2227 Navigation, floorcraft, etc.
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 16:12:46 -0600
From: Frank Williams <frankw@MAIL.AHC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Navigation, floorcraft, etc.
Hi Friends,
Reading so many platitudes about responsibility, sharing, and setting a good
example, I can not help but react with a little resigned skepticism. I HAVE
enjoyed the kind of harmonious conditions that Robert describes and, yes,
they're sublime. However, when I think about the times I've been
accidentally kicked or shoved, the worst of the offenses were on nearly
empty floors. For example, I have been kicked (hard!) while sitting beside
a gymnasium-sized dance floor that was almost empty. The teacher who led
that boleo was experienced - ignorance as a defense didn't fly. This guy
was showing off for the woman (teacher) with whom I was sitting. Other
times I have been forced to dodge 'older milongueros' whose line-of-corrida
(humor intended) was an intentional collision course from one tranquil
couple to the next.
These are problems that go deeper than ignorance. We have leaders who are
trying to prove something about them selves for others to see. When these
dancers are causing problems for others, their insecurity and/or aggressive
behavior is as transparent as a peacock strutting for a hen, or protecting
his feeding territory. At the worst levels, it is the manifestation of
antisocial or very insecure personalities. I have seen enough of them that
I am skeptical about changing them. They are exactly like bad drivers on
the interstate highways. They'll always be there, and all the traffic laws
in the world will not control them. The only thing that helps is the limits
of 'gridlock'. Fortunately, many such people are too impatient for tango.
It keeps the occurrences of 'ronda rage' to a minimum. ;-)
Even among good, friendly dancers it still doesn't take very much bad
behavior before everybody starts to get testy. Let's remember that leaders
and followers are encouraged to watch each other before offering or
accepting invitations. We do watch and should watch each other. Also, the
social pressure is a little greater when dancers travel to other cities
simply because they are not known, yet hoping to demonstrate social grace
and attract nice partners. Faced with this challenge, some leaders can
function well but others, obviously, can not.
Even though I have been at this for almost 10 years, I still sometimes can
feel a bit uneasy when first taking the floor with a total stranger amidst a
room of strangers. It's pretty simple: you want your love for tango to
show and because you're new, you KNOW that there will be extra eyes on
you... Only after the ice is broken can you relax and comfortably "dance
like nobody is watching". Then, hopefully you will be able to contribute to
the room's ambiance. In a social sense it is easier to relax when
conditions are crowded. If it's not crowded, a preemptive glass of wine
won't hurt! ;-)
Saludos!
Frank - Mpls.
Frank G. Williams, Ph.D.
University of Minnesota
frankw@umn.edu
612-625-6441
Department of Neuroscience
6-145 Jackson Hall
321 Church St. SE.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
1971 Commonwealth Ave.
St. Paul, Minnesota 55108
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 23:26:21 +0000
From: Jay Rabe <jayrabe@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc.
Frank, I agree completely. There is a percentage of every population, tango
communities included, that are marginally sociopathic, that are driven
solely by their own ego-selfish needs, and that just don't care about rules
or even about acceptance from their peers. So what to do? I agree in your
and Razor Rose's and other opinions voiced here, that escalating with
vindictiveness and violence of elbows or heels ("ronda rage" - love that,
Frank) is the wrong thing to do. However it does seem somewhat unsatisfying
to just avoid them and practice defensive dancing. But that's our challenge
- at a fundamental level, it's about tolerating diversity, maintaining
civility in the face of boorish behavior, refusing to stoop to their level,
preserving the elegance and refinement of this dance we love, and refraining
from cheapening it with equally inappropriate get-backs.
J in PDX
----Original Message Follows----
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 15:38:08 +0100
From: Andreas Wichter <Andreas.Wichter@GMX.NET>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc.
Hello everybody,
my name is Andreas Wichter, I live in Germany and I am new to the list.
