In a box

During my first 2 or 3 years of tango I felt I was improving about as fast as anybody could. I am still taking classes and occasional workshops, and, slowly, new figures are added to my repertoire, although I worry most about musicality, connection and style. However, somehow I am feeling "boxed in".

I feel lucky that there are quite a few good dancers who always seem very happy to dance with me, but there are still some who don't and they trigger in me the simple question "what is it about my dancing that makes them avoid me"? I know that I shouldn't be asking that. They may simply be looking for specific people they want to dance with, or I have developed a style they simply don't like. I feel I can accept anything, but I would love to know what it is.

Ney Melo once said in a post that he was "grateful" for all the followers who turned him down while he was growing as a dancer, because that kept him wanting to improve. I have tried to adopt the same attitude, but I find it frustrating not to know in which direction to go.  By "boxed in" I mean that I feel I have been put in a box by some dancers. This is the box defined by what, in their eyes, is my level of dancing, and a box I am not allowed to escape. Luciana Valle, another teacher from Argentina who periodically shows up in SF to teach very popular workshops, once spoke about the followers' dreaded "plateau", where they have reached a good level, but they feel stuck and seemingly unable to progress. My feeling is somewhat similar, except that I do feel I am still improving, but with no discernible effect on my "official status" as dancer.

Luckily I can experience escaping from the box every time I travel to some other city. There I enter milongas as a complete unknown and I seem to quickly be accepted by the best dancers. Maybe it's the "San Francisco aura" but I am finding the dichotomy confusing. It's also frustrating for me to realize that I had the same basic questions a couple of years ago, when I first started feeling pretty good about my dancing. So, I am finding, even years of dancing don't seem to make much difference after the initial progress. Maybe the analogy is like heading out into the ocean on a boat. When you leave the shore, you see yourself quickly getting far from the beach, but after a while the shore is far away and you feel stuck in the middle of the ocean with no visible progress towards your destination. You need to have faith in the fact that you are still moving.

Maybe the box I am stuck in is moving, just like the boat, but I am not noticing it. Will I ever see the other shore? What will it look like when I see it?