toe portrait © Verena Fischer 2011

Most people in Western cultures find there feet odd-looking without their shoes. It probably has to do with them being always out of sight, either in socks or in shoes. I also thought that I had particularly weird-looking feet, but only until I started to dance tango. Since then I have seen so many different feet of women that I had to change my mind about my own feet. Mine are not particularly weird-looking, especially not in comparison to some of the feet I’ve seen at tango.

The only bad thing I have to say about my feet is that they took quite a beating over the last few years. I hardly ever wear high heels in real life, so dancing on 10 cm heels is a bit of a crazy thing to do. It’s definitely not good for the feet either. Additionally my feet have been stepped on so many times that I even have scars from it – you can imagine what happens when a thin heel of another woman lands on your foot full force. If you’re lucky she doesn’t step right on it, but only scratches your skin a bit. Most of these encounters are close calls like that, but sometimes they hit you right on with all their weight and some more additional force. It hurts like hell! At the beginning of my journey into tango something like that would have stopped me from dancing for 2 weeks. Nowadays I know that she didn’t break any bones and that my foot will be just as new in a couple of weeks, why stop dancing? The same thing happens with blisters. You just put adhesive plaster (band-aid) on it and dance another couple of hours. The pain only hits you the next day when you wake up.

My dance partner from yesterday is even crazier than most. He had 3 hours of tango classes in a row with an inflamed tendon in his foot. How did he get it inflamed? Well, dancing too much tango! Being a bit crazy like that is an occupational hazard, I guess. It’s no different from sports where many people don’t stop with all sorts of injuries, they just push through the pain, because the flow of what you’re doing makes you forget about it.

Getting injuries from women treading on your feet in tango is one thing, as I said, occupational hazard, but a completely different one for is me is when men manage to step on my feet. With this I don’t mean my dance partner, that can happen too and it does all the time. No, I mean leaders from a different couple! This actually often makes me angry, because normally this isn’t even possible at all if you dance with consideration for other dancers. If people wouldn’t be changing lanes walking backwards this would probably be entirely impossible. And so far this has happened to me only in Berlin where the dancing often seems more than inconsiderate.

I wished that tango teachers here would be teaching milonga etiquette alongside the technique as they do in other places. Then they would tell beginners never to walk more than one step backwards if it’s too crowded to predict the space. They would tell them not to dance figures that pose a risk of injury to other couples in such situations. They would tell them that the best way to protect the woman you’re dancing with from injuries is to dance in a considerate fashion yourself. However, maybe that’s too much to ask in a city where all teachers are competing with each other and tango schools even have competitive rates at which you can come to all of their classes with a monthly subscription. Since there are 2 classes in every school every night of the week you can have your pick and maybe they have figured out that teaching etiquette will lose them students, who knows!

© Verena Fischer 2011

I took this picture on Monday when I went to my typical practica, the one with Gaia and Leandro at Nou Mitte. It was quite dark which explains that this picture is way too grainy for my liking. I can’t wait to get a faster lens to take better pictures at tango.

As only a couple times since I started taking classes again, I agreed with a leader beforehand that we would attend the practica together. Only at the very beginning of my journey into the tango world I had a regular dance partner, my good friend Olli who studied philosophy with me. Soon after we started, Olli already quit and I was left to my own devices. I have to say though that this was probably a good thing, since heaving a dance partner at the beginning will keep you from being bold enough to dance with strangers, especially if you’re insecure about your dancing. And every beginner is! The more you dance with different people as a beginner, the faster your body will figure out the general principles of what it means to dance your role, i.e. to lead or to follow. That’s probably why my dancing made big leaps already in my first few months of dancing tango while others with a dance partner stayed on the spot until they finally had the guts to go to a milonga.

That I never had a regular dance partner doesn’t mean that I didn’t have leaders I practiced or danced with regularly. I have never quite figured out how the distinction really works in my head. Maybe having a regular dance partner means for me that you rarely practice with anyone else and say this explicitly. I imagine that if you have such a partner you start adapting your own dancing so that you fit more and more to this partner. In this case you might be able to dance more fancy figures with this partner only, because you know him well enough so that these figures are less of a risk when dancing in public. It is understandable then, why I never had a dance partner, because I don’t care much about how fancy the dancing really is.

