softest steps

1:25 to end, right?

 

ps. awesome quality, one day all tango videos will be like this…

Yeah, so this happened…

fantasy footwear

dear CiF,

could you please make these shoesin a silvery pewter satin?

I would love you forever

cif critique

I’m just not happy with gold and silver and red and black OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN! and so I had to vent.

First loves are never over when your first love is a tango club.

I love Ann Arbor tango. I want to write it love letters, I want to buy it flowers and take long walks with it, my hand in its back pocket. Buenos Aires close-embrace leaders have been unnecessarily nice to me—one acted shocked when I opened my mouth and he realized I wasn’t from Buenos Aires (I apparently look like I could be Argentinian, which I’m sure has a lot to do with it), several expressed something to the effect that I dance well for an American or for being so young, that kind of thing. I’ve heard this a few times: “You learned in the US? But you had Argentinian teachers, right?” No, not really. It’s just that my teachers were the best.

The way they teach in Ann Arbor (what do they say—something like, “tango is not a commodity, but an art form to be shared”?) is so beautiful—in its generosity, in its practical and aesthetic philosophies, in how much of the beginner class is devoted to walking, the essentials, the music, the sensation. I consistently fail when I try to describe the myriad intangible ways that it is awesome. There are classes like that here too, but there are also classes where beginners learn to start with the 8-count basic, to lead the cross with their arms, to do front and back ochos before they can really walk—I get a little bit upset sometimes. I bristle. I wonder if I’m indoctrinated, or uppity, but deep down I’m convinced that I learned the right way. I just wish I could find the words in Spanish to explain it to my partners. I end up saying something like, “I learned in a small city, but I had wonderful teachers.” I get maybe too sentimental about this, but even though my teachers were Aleric, Karri, Bo, Liz, Ramji, Heather, Solveig, and Ciro, I feel like my teacher was the entire Ann Arbor community, and it gave me all this passion and potential and I’m so grateful all the time. Dear Ann Arbor tango, I love you so much I don’t know where to put it all. I hope you like tulips.

oops

follower part II

by helloaudra

One time I had this thought, but I never really finished it, and it was about how a follower is like a translator. I do think that learning to lead and learning to follow are like learning languages, non-verbal ones. It’s a form of communication.

But it’s not like learning a language, because followers can’t necessarily “talk” to followers, and leaders can’t “talk” to leaders. (This takes place in an imaginary world where all followers only follow and all leaders only lead, which would be a silly world, but just for the sake of figuring out what I’m talking about.) That is, the people who speak the same language can’t communicate with each other.

As a follower, you learn to understand one language, and respond in another. But not respond exactly in the way you respond in a conversation. It’s more like translation because you try to stay faithful to the original (i.e., follow the lead) but no matter what you do, it’s a new work of art. It’s not necessarily good art– it could be blandly literal, it could be inaccurate. And staying faithful to the original has so many interpretations, it could mean nearly anything, as long as it works. You don’t want to completely diverge from the literal subject matter, but you have to add your own input; you have to make it work in your language, the language of following, and when appropriate, make your own decisions according to your personal interpretation, your personal style.

Again, though, it’s not like translation, because it takes place in real time. You’re translating instantly, and you’re translating directly from a human, responsive, mutable, not from a fixed text (although really I think text is also responsible and mutable, but in a different way). Based on how you translate, the leader might change his/her style of composition. In that way, it’s collaborative– the author and translator work together to write the original and the translation at the same time.

I don’t know if that really responds to what you’ve said, though, so here’s another thing:

I went to a follower’s technique workshop with Graciela Gonzales, and we did some preliminary exercises that had to do with following and trust, where one person closed her eyes and the other led her around the room by hand, things like that. Anyway, GG asked us how it went, how we felt, and one woman said she had a sense of “abandono”–abandon, I guess, but it also translates to desertion, withdrawal, resignation, neglect. And GG said she didn’t like that word, she prefers “entrega”–surrender, delivery, handing over– because that way it’s a choice, it’s deliberate.

So, even if I surrender to my leader, it’s an active decision. Being completely receptive, in this case, IS assertive.

Now to be completely literal, even if the word they use in Spanish to say “lead” is “llevar” (which means carry or take) you still have to move yourself. How can it not be active?