This is all great advice! I am terribly green, so every dance I hear, “relax!” A partner even left me in the middle of a tanda, and I know I’m not that horrible.

Please tell me–what is the proper etiquette to turn down a tanda at a BA milonga?

So, all this talk of what’s okay and not okay during a milonga is making me sad that I haven’t been out dancing since my girls went missing.
I agree though with the correction issue though. When I first started out, I noticed that there were a few leads who were constantly criticizing me and my technique. I don’t dance with them today and I don’t think they like me much either. No skin off my nose though! There are plenty of nice people/leads who enjoy dancing and who make the follow feel like a million bucks no matter what her level of experience is.

Boris…You’re one of my faves.

On the “choosing the partner to the music”–Tina, I hear you. The thing is, this is related to your point #3–Tango takes time. Tango takes understanding. And, at the beginning, there will be a lot of people who are still not savoring and planning, just going for quantity over quality… and that means they may not yet be listening and/or paying attention to the music sufficiently to discriminate one’s potential dancing partner sensitivities.

It’s all related… I have to say that I liked Sorin’s response–very common sense, polite and still accounting for the need to listen, go slowly, pay attention, etcetera, etcetera.

On other codes… What can I say? Interrupting, grabbing, whatever is just not polite in a social environment. I personally had