I myself only dance socially and therefore prefer to focus on the connection, on the embrace and on dancing well with many leaders. The skill you need to understand the lead of many dancers is to be able to find the abstract general principles of the lead in the concrete dancing of the leader you are dancing with. Especially when it comes to different dancing styles this sometimes feels like trying to understand a dialect when you’re only used to a different one. As it can be very difficult for someone from Saxony to understand a person from Bavaria and become impossible with someone from Switzerland, in tango you can have similar difficulties. Not only might I lack the repertoire to respond to a particular lead, i.e. speak the same dialect (for me especially the case with Tango Nuevo dancers), but sometimes it is already difficult to recognise simple figures like the cross. This particular figure is taught in many different ways and it is so basic that as a leader you will probably never change it once you have learned it. Understanding different ways of leading one and the same figure is something that you learn over time without even noticing.

However, there was something interesting I also noticed when thinking about these tango dialects or styles: Part of this is also that the repertoire of people in a specific tango scene can be very different from that of a scene in a different city or country. There are a few figures that people in Berlin dance which nobody in England ever led. Maybe it doesn’t fit to their general style of teaching there (more salon, less nuevo) or even if these figures were ever taught maybe the leaders were unable to incorporate these things with the available followers. In any case, this only shows that these differences in dialect / style, which might be evened out in big tango scenes like Berlin, are much more pronounced when comparing closed tango scenes with each other. The question I wonder about in this case is: When does a specific way of dancing become a style and when does a style break away to become its own dance?

If you like this post, please share it by clicking on one of the buttons below, or maybe even subscribe to my blog. If you like you can also visit my photography blog experiments in experience to see my recent photographic adventures.

In the 4 1/2 years I’ve been dancing I have only ever asked one man to dance about 2 years ago. It was Constantin Rüger, who came to Brighton a few times to give workshops. When I asked him I said to him in German: “Uhm … I’m going against my own rules with this, but … would you like to dance?”. Normally I just don’t have any reason to ask men to dance, but in this case it was one of those Brighton milongas that for some strange reason stay empty. There were literally no men other than Constantin with whom I would have wanted to dance. Additionally I was quite certain that he wouldn’t turn me down since he is a really nice guy. And in fact he didn’t! He even let me pick the orquesta since he was the DJ for the evening.

Other than that one time I never asked a man to dance openly. Maybe I’m lucky, but I normally just get the dances I want without much of an effort. Sometimes it might look from the outside as if I’m engaging someone in a conversation to get a dance with them, but normally these people are just friends and I personally don’t see the point in sitting alone when I’m taking a break from dancing. Sometimes I even sit for half an hour and just have a conversation, either because I don’t like the music or because I just enjoy talking to a person. I don’t have any ulterior motives when doing that and sometimes I even sit with people after not really enjoying to dance with them. It’s a question whether I like them or not, not whether they are good dancers or whether their style fits to mine.

Although I generally never ask men to dance, it doesn’t mean that I’m just sitting on the side waiting for a kind soul to have a bit of tango compassion for me. Also the followers can be active when it comes to this initial barrier. Too often I see women just sitting there, waiting, with a frown that becomes harsher the longer they sit. Ladies, who do you think will want to dance with you if you sit there staring onto the dance floor enviously, combined with an expression on your face as if you’re gonna bite any man who approaches?

For me it just helps to sit somewhere where I can be approached easily. If there is space, then don’t sit right next to the dance floor or you will only be able to get dances when the floor empties. Sometimes it’s good to stand at the bar, or in some milongas – I’m thinking of Negracha in London – it’s helpful to just stand in the way of people who are not dancing. A tight spot on the way to the bar or the door works wonders, because then they will have to navigate around you when they want a drink or on the way back from the dance floor. People will also have enough reason to notice you if you’re standing expectantly as if sure that you’re going to get a dance any minute now.

It helps to have a couple of dancers you always dance with, because then other leaders have more of a chance to notice you. To find these dancers maybe you need to get a routine and go to the same milongas every week. If you then hit a dry spell, you can go over to your favourites and start a conversation, without expecting that they will ask you to dance. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t. Just try to have a good time in any case and you will start to smile automatically, which is really the best ice breaker for any leader who is unsure whether he wants to risk asking someone unfamiliar.

Even if you are in an altogether unfamiliar milonga, try to enjoy the music, listen and watch. Don’t forget to look around every now and then to signal that you actually want to dance. And be patient, because the later it gets, the more likely it is that the leaders run out of their usual suspects and will get more adventurous. If you have a grumpy frown on your face by that time, they will obviously ask someone else. And most importantly: Watch people and try to not have your first dance with a beginner. If you do you might end up in the beginner category for the evening. Later on it’s no problem, but first impressions sometimes make all the difference.