I found the floorcraft thread(s) to be particularly interesting, so here4s
my (late) 2 cents4 worth. I taught at a small tango festival in England last
year (Kinnersley Castle), and since I was fed up with people dancing like they
were alone on the floor, my partner Anne-Cecile and I devised a 75 minute
workshop entirely geared towards this problem. We called it the "Salon Survival
Guide"; it incorporated basic etiquette, danceflow, navigation
techniques/methods, exercises for precise and safe avoidance of dangerous situations etc.
Besides it being a whole lot of fun for everybody, we were both really happy
at the milonga the same night: "our people", those who had participated in
the workshop, danced considerately and smoothly, without incidents, and you
could easily tell who had been there and who hadn4t: the newcomers from after
that workshop did all the no-no stuff, with the usual results...
So what I learned from this is: it is easy and fun to teach people how to
dance well in the milonga context, and results are immediate. The more I wonder
why so many teachers don4t seem to bother. We4ll do that workshop again this
year, no doubt.
Cheers,
Andreas
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Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 15:29:05 +0000
From: Jay Rabe <jayrabe@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc.
Andreas,
What kind of exercises or activities did you do to make it fun?
J in pdx
----Original Message Follows----
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 12:01:51 -0700
From: Brian Dunn <brian@DANCEOFTHEHEART.COM>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc.
Andreas wrote:
>>>
my partner Anne-Cecile and I devised a 75 minute workshop entirely geared
towards this problem. We called it the "Salon Survival Guide"; it
incorporated basic etiquette, danceflow, navigation techniques/methods,
exercises for precise and safe avoidance of dangerous situations etc.
<<<
My partner and I have had a similar adventure over the past two weeks. In a
series of classes focusing on "Breathing with the Room: Close Embrace,
Floorcraft and Navigation" we worked on adjusting to the dynamic nature of
floor-crowding. Most of us have seen floor conditions change rapidly even
within a single song - the floor gets ever denser as more people get pulled
from their seats by some really nice music. So we set out to create
"training ground" for the skills needed to handle this.
We found two kinds of conditions worthy of specific training: first, the
occasion of extreme crowding where the needed skill is dancing smoothly and
happily in lanes; and second, the ability to adapt to the change in floor
conditions, where the space around you is opening and closing more randomly.
WE used the idea of water freezing - until the water is frozen (in lanes)
you are sort of sailing through icebergs, which is a different skill than
lane-dancing.
To create the environment of the room "exhaling" (and reducing the available
dance space) we set up a "chute" of chairs to simulate a lane of dance.
Partners would try their usual close-embrace vocabulary dancing down the
lane, and the teacher kept the lane "full" by lining couples up to enter the
lane in close order. Those who were taking too much time moving too slowly
in the lane felt the social pressure to get moving, but at the same time
they needed to keep turning to be able to see the chairs on both sides of
the lane. Everyone could tell if anyone violated the lane by the sound of
feet hitting the chairs.
When the room "inhales" and the available space expands, around here people
begin to move more freely, and they become somewhat less predictable than
when in lanes. To train for this condition, once the students spilled out
of the end of the "chute", they proceeded through the "obstacle course", a
set of moving objects like chairs and benches which we, the instructors, set
into motion at various times to simulate the less-structured environment.
If everybody got through the lane with no hits, we made it narrower, and
continued. We also taught some tango vocabulary which were better suited to
lane-dancing than what the students were using. We would also show some
vocabulary which allowed students to react more quickly in the
less-structured environment.
We would also demonstrate the kind of decorations that work well in the
various levels of crowding.
Everybody really enjoyed these "training runs", and they were fun to teach
too!
All the best,
Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
Boulder, Colorado USA
1(303)938-0716
https://www.danceoftheheart.com
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:33:47 -0800
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc
I have said it a number of times, and I shall say it again: the main reason
why men navigate poorly is misunderstanding of what one is trying to
accomplish, and how. It is not just a matter of complicating things with
irrelevancies; it is that the extraneous matters lead leaders in the wrong
direction, pun intended.
Some simple examples. A traditional bugaboo is that men should always move
forward. How such nonsense gets established amidst us I will never know (well
I know, but I can hardly believe it), but obviously, requiring (or seeming to
require) that the man take only forward steps, not even specifying the
default ronda DirectioN for them, is a sure recipe for mayhem. Interestingly,
this bugaboo, once passionately defended by many, both washed and unwashed,
has fortunately been slipping little by little into well deserved oblivion. I
guess some people eventually realise nonsense for what it is.
