the tango world; maybe its because in tango most of the things are connected with subjectivity and the taste; with choices and personality.

But, fortunately there are some objective criteria by which we can judge and we can use them to make difference. The taste is pattern of choosing in the case when we have options - but there are situations where we don't have options to chose from. This means, we must do it, because otherwise it will not work.

Let me not speak abstract - let me use example - lets say this: man in tango must not close his eyes, not because I don't like it, not because it is my taste, but for very practical reason: because if he does that, he will bump in to the wall or with the other dancers on the flor.

It is that simple. But it will get more complicated... and more dangerous also.

Bringing order, or the story of my first tango manual "Tango and chaos"

Writing a website containing the word "chaos" in the title is probably writing about order. Considering something chaos or chaotic is having perspective of someone who demands order. So... what the site "Tango and chaos" is about? It is about bringing order. At least for me.

When I began to learn to dance, I could hardly find someone eloquent enough to call him my teacher. The very few experienced dancers here in Skopje were not willing enough, nor capable to teach me to dance (ofcourse they helped me the way they knew and I am thankfull). From this perspective, I am very happy that they were not: I found myself in a situation to teach myself, I went just to a few workshops and private classes with guests teachers, and after that I set my self on a crusade on internet: found loads of websites and watched tons of videos.

And yeah... I discovered "Tango and chaos". It brought order to my mind tortured with a lots of, sometimes totaly oposite, aproaches. After reading just a few pages, I knew I found what I wanted to find - the site guided me and I finaly understood why it was chaos in my head. Noone teaches the begginiers those things which you can find there, but they are the basic on what one should build - not watching videos of Chicho and Arce, not learning steps from Osvaldo Zotto and Mora Godoy...

This is why you can find "Tango and chaos" in the links on my sidebar. If tango means something for you, for God sake, pls read it. It will make things clearer for you.

The word "chaos" in the title is not about tango, perhaps - but it fits very good in the story I told here in this post.

The site author is an American guy - Rick McGarrey married to Argentinian Alejandra Todaro. Watch them dancing in Lo de Celia in Buenos Aires (Rick is bald tall guy with glasses). Notice: pls read the comments under the video - it is a very interesting topic for some of my next posts: how dangerous is to write openly and honestly about tango and why?