Sure, all of this is very different from “having the pick” like the leaders do, but remember that you can be picky too. You don’t have to dance with everyone who asks you. You can avoid eye contact or change your position from approachable to “busy talking” and if shove comes to push you can still say “No, thank you!” if someone approached you despite your attempts to discourage him. You can also let people know that you want to dance with them by searching eye-contact, sitting close-by or – if you’re bold enough – by smiling at them. If you see your role as active you’re much more likely to get the dances you want.

At the same time, being too active discourages men too, like in real life. Asking directly is rarely a good idea. Do you know these games many women play in real life, in which they convince their counterparts that as men they have the active role? These games actually make some sense, because women who are too bold can be a bit scary for men. These games are not unlike what women do in tango: They often leave the men only the final words of “Would you like to dance” or the nod in the cabeceo, but before it even comes to that they do everything they can to plant the idea of asking in the man’s head. It’s all about sending the right signals at the right time and while he will believe that he asked you, it was basically you who initiated it. If you’re not used to such games, let me assure you that it becomes easier with time. I don’t even notice it anymore, because it has become second nature to me.

I think that it’s unnecessary to ask men to dance. There are many other ways of getting what you want without putting yourself on the spot like that. Why should there be a need to take the illusion of control away from the men? After all, would you really like to be the one who hears a frank “No, thank you”? Would you really want to risk being rejected in public? Seriously, it’s so unnecessary to put yourself up for rejection. I think it’s only fair to let the men deal with these unpleasantries in exchange for their illusion to be in control. In the end, who has the real power is obvious anyway: It’s the girl saying “no, thank you” without feeling guilty!

It’s interesting to see the differences to what we do in Argentinian tango. However, clearly this old Finnish Tango buff has absolutely no clue as to what tango argentino is like. He says about it: “There is no feeling. It’s just counting steps” and he also thinks it’s all just open embrace. He couldn’t be further from the truth! I have never counted steps and if a teacher prompted us to count it was always about musicality and not about the steps themselves. I personally also tend to resist when someone tries to dance in open embrace with me. Maybe he actually had been talking about ballroom tango and was just misquoted. And by the way, friends tell me that even in Finland you can dance Argentinian Tango, like almost everywhere else in the world.

For me tango argentino is about precisely what this guy says it is lacking: the connection and the feeling. That’s also why I don’t really like open embrace either, because open embrace can be an obvious way of withdrawing from any emotional connection. Sure, it doesn’t have to be like that, but it’s comparatively easy just to reduce it to some almost acrobatic figures without a “real core” if you’re dancing open embrace. If you try to do the same in close embrace such an emotional disconnection would seem paradoxical. Why would you come close if you don’t want to feel anything? I’m becoming more open-minded about open embrace these days, but to be honest this is more because I see it as good practice for technique and not because I actually enjoy it. I wouldn’t want to dance like that at a milonga, because for me it just seems to lack the emotional energy that I’m looking for in tango. As I said, I’m open-minded about it, but I have yet to meet a leader who can build up this exact emotional energy in open embrace. It’s just not the same …

The first video I hadn’t seen in a while, because I have seen it so many times over my first year of dancing tango that I almost seem to know every movement by heart anyway. It stayed just as amazing as I remembered it! I was prompted to re-watch it after discovering the last video a week ago, which I was also watching in complete awe. I was literally shouting out at some of Geraldine’s adornos, it’s fantastic dancing too!

What I find most interesting though is that one of Geraldine’s adornos actually must have seeped into my own dancing without me realising. I almost never see it when I’m out dancing and the other day I was even wondering where I got that movement from. I only realised that it must come from her after re-watching the first video again, just now when planning this post. Admittedly, I doubt that it looks anywhere as good on me as it does on her, but I’m absolutely fascinated that I seemingly have incorporated a movement that I’ve never been taught only by having watched a few tango videos years ago. How does that work? Human body learning is just so unintuitive sometimes!

This is the first post that would not have worked on my photography blog as well and my urge to write this post was the reason why I created this blog.

If you like this post, please share it by clicking on one of the buttons below, or maybe even subscribe to my blog. If you like you can also visit my photography blog experiments in experience to see my recent photographic adventures.