Another bugaboo, just about as intelligent, is that you must not overtake.
You may think, OK, if people do not, what is the harm? There is plenty of
harm. You will experience one kind directly in the milongas often enough,
when you try to resolve a bad clogging problem, only to be literally charged
into by a self righteous clogger, who wakes up just as you reach the great
expanse of empty floor past his obstruction. There are some ways of
interpreting this dictum that are not entirely absurd, perhaps, but the
proponent needs to be explicit. And make sense. Like, saying that you should
not pass the couple directly in front of you will not do. I KnoW I CannoT
pass the couple directly in front of me, unless I can fly. I have first to
work my way into another "lane"; then what the heck is wrong with passing a
couple who will not move for 20 seconds as the entire room of dancers gets
squeezed into half the space? The answer is nothing, quite the contrary, is
it not? Come on.
Wiping out the "No Pass" bugaboo has not fared as well. The thing is still
repeated, though far less often, in the various tango "channels". Please,
discouraging unnecessary passing is fine, but prohibiting it as an indelicacy
in rooms large enough to permit it makes as much sense as prohibiting a car
on a multi-lane highway to pass a car parked on the shoulder.
Another bugaboo (repeated less and less) is about proper navigation being on
the perimeter of the floor. Of course we hear a lot, as if we really needed
to, about the milonguero line around the perimeter, and mayhem everywhere
else. Is this what is intended by this most weird "teaching". Please, washed
tangueros, leave it to the unwashed!
Last bugaboo. Recommending single file dancing as a training device is
ExactlY the wrong solution. True, we can limit the damage, and complicate
things greatly, by making chair gauntlets. Hope it works better than I have
seen it NoT working plenty of times. We can also make it good by StartinG the
training of new leaders on the outermost lane, because it is the easiest,
WithouT of course stopping at that; but allowing leaders to "navigate"
counterclockwise single file using the entire width of a single lane, no
passing, please (it is IMpolite ...), is to TeacH them ExactlY the worst kind
of navigation that we most observe, with couples moving at any time in any
conceivable direction, including virtuous single steps by the man as he moves
clockwise, backwards and in heavily shod feet. The "solution" (and it IS
viewed as a solution by more veterans than I care to count), not only does
not obviate or cure the problem, it CAUSES it.
I am tired of making, and seeing sensible people make, these completely
elementary points, knowing that the bugaboos are still out their doing their
dirty work. I will continue to make them points, because this is the one
thing that I cannot just say, OK, you believe your crap, my friend, and I
believe mine, and I will still have a blast dancing tango with the many women
I absolutely adore to dance with. In this one tiny area, the competing crap
is one with consequences to ME.
Cheers,
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 19:48:39 -0700
From: Brian Dunn <brian@DANCEOFTHEHEART.COM>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc
Carlos wrote:
>>>
...the main reason why men navigate poorly is misunderstanding of what one
is trying to accomplish, and how...A traditional bugaboo is that men should
always move forward...Another bugaboo, just about as intelligent, is that
you must not overtake...Last bugaboo. Recommending single file dancing as a
training device is ExactlY the wrong solution...True, we can limit the
damage, and complicate things greatly, by making chair gauntlets. Hope it
works better than I have seen it NoT working plenty of times.
<<<
If one is to be the target of an attempted butt-kick, the experience is
always much more of a pleasure if the attempting kicker is a lover of the
English language, as I suspect Carlos Lima is.
But I fear the experiences of seeing "chair gauntlets" "NoT working plenty
of times" are leaping from Carlos' memory into his mind's eye perhaps a bit
too readily, and perhaps thus obscuring from his vision what I was trying to
communicate. Herewith, then, some clarification of points of agreement and
disagreement.
Carlos: "A traditional bugaboo is that men should always move forward..."
