A 5 year self-assessment

I started dancing Argentine Tango about 5 years ago, after previous 4 years or so of ballroom (including "international" tango) and (with a 10+ years gap) previous training and some performing and choreographing in modern, jazz and contact improv. As I look back to my dancing "career" carved out of a demanding science and engineering profession, it has become abundantly clear to me that dancing has had a profound impact on my life, all the way from how I spend much of my free time, to the people I associate with, including my ex-wife (a pro-level modern dancer) and more recent close relationships.

So, how do I feel about my Tango? First of all I wish I had started it at the very beginning of my dancing, thirty-some years ago... I can't help but fantasizing how "good" and possibly even well known I might be by now. Still I feel that there is probably something unique that can come out of my prior experience, and I fully intend to bring it out. Something in me also continues to be convinced that I can become a very good Tango dancer. One point of attraction for me in the culture of Tango has been the realization that its subtlety and depth make the contribution of "older" dancers valuable and appreciated. I fully intend to take advantage of that. I am also a singer and musician, which really enhances my dancing musicality. In addition I have started building a repertoire of Tango songs to perform (eventually...).

All this being said, after 5 years (dancing at least 3 or 4 times a week), while part me wants to enter competitions, start teaching beginners and work on performing,  another, loud and more realistic, part of me feels like I am still a "beginner" and in dire need of continuous review of the "basics". I constantly waiver between strong positive opinions of some ways I am able to move, and awe for some of the professional tangueros I would like to model myself after. I wish I could just go to BA for at least a year and put myself in the hands of one of the great dancers... We are fortunate in the Bay Area, in having great teachers and a constant flow of phenomenal performers to inspire us. On the other hand it can also be a confusing hodge podge of directions and styles that cannot be easily sorted out.

In all, whether or not I will be able to fulfill my vision of constant improvement and contribution to the Tango community, I have been having the time of my life, have had the pleasure of dancing with great followers, have made great friends and I continue to be inspired by both the movement and the music of Tango.

It’s as good as it gets…

The seven phases of losing...

I have always been ambivalent about the idea of artistic competitions, mainly because of the inherent subjectivity in the judgment of peers and even “experts” in any human activity that is not quantifiable either in terms of scores or times, as in competitive sports. Nevertheless I have participated in contests in photography and quite a few in public speaking and Karaoke singing, but never in dancing... until now. I confess that one of the attractive features of Argentine Tango when I started to drift away from Ballroom, was precisely the fact that there seemed to be less emphasis on competition, favoring instead connection and individual style, whereas Ballroom folks seemed to be always preparing for the “next” competition, and working on style and steps for that purpose. On the other hand I soon came to realize that Tango is very much about “competition” but not the “official” kind, instead the constant underlying competition for the acceptance of our respective followers and leaders. This wasn’t true of Karaoke, for instance, where everybody is always made to feel like they are Frank Sinatra reincarnate .. So, when this year the announcement was made of the very first upcoming USA Argentine Tango Competition, I jumped at the chance of finally “exposing” my dance to the critical eye of “experts”.

I thought I would be ready for any possible outcome. I was right, ultimately,... but not before some unexpected struggle.  This struggle reminded me of the classic book on “Death and Dying”, by Elisabeth Kuebler Ross, where she describes 5 phases people seem to go through when faced with the prospect of death. These were Denial (this isn't happening to me!), Anger (why is this happening to me?), Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...), Depression (I don't care anymore) and, finally, Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes).  In both singing and public speaking, I found it fairly easy to accept the eventual loss (in any fair contest most people end up “losing” at some point!), but my first loss in a Tango dance competition hit me much harder than I had envisioned and in ways that I found analogous to the stages of “Death and Dying”. I found 7 phases andI will examine them here.


1. Denial

After the final qualifier run, they announced “in no particular order” the couples that were advancing to the semifinals. These were the longest two minutes I ever experienced. “Couple # 5, Couple #10....  Couple #16 ...and, finally, Couple #22”.... Wait, this can’t be true. They are done? Where is our number? There must have been a mistake! We had coaching for this event. We were ready. Am I having a bad dream? At this point I actually performed my lucid dreaming “test” to see if I was dreaming or awake. I was awake. But we were told we looked really good! That there was a “special quality”  to our dance. We had received tons of great (and unsolicited) feedback from friends about how great our dancing and connection looked. How can it be that we are not even advancing to the semi-finals?


2. Anger

These judges are crazy!  What are they looking for? I can’t believe they picked Couple #....  over us!


