Rejection Therapy
This past weekend I attended my first Milonga. Confusingly Milonga refers to a genre of music, a type of dance and a dance party for Tango. Thankfully, I did a little research and knew a bit about the social norms at a Milonga. In a Milonga there is usually a tanda which consists of 3-5 songs that you'll dance with a partner. After a tanda there will be a cortina which is a small break letting people get water, talk to their partner, get off the dance floor and find a new partner.
Right as I arrived my Tango teacher saw me, and he was happy to see me. I put all my things away, and for a long time I was observing people dancing. I made sure to keep my phone in my bag, try to have my hands at my side (not in my pockets or clasped), and smile to look like I was happy to be there (I was happy to be there), and open to dancing with others. Unfortunately as a man you're the one that has to do the initiating and it would be up to me to ask people to dance. There is an upside to being a man in this situation which is that if I don't want to dance I don't have to, and I don't have to worry about people asking me.
Another part of the Milonga social norms is the cabeco, which is eye contact followed by a head nod, and a gesture to the dance floor. The benefit of this norm is that you don't have to even verbally decline someone if you simply avert eye contact then people probably wouldn't approach you. When my teacher sat next to me he told me that I should be dancing the whole time. He also mentioned that the woman next to me probably wanted to dance. After my teacher talked to me I asked the woman next to me to dance.
I introduced myself, asked for my dance partners name, and mentioned that I was a beginner. I also gave the opportunity for them to lead me if they wanted. My first partner jerked her head upwards in my direction about 100 times. It looked like she was spazzing out. I was doing my best to concentrate. I was also told by her to follow the line of the dance. In a Milonga you dance counter clockwise and as a follower the one thing you should do is keep yourself between the couple in front of you and the couple behind you. Conceptually this is a really simple idea, and in practice I'm sure it's easy as well. For whatever reason every partner wanted to tell me to follow the circle. A lot of the time they followed this up by saying all you have to do is walk.
The order of who I danced was with a blur. I unfortunately didn't continue dancing non stop as my teacher suggested, but dancing as a beginner can take a lot out of you. I would let each person know that I was a beginner. At some point they'd tell me to try walking. Oftentimes they would want to end the dance prior to the cortina.
I do think the Dunning-Kruger effect was at play in my dance partners. I suspect that the people I was dancing with are relatively novice themselves, but they feel confident particularly around a beginner and therefore they are more prone to give advice, but it won't necessarily be good advice. I have to simultaneously acknowledge that I was likely the biggest beginner of them all, and it is beneficial to receive feedback. If I was more bold I would have asked way more people to dance, maybe more confidently made a fool of myself, and aspirationally experienced ego death.
Many of the women that I asked to dance were women that were off to the sides seemingly waiting for someone to ask them to dance (perhaps). An uncomfortable part of this is that once I had danced with them once we would often spend multiple tandas standing side by side. Apparently, not dancing was preferred to dancing with me twice. To be fair, I never confirmed this by asking someone to dance twice.
As a leader it was interesting to experience a variety of dancers. One woman I danced with basically was leading me so I offered her to lead, and she refused saying she didn't know how to lead even though she was the one taking all the initiative. Another woman did lead me, but she got frustrated when I wouldn't follow her lead. There's a strange thing in Tango where people are trying to communicate what they want you to do non verbally, and when you don't know what they are trying to do they refuse to tell you verbally. All I really felt when this person was leading me was being jerked around. I think the ideal state of leading in Tango (and probably other dances) is to use the minimal amount of effort to communicate where you want to go. To clarify, if I as the follower feel like I am being shoved, and yanked the follower is likely being way too rough.
In many cases I could come to a stand still, and the followers would follow this direction. When I tried to lead slightly more involved moves such as the cross, or an ocho the people I danced with knew what to do, and knew how to follow in most cases. In one of my early dances I was dancing to a Milonga (the music), and my partner was leading herself. I tried to follow along, and go with the flow while also wondering how I could set more of the tone as the leader. At some point this partner got bored, and walked away. As I was coming off the dance floor a woman ran up to me and said hey let's dance. I told her that I was a complete beginner, and I offered for her to lead, but she was like you'll do great. The tanda ended quickly after. This dancer had a ton of energy, in some capacity was leading herself, but she was also able to pick up on some direction that I offered.
After the dance she was really kind. She asked me why I chose to learn Tango, and later in the evening she came by to comment on how both of our hairs were tied up in buns. This was the youngest person I ended up dancing with, and the only person to ask me to dance!
A common theme for me was I wanted to practice following as well. My opportunities were probably limited here, because I don't think most men at this event would want to dance with me over a woman. I found one woman that was exclusively leading other woman. I tried to make eye contact with her, but she ignored me, this should've been the sign, but I walked up to her and asked her to lead me, and she said no. Then we stood near each other for like 20 minutes with neither of us dancing.
Since I had watched a video the other day of a man cross dressing to experience what New York City is like late at night, I considered what the Tango experience would be like from the other gender perspective. I have no plans to do this, but I did consider that if I cross dressed I would have first hand experience to what dancing Tango is like as a woman. Well particularly if I did a good job cross dressing.
Having uncomfortable dance experiences radicalized me. Not in an unreasonable way, but I felt very motivated to quickly improve my Tango abilities. There certainly is a ton of opportunities to do this in NYC. The reality though is that time is limited. There were some four week long classes twice a week, but they take place on Mondays and Wednesdays which is when I got to Klezmer and Tango. I guess the one thing I would like to learn is how to think about dancing in a circle, and how to use the space creatively when it feels like you don't have a lot of room to move.
One of the biggest sources of discomfort was the feeling that I was inconveniencing my dance partners or making my dance partners uncomfortable. This made it harder for me to feel comfortable continuing to ask more people to dance, and is another motivating element of wanting to get better. There is some cognitive dissonance here, because even though I don't want to inconvenience my partners there's also frustration or annoyance with me perceiving them as not being gracious.
In any case I'll be curious to have this to look back on and reflect on my experiences dancing. I've found these elements of social dancing to me some of the most deterring, and uncomfortable parts. Thankfully, my teacher has created a good environment, he's pretty supportive, and so are the classmates. What's also great is if you're bad nothing happens!