We agree. In our class, it was much more fun for everyone if the embrace
was allowed to rotate as much as possible, creating many opportunities for
the leader to step open to the side or backwards in the line of dance.
Potential safety for Mr. Lima in a hypothetical adjacent lane was thus
INcreased, because in so stepping, the leader rotated his field of view out
from behind the "leader's blind spot" often created by the follower's lovely
face or hair.
Carlos: "Another bugaboo...is that you must not overtake..."
Again we agree. True, the gauntlet physically allows no overtaking, but the
"obstacle course" does. In our class, we were practicing the extremes,
without any admonitions other than those dictated by the dynamics of every
milonga floor dense enough to generate one or more perimeter lanes. The
whole point: the room "breathes", and so might your navigational choices, to
best adapt to changing conditions.
Carlos: "...allowing leaders to "navigate" counterclockwise single file
using the entire width of a single lane...is to TeacH them ExactlY the worst
kind of navigation that we most observe, with couples moving at any time in
any conceivable direction..."
Carlos, your statement makes so little sense to me at the moment that I
wonder if we're lacking a common frame of reference here. Specifically, the
"entire width of a single lane" might be only a little more than three feet
or so, and made progressively smaller as described in my posting...the
"chute" thus allowed people to discover just how much room their favorite
vocabulary took up from side to side - a disturbing discovery for some
leaders, but one which was introduced in an entertaining and educational
fashion. Leaders discovered the weak points of their current choices and
were led to fix them (as did followers - but that's another thread). Our
technique specifically did NoT tend to lead to "couples moving at any time
in any conceivable direction." Of course, any device such as a "chair
chute" can be poorly implemented & poorly exploited - so if my partial
description unearthed ugly memories for you, may they quickly pass.
But Carlos, I so enjoy your posts, almost always, really I do! ;) Say, are
you going to Portland this week? If so, please reply offline - it would be
a pleasure to meet you.
All the best,
Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
Boulder, Colorado USA
1(303)938-0716
https://www.danceoftheheart.com
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 11:50:13 +0100
From: Andreas Wichter <Andreas.Wichter@GMX.NET>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc.
>>Andreas,
>
>>What kind of exercises or activities did you do to make it fun?
>
>>J in pdx
>
Hello Jay,
the fun mainly came about by the nice, relaxed atmosphere we had in all the
workshops.
Some things we just explained, some others we presented exercises for. A few
examples: dancing a ronda without changing the distance to the couple in
front. How to check if the space where you want to go is free, and how to
overtake (using a turn to keep an eye on the couple you overtake). Precise leading,
e.g. putting the followers foot in a specific spot, maybe left, center,
right of some markers with or without actually stepping. Hesitations/staying in
place and what to do meanwhile. Dancing with chairs being moved about on the
dancefloor. Evading the stupid teachers walking about randomly, or evading
them when they dance against the ronda. (That was actually fun for both sides
:-) )
So: a mixture of common sense explanations, applications of said common
sense, and ways to build/encourage precision in leading.
Andreas
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Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 11:55:45 +0100
From: Andreas Wichter <Andreas.Wichter@GMX.NET>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc.
Brian wrote:
>>>
In a
series of classes focusing on "Breathing with the Room: Close Embrace,
Floorcraft and Navigation" we worked on adjusting to the dynamic nature of
floor-crowding. Most of us have seen floor conditions change rapidly even
within a single song - the floor gets ever denser as more people get pulled
from their seats by some really nice music. So we set out to create
"training ground" for the skills needed to handle this.
<<<
I think two areas are important to do: teaching the basic skills needed for
safe navigation and for making the best use of the space available; and
setting up exercises where those skills can be applied, more or less what you
described. A two-pronged approach that also serves to create awareness of how to
use what you learned.
Andreas
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Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 13:40:30 -0800
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Navigation, floorcraft, etc
See, Brian Dunn, when one is discussing something other than the ball club
one roots for, one can be focused on the issues, and use the whole panoply of
rhetoric devices, thereby making the discussion sharp, maybe even
entertaining, yet not ad hominem in any real way. Is it surprising that we
agree so much? *I* am not surprised. Not in the least, since you are one of
the (not too numerous) crew that I read with pleasure, and learn from, even
when nowhere nearly in full agreement. Stephen Brown says: tangueros have
brains. Absolutely, that is my experience, here in the Big Apple, big time!
