Tropical Zen

I like focusing on leading moves that the follower can’t ignore, or has to work really hard to not follow. I think that most of my dancing time will be spent dancing with women who are not as good at following as I am (following or leading) and probably also with less musicality. This is a normal part of things, related to where I need to live and how friendly I want to be as a dancer.

What I want to be able to do, then, is to lead not-so-good followers in such a way that they have fun, look better, and I have fun too. I can probably already do the first two; it’s my fun that I’m not so sure about. I don’t want tango to feel like work all the time, you know?

My teachers think I should teach.

If I want to teach, I will (among other things) have to do the grunt work of dancing with all the old, not-so-pretty, bad dancers in every community I land in. Everywhere I go where my face is new, until I have a Name for myself and also land in a bigger community where they are accustomed to Names, I will have to dance with bad dancers and make them look good if I want clients. That is the work part of the business. Dancing with good dancers and cute people is the fun part, but it doesn’t pay very well.

Related to my orientation and the strongly gendered culture of tango, I’ve never once fooled myself into thinking that I will find love here. It does not matter to me if I dance with attractive women; I’m not interested in attractive women, nor am I interested in straight men, and the supermajority of tango dancers will be straight men and women (whatever their orientation). From the tiny little pool of tango dancers who are gay men, the likelihood of encountering one who’ll enjoy my freedom, annual migrations, and also my non-monogamy are even more slim. So much so that I have written it off as even a remote possibility.

There’s no need to feel bad for me. I don’t go looking for love in straight bars or government offices or hardware stores, either; when I find it, it is within my community, friends and friends of friends, people who share more with me than love of a certain music or dance style. Perhaps I have higher standards, or maybe I just have more specific needs; whichever the case may be, I’m not in any hurry to alter a reasonably functional system of low love expectations and polite but sexually neutral behaviour. I imagine that the straight men I dance with would be just as put off and weirded out if I flirted with them as I am when a woman gets too overtly sensual at me; that’ s usually the time to bring up a reasonable but blunt reference to my lover, the big hairy sailor in Victoria. (Who doesn’t dance tango, and doesn’t need to. It seems foolish to try to get all my needs met in one person and only one person; if there are needs he can’t meet, what do I do then?)

Several of the women I danced with last night assumed I was a teacher. I suppose, if the requirement for being a teacher is that I’m willing, then it’s in the process of becoming true. It still doesn’t quite fit comfortably, but it’s becoming more okay as I get used to the idea. Maybe by the time I return to Puerto Vallarta I will think of myself as a teacher, and be one.
And I will dance with all the older women, and make them smile.

One thing most people in the Puerto Vallarta tango community don’t realize is that no one is obligated to dance with them, and they are not obligated to dance with anyone either. If they actually practiced this, a bad leader would finally realize that he is a bad dancer and needs to become better, because he wouldn’t be getting all the dances he wants like he does now. The women who say yes and then bitch about him later are helping to keep him stuck. They give him no motive to change.

It’s a common thing, in tango especially but also in the world, for women to give up their power. They say, “I’m not doing anything, I’m just supposed to respond and let the man do all the work.” Well, why on earth would he, then? Is it because you’re so wonderful that he will spend years training at this frustrating dance just so you can feel good for 7 1/2 minutes? What are you offering your partner that he would be willing to spend years learning a difficult craft?

He does all the work; and if they do dance well together, she gets the reward: she looks good, feels good, and the passive dancer has put next to no effort into it. If they don’t dance well together, he gets the blame: “he’s not a good leader, he doesn’t do what I want.” But of course, this is never said to his face. What a set-up. The women who “just follow, it all depends on what he’s doing” are generally terrible dancers because they expect the guy to hold up her weight, keep her on her balance point, keep time with the music, and generally haul her as around the floor; all this just to make her feel good. Yeah, normally when a guy has to do a lot of work to make a woman feel good, she either pays him a good deal of money or she marries him, and prostitution is often illegal.

The best dancers don’t let themselves be pushed around. They move, absolutely; but they move according to their own needs, to their own sense of the music, and they don’t make the leader haul them anywhere. It’s not work to dance with a good follow.

I’ve been looking recently at why it is that someone would want to dance with me. I think it’s a good exercise, to really think about what it is that you have to offer a dance partner. It helps boost confidence, yes, but also knowing what you have to offer makes you more in control of what you’re going to give.

If you aren’t offering anything, why the hell are you dancing?

Last night, Tuesday, I went to the practica at Cheryl Burke studios, this huge chain of dance studios and met Marc, one of the gay tangueros here in SF. We had some wonderful dances, and he introduced me around to other people there, including Christy Cote (part of Tango Con*Fusion, the all-women’s tango performance group). Good times, and I didn’t sit out any dances I didn’t want to. Marc says he doesn’t really like close embrace, but I found it to be clear and sweet and a lot of fun and he seemed to enjoy it with me. Maybe he just hadn’t found the right person to dance it with yet.

Compare and contrast with this evening, at the Cellspace Alternative Milonga, which I had thought was a practica. Oops. I got directions to the wrong place, ended up at a different tango studio (La Pista) a mile away, and tried to figure out how to get to where I was going without having the correct address. The building owner heard me on the phone, and not knowing the story came to kick me out; I explained that I *had* come for the tango, just to the wrong place, and he was very kind. I met Nila who walked with me to Cellspace, but that was very crowded and the floor was just plywood, so it was sticky and harder to move on. I sat down where there was space to sit, and spent the next several tandas with that awful sinking feeling which happens when I realize I’m at a strange place where I don’t know anybody and I’m not going to find anyone to dance with. I hate dances like that, and I was already mildly annoyed at having gotten the wrong address. If I’d been able to make it on time, I would have attended the class before the milonga and met some people I could dance with later. I’ve found that generally, if I attend the classes I find people who really enjoy dancing with me, and it is much more comfortable asking for dances later in the evening. If I just show up somewhere, unknown and untested, nobody knows if I’m a fun dance partner or not.

It’s not that I have such a hard time asking people to dance because I’m afraid they’ll say no. A very important aspect of asking is that they get to say no; otherwise, it’s not asking, it’s a demand. Nope, it’s really just that I’m terrified to talk to strangers, to initiate a conversation without a good reason. I’m not confident enough that I can just go somewhere and pretend they’re all my friends; I’m not creepy enough to prey on beginners; and truthfully, I’d rather be following, and that’s a really hard thing to ask for in a community with such highly specific gender roles.

Teachers say again and again that it would be better for leaders if they spent their first 6 months or so as a follower, so that they could learn what the follower’s feet are doing before they have to figure out how to get them to do it. But I don’t see the community support for such an endeavor; men are easily embarrassed, that they are dancing at all is a Big Deal; starting them out dancing with other men will not have much appeal for straight men. Now, if you had a large pool of women who lead and would be willing to adopt a few beginners, *that* could be a motivating situation. But generally, the women who lead are very experienced followers. What could motivate them to work with beginning men, I don’t know.

Ultimately, Nila came to my rescue just as I had given up and was leaving. She introduced me to a few friends and we danced a few dances, which were difficult because of the crowd and the floor. But we had a pretty good time anyway. Another woman came up to me just after that and asked if she could lead, and we spent some time switching leads about every song, and that was nice. It doesn’t really seem like a good place to work on stuff, though, only a place to show off how good you are. That’s part of what I don’t like about milongas; I’m still working, still playing, and not nearly good enough as a leader to show off. Not really, unless you think simple moves and good musicality is showing off, but it seems like half the time I can’t get my partner to groove in the music with me; usually, she’s just following steps.