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?

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.

At a milonga, if you’ve screwed up and they’re not happy, they’ll often put up with you until the end of the set, and then go tell all their friends that you’re a terrible lead. Even if it was not my fault. (Explain to me, again, how this is supposed to be fun? Where’s the motivation, if there is no reward?)

I very much liked the open atmosphere, the friendly vibe, even the few tandas of alternative music. (By alternative I don’t mean Pearl Jam, I mean tango-able songs that were written after about 1959.) Homer was very friendly to me, when I introduced myself and said I was a fan of their YouTube videos; he even helped me get a ride home, which is no mean feat since Berkeley is about 25 minutes away across a bridge, or 1:20 by transit. I feel really positive about him and Cristina, and I’m tempted to see if I can arrange a private lesson with him about when it’s appropriate to relax the hips and get that huge torsion, and when it’s best to keep everything together. I think I’ll ask Michael and Beatrix the same question, and probably get different answers.

I like that about tango, that there can be many different forms that are right. Well, some people don’t think so, but I’m not very interested in their opinions. I just want to have a good time, not be all snobby about someone else having a good time.

Beatrix and I still struggle to dance well or even comfortably together socially. We just don’t seem to, almost ever. I like her, and I want to be able to dance with her, but it’s just so difficult. We go out on the floor and I feel like an idiot, like I’ve never done this before in my life; so of course I don’t have the courage to ask anyone after that, because they’ve just seen my worst. It can’t *just* be me, because it doesn’t happen that way with 99% of everybody else I’ve danced with; but she’s a professional, so it must be me. I dunno. The way Michael dances, anyone could follow, and feel they were doing well; of course there are things he does that I don’t. (A whole list of them in fact, most of which I forget 20 minutes after the lesson ends. Argh.)

But all in all, it’s good. I’m learning so much, sometimes my brain is full. Soon we’re going to start filming the review part of the lesson, so I can look back later (after I’ve forgotten it all) and hopefully remember. It sure would be useful to be able to do that in shoes!

Anyway, now I’m in a sublet in the Mission at 22nd and Guerrero for the next 3 weeks, and it seems like a neat place. I’m very much enjoying my lessons, and also my teachers as people. I like them a lot. Michael is sort of a cross between my daddy Charlie and me: he’s a curmudgeonly computer-gadget-loving dedicated meat/beer consumer who gets nervous around health food, and also a showoff and great physical comedian who enjoys smaller groups rather than larger parties. He’s got this thing he’ll sometimes do he calls “oranguatango” where he does a very good job mimicking an orangutan, and leads an entire song dancing tango while doing it. It’s super funny, and I’ve been encouraging them to get some clips up on YouTube. Oh, he’s also a quintessential Canadian, which interacts strangely with being a curmudgeon, because that means he’s a very polite curmudgeon. I’m not quite sure how one does that, but he pulls it off wonderfully. Beatrix is extremely sweet, sometimes a little too much but then she’ll make a joke out of language or do something weird and funny. German is her first language and she has a heavy accent; she has a hard time with “th” not coming out as “ss,” and she knows it, and she plays with that sometimes. She used to be a therapist on Salt Spring Island, not too far from my lover Derek. I bought her some glove warmers recently because her hands get so cold its painful for me when she touches me. She doesn’t seem to mind her hands being cold, but *I* mind, so I’ve provided a solution.

So there.

Yesterday I put on a pair of Beatrix’s shoes. Her feet are only a little bit larger than mine, and these are surprisingly comfortable for three inch heels; the sides are a soft mesh and the whole shoe laces up, so it moves with your feet and adjusts to the contours. The arch is very solid, the sole a very thin suede, so I can feel every nuance of the floor beneath me.

And everything about my dancing changed again. Smaller steps, directly under the place my hips stop; no more skidding to a tenuous halt, no more underpowered steps, I can’t afford them in these shoes. It’s good. The bones of my big toes hurt, through the base and all the way up the inside of each foot; not because of a lack of arch so much as because I’m using new muscles I haven’t felt since I was re-learning how to walk after the military… or during my exploration of zen … or during my first time learning to walk in tango. Or my second time learning to walk in tango. So I guess this makes it Learning to Walk v6.

I’ve been learning about walking again; I also learned something I dearly wish I’d known three years ago. I showed up to a practica in a new city, knowing only my teachers, and almost immediately a friendly man asked me to dance. It was the shoes, he explained. Oh, I said, as we danced around the small dark room.  I’ve been waiting more or less quietly for over three years to find out how to tell the men I want to follow, and here it is! Finally!

So tomorrow we will go out shoe hunting. The store where Beatrix got them is in Berkely; we’re headed there for a milonga tomorrow night, so we’ll just go a little early and catch dinner after. I have no idea how much they will cost, and I don’t think I care. If I can find good Cuban heels like Michael’s, I’ll get them too. Those he bought in Seattle.

[edit: Her shoes are from Experience Shoes in Seattle beneath Highway 99 in downtown, his shoes are Capezio Cuban heels which we were able to find for $80. It took a few days to get comfortable in them, but with the right socks they're very nice.]

But tonight, we dance. I’ll bring in my thighs in the back, try to stay hips over feet and belly button toward the leader. Zoom!

So I’ve been learning a great deal about tango. New things, like how to walk again, and really new things, like a cross that becomes a sacada that becomes a turn around the follower. Crazy stuff, good stuff, and really interesting and well-explained.

I’ve started blogging a little bit about my journey, so here it is. Enjoy!

Take your thumb and rub it lightly back and forth across the second segment of your fingers to make a whispering noise-”tssa, tssa, tss”. It’s distinct enough that that noise, repeated a few times, is enough to prevent a startled (and possibly violent) response when someone touches me unexpectedly.

Over the years, it’s come to mean many things — among them affection, care, respect, for fears and needs and space.  It also often means that petting is about to happen. This all started many years ago when I first had Sputnik the surly black cat. That boy shed like he was being paid by the by the strand–short black cat hairs floating gently everywhere with each pet. As I’d pet him I’d rub some of the fur off my fingers in the above-described fashion (tssa, tssa, tss) and he quickly associated that noise with affection, so whenever I wanted to touch him I’d make that noise. If he was sleeping, I could make the finger-whispering noise and he’d keep drowsing as I pet him (instead of attacking, which he often did in his kittenhood).

I don’t know exactly when it became a thing to do with humans, but I most strongly associate it with my kid. Like me, she startled easily and could be angry and very frightened when caught unawares. “Heightened startle response,” they call it. I also tend to pay close attention to certain familiar voices and sounds so I can pick them out from the undifferentiated din of public places, but it’s still often a game of “guess what they actually said.” We used the finger-whisper enough that even my hard-of-hearing ears could pick the noise out of the background, a vital thing when I need to hear something/someone.

Sometimes, the noise was a shortcut to whispering, “I love you.” (tssa, tssa, tss.)

I’ve since trained other animals to the sound; they pick up pretty quickly what it means. With an animal’s keen sense of hearing, they can often hear the signal from much further away than a human could, so it works pretty well as a “come here for something you like” call.  I wonder –who trained whom?

Sigh. I really miss my kid right now.

That small village only recently got electricity, and doesn’t yet have broadband. Unfortunately, a major travel magazine wrote an article about the place, and you can’t find a decent house to rent for less than $400 US, which makes it significantly more expensive than Puerto Vallarta; these reasons and a few others are what have caused my move.

I hope to start writing habits again once I’m more settled in my new place In the meantime, I’m going to post a few links to things I find interesting. Let’s see what turns up!