It is not the tangueros, and those that [semi] professionalise while
remaining true amateur tangueros. These people essentially always have a non
tango life where they better make sense, or else. It is the people who make a
living of being the "in" crowd, and the keepers of the religious flame that
bother me. Not the highly talented, the deservedly famous either. Those
rarely give me any trouble, quite the contrary.
Our two major points of disagreement. You feel I was kicking you in the butt.
Not so. Anyway, you should take it as a compliment that I would want to take
time out to kick you in the butt. I do not do that to just anybody. But that
was not the point at all. My main target was advice offered by others that I
consider highly undesirable. I consider your gauntlet less than the best
solution, but not something BaD; besides, other things you suggested are just
fine. Once you see this whole thing as a quest for real solutions, you will
not feel any kicks in the butt.
Second, you claim not to understand my problem with the Indian file approach
to teaching navigation. Well, easy. Just think of your gauntlet being half
the width of your room, and keep your dancers bunched up as they go the
parcours. Or do as many teachers do: make a rough circle with your dancers
and tell them to go vaguely "around". Have you ever done it, or seen it done?
THAT is where people start on their way down the curve of incompetent and
inconsiderate floor use. They think of the ronda as a ring of circus
elephants holding the tail of the one in front with their trunks, with side
trips to the center and to the outside edge. Now add a dumb injunction
against "overtaking" (whatever that is supposed to mean). Next, I am
progressing deliberately along the edge of the floor, as they say real
milongueros do, I come alongside a teacher performing for the tribune who
seems to be leaving me the right of way. Next thing I know I have to make an
emergency quarter turn clockwise so that I, rather than my partner, get the
brunt of the impact of this loose cannon, perhaps not just drifting into my
lane, but spinning as he drifts.
The Indian file teaching method has made this almost impossible to resist. It
has made this the RighT way. Can it be lived with? Sure, provided each couple
can be alloted an acre, and stays within allotment. Under this regime the
room becomes "crowded", and progressively unpleasant to dance in, as soon as
it would look like not entirely empty by any reasonable standard.
What is the real approach? Well RULE 1 (once again): tell your students that
they MUST NOT go where another couple is, or is entitled to go next, or seems
headed to; that they MUST NOT kick, or step on, or collide with, or shove, or
as much as touch, any other dancers. If you think people already know this,
GooD LucK.
RULE 2 (once again): show your students how to move in-lane (no matter where
they are in the room, other than dead center), that is, roughly parallel to
the nearest floor boundary (often, but not always, parallel to the nearest
wall) and the diagonals where they need to change direction of progress in
order to follow the "new" wall or boundary. Make them move sort of in
"concentric lanes". Start them on the outside lane, and teach them only
ronda-conformant themes. Teach them all the tricks you know to stay in-lane
as they progress counterclockwise and dance in place alternately, turn as
much as possible in one baldosa, or "spiral", combining turning and
"line-of-dance" progress. A nice side benefit of this is that their dancing
will look a lot fancier with a moderate effort.
That is ALL. What is the technique to navigate wild floors? ExactlY the SamE,
except that RULE 1 requires a lot more stopping, turning your back to protect
the lady, careful lane changes to resolve snarls, running away from known
attackers, and so on. Show them all the defensive driving skills you know, if
any. Please do not try to have them use fully the "space available" until
they are masters of orderly navigation. The absolute worst of the incompetent
navigators is the in-and-out darter. We get them visiting from far away
places here once in a while. When they hold sway I sit, or switch from
dancing partner to drinking partner.
I must confess, there is an easier, if less orthodox, way: teach neophites
how to terrorise the entire floor, to scare everyone else into staying out of
the terrorist's way. A nice exercise to start them on this is following all
the rules while navigating clockwise. You will see that most leaders are
facing you. Meet their stare and stiffen your facial expression. You will
have the safest cruise ever.
Cheers,