3. Depression

Note that I skipped the “bargaining” step, that seems appropriate only in the contest of some possibility still being open and in some belief in a supreme power that can make things happen for us. But, man, depression hit both me and my partner like a ton of bricks. I set there stunned while the milonga got going. My partner ran off somewhere to cry in privacy. I was holding back my own tears and, after a perfunctory dance with a friend I had invited to come and enjoy the event with us, I went off to find my dance partner.



4. Drama

I’ll never set foot on a dance floor again. I’m tired of the Tango scene. I’m going back to Europe. I’m definitely not coming back tomorrow. I’m not going to be able to look at the contest from this point on. My partner is mad at me for not chasing after her (I actually do... a lot) and for not being more supportive (I feel I am). The friend I had invited to the event  wisely decides that we really are no fun to be around and leaves. Somebody is doing a documentary on the event, and my partner and I provide just the fodder they were hoping for... drama! They interview us. They love it. I feel like I am on reality TV.


5. Embarrassment

There is no such feeling in Kuebler Ross’s stages, but, man, it was strong here, at least for me. I had announced the contest on Facebook! And I had added that it was part of a celebration of my upcoming birthday. Got lots of support and wishes, and congratulations for participating. Many of my posts all these years have been about introspection on the quality of my dance, who accepts me and who doesn’t and why. Here was my chance to get an “objective” view, and the view I get is that I might as well have walked onto the dance floor from the street without ever having danced, and I would have gotten the same result! This is far worse than having been turned down by one of the followers I admire. Not only that... If one of them was present she would see her dismissal of me reinforced and confirmed by the “official” judges. Tango community... It’s now official ... Silvano can’t dance!
This, BTW is about me, not a reflection on my dance partner. I confided this feeling to her, and she got mad at me. I think she had  gotten stuck between the Anger and Depressions stages.


6. Rationalization

OK, so I needed to calm down and step back. First of all the “contest” we participated in was in “strict” Tango Salon. I.e.  ganchos, high boleos, leg wraps or any moves that take a foot off the floor more than a few inches were not allowed.  That put us in a situation we were not used to, and a leg being too high at any point could have cost us points. This is just the “game” we accepted being part of and how we were being judged depended only in part on how we “normally” dance Tango. Second, we, with other participants, had the courage to put ourselves out there in front of everybody and fight the butterflies in our stomach, and people will only remember the winners (who really did deserve to win!) and the fact that we took part. Whether we made it to the first or second round or whatever, is something that loomed gigantic ... only in our own minds... As a friend of mine aptly put it “nobody cares”, and nobody really should. We took our participation seriously, with extra lessons and some extra practice to adapt our dance to the requirements of the competition, but we didn’t go overboard with this, and we were fully ready concede that there would be many other couples that would do better than we.


7. Acceptance

I still went home determined not to return the next day. I knew I would be back to watch the finals, but I felt I needed at least a day away from the scene in order to “detox”.  My partner had apparently processed her feeling faster than I had and was already telling me that she wanted to go back. The next day we went for a short walk on the ocean-front in Pacifica, happy that I will be moving there soon. Staring at the ocean is always very good for me. At 6pm I called my partner: I was ready to go back. I was ready to be there to support and cheer on our friends who had moved up...  regardless of how we had felt the night before. We were all on the same team and we had put on a show together. Now somebody would go on to win and they deserved our friendship, support and rejoicing. “It’s all about spreading happiness” I had been saying prior to the contest. “Either we win and we’ll be happy, or somebody else will win and they will be happy, and we can be happy with them”. To my own surprise, at first I found this harder to do than I had expected, but I got there, and I hugged everybody and the new winners, and I danced the night away.





Epilog

We were able to find out something about the scores. We had been very close to moving up to the semifinals. Also got some hints that the judges had fairly wide disagreements. We are trying to find out if this was the case for us. Somehow we’d rather know that some judges liked our dance and some didn’t. At least we can feel that we made a dance statement. Also, small things that people say can make a huge difference, when not obviously perfunctory - keep that in mind when your friends are in a "fragile" position. For instance, one of my teachers saw me the night of the finals, and, while saying hello, remarked "why weren't you up there?". I don't know if he even realized I had entered the contest and had been eliminated, but he didn't have to say that, and that remark made me feel better. In any case what's really  important is that we still feel good about how we dance, and we are ready to do this again. Maybe these 7 stages will move by faster next time...