© Verena Fischer 2011

Last night I was dancing tango at Villa Kreuzberg and I had such a great first tanda with one of my favourite leaders here in Berlin that I immediately decided not to let that be ruined throughout the evening. It was a Miguel Caló tanda sung by Raúl Berón and one of my favourite tangos, Qué Importa Qué Te Llore, was part of it too.

I hadn’t been at Villa Kreuzberg before, because it’s a bit far from where I live, but I have to say that I also hadn’t been missing much. Don’t get me wrong, the venue is fantastic since it’s a beautiful old villa, but the dancing I saw on the dance floor was not up to the usual good standard in Berlin. Considering the steep entry price of 5€ I’m not sure it’s worth it if you’re not sure that there will be a leader you like. There were many good leaders, but quite many poor ones too and the latter made the floor really chaotic. It’s bad already if good leaders create chaos by being inconsiderate, but much worse and much more dangerous if a significant proportion of the dancers on the floor just don’t have the skill for anything but chaos. Luckily I was dancing with someone who dances carefully in such circumstances, but with many other leaders I would have feared for my feet. In the early hours of the milonga at Clärchen’s Ballhaus on Tuesdays it’s similar, which is the reason why I often go there quite late.

Over the evening I turned down two leaders who I hadn’t seen dance before, because I really didn’t want to spoil the great start I had. One of them also got a “No, thank you” partly because he asked me in a way that I just find terrible. I was sitting and looking down at the floor, watching people dance while holding a drink. Especially the fact that I didn’t even look up when he approached was a clear sign that I didn’t want to dance with him. If I had wanted that, I would have looked up to see whether he is really approaching me or someone sitting next to me. This leader actually leaned down so that he would enter my field of vision whether I wanted to or not. He was setting himself up for rejection there. If he hadn’t made that mistake he would have saved himself the disappointment of an open “No, thank you”. The other leader also caught me at a bad time after just sitting down with a fresh drink. I was still danced out, eager to rehydrate, since it was quite warm on the dance floor.

However, it’s not just these two. In fact many leaders have little feel for the right moment to ask a follower to dance. Instead of asking a woman who has been sitting for a while, they pounce on someone who just came off the dance floor. It’s psychologically understandable if you have seen her dance just now and like what you saw, but in this case her “Oh sorry, I need a break just now” might be honest and not an excuse to soften the blow. If you in this case interpret it as real rejection you might miss out on a chance to dance with her later. However, sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish excuse from honesty, so it’s better not to ask at all in such moments and wait a tango or two.

Another leader who I had been curious about while watching him dance earlier asked me in just the right way. I had been sitting alone for a tango and although I was watching people dance I sometimes glanced sideways for someone to dance with. However, given the low illumination of the venue cabeceo was impossible and so I wasn’t looking around properly. He had to approach. If he had hovered about I might have interpreted it as indecisiveness and would probably have ignored it. However, he did the right thing and was coming right towards me. This made me glance up quickly to see who it was and when I was sure that I wanted to dance with him, I directly looked up at him. Only at this point he asked me whether I would like to dance, which I gladly accepted. He definitely measured up to what I had observed earlier, he had a nice soft embrace, focused on little steps and accentuated the music in just the right understated fashion, which gave the impression that he could show off if he wanted to, but that he was looking for something else. I had a lovely time dancing with him.

Generally I had a very nice evening and I can conclude that it pays off to be picky sometimes.

The picture I took in the afternoon at the subway station Turmstraße before shopping for some new trousers at the Ku’damm. It seems I’m having a monochrome week.

© Verena Fischer 2011

These days on a Wednesday night I go to a tango lesson with Leandro and Gaia at Nou Mitte. I’m quite picky with tango teachers, because I had quite a few lessons that didn’t seem to help me at all. Some teachers are very particular to their very own dancing style, others have problems verbalising the core problems of certain movements and again others like to hear their own voice a bit too much. I personally think that it’s quite difficult to find teachers who can really help beyond the beginner level, because most teachers just submit too much to the expectation that it’s just about learning new figures. It’s quite the opposite actually. It seems to me that whenever you reach another problem that doesn’t seem to resolve itself just by lots of practice with a good leader then the problem always seems to lie in something rather basic like posture, walking, patience, resistance, etc.

Gaia and Leandro strike me as teachers who know that very well and have a knack for identifying these little problems and bad habits. To me their advice seems always spot on and they point out logical causes for the problems I have. What’s frustrating about it is that I know perfectly well that I have bad habits (like my impatience for example) which cause the bigger problems I’m experiencing, but knowing about these habits and changing them are two different issues. Sometimes it’s about finding something that just feels right which then is repeatable, but then other things precisely feel wrong at first until the body gets used to them. Especially with my posture I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be headed. I wish I could just afford some private lessons to work on these things in a more focussed fashion.

The picture I took in the subway station Leopoldplatz. This young man was pacing in circles while talking on the phone. Obviously I’m not the only one who needs to work on their patience …

© Verena Fischer 2011

Last night I went to tango really late. The subway wasn’t running anymore and I had chosen to take the bike as to not wait for half an hour for the night bus. The streets were empty, the air was crisp and it was a bit chilly if you didn’t cycle fast. I arrived around 1am at Clärchens Ballhaus, sat down, put my tango shoes on and started looking around. The usual chaos on the dance floor had disappeared by this hour and the floor was filled with good dancers. Without too much care I looked up to see whether I could find someone to dance with and … someone I actually didn’t want to dance with had approached and was looking right at me. What to do? For a split second I had the chance to retreat, but my reaction was too slow, he already asked me verbally whether I’d like to dance. I hesitated. Should I go with my instinct and decline? Or should I be polite and dance a few tangos? I decided to be polite since I had danced with this man before and I was a bit curious because I couldn’t quite remember why I didn’t like dancing with him.

My curiosity only got me a bumpy start into the evening. I had to accept three tangos where he repeated two moves that I really disliked over and over. One was a gancho with not enough space and the other was something that hopefully doesn’t have a name and isn’t taught by anyone, because it feels utterly silly. Apparently there was also no change to his dancing since we last danced, at least 4 months ago, because these two moves brought back the memory of another night at Clärchens. Back then I also thought after only one tango with the same leader just at the beginning of the evening that sneaking up to someone who just arrived speaks of desperation. I couldn’t manage to be polite for an entire tanda, because I wasn’t enjoying it at all. I was so wishing for the cortina to play, but when it didn’t come I thanked him after 3 tangos glad that Berlin is not so strict about these rules. Well, lesson learned, next time I will insist on having a drink first.

What strikes me though is that I’m much more patient with beginners than with someone like this. It is obvious that he has danced for years, but that he has been stuck in his dancing for most of this time. In this case it’s not bad basics, it’s bad taste in figures which are on top of things not properly mastered. However, most importantly it has to do with lack of musicality and an embrace that seems like he doesn’t even want to connect. It’s about getting by and therefore not striving anymore. It’s about missing the point. Whatever you do, dancing, photography, art, music, don’t settle with just getting by. At least try to give it your best shot. What’s the point of doing things in such a half-hearted fashion?

This picture was a bit of a struggle by the way. It was an attempt at combining different textures. I’m not sure I’m entirely happy with it, but that’s to be expected when you’re experimenting like this. The texture on the left is the material of my tango shoes. You can see the reflection of the scarf on the right in the top part of the heel. I love these shoes more than ever, now that they actually fit well.

© Verena Fischer 2011

Today I listened to a great Rodolfo Biagi tanda over at DJ DPP’s blog and found myself inspired to listen to some more Biagi over the day. This post is brought to you with the help of the rather nice Biagi album Sus Exitos con Jorge Ortiz – Vol 2. Lately whenever I feel a little directionless and lost I turn to tango for a shove into the right direction. Maybe it’s because problems in tango don’t feel so overwhelming. Focusing on just a little problem with a movement, the posture or a figure can be so therapeutic, because these are problems that seem neither very important nor very difficult to solve. At the moment I’m mainly focusing on some basics: posture and, more importantly, patience. Sometimes it’s important to go back to basics.

And I also find it rather amusing that I take such a picture when I myself feel directionless and lost. Maybe I should read it as a sign …

© Verena Fischer 2011

Yesterday my mum arrived. She is staying for the weekend and I took her to tango last night. This was also a good opportunity to try out my tango shoes after getting them changed and repaired by the cobbler. It’s like having totally new tango shoes and they fit really well. It was the first time since summer that I felt totally at ease dancing on these shoes and this time it was not because I’m so used to their quirks, but because they actually fit. The blue vespa I saw on the way from my driving lesson to the cobblers. I liked the contrast between the blue and the orange brown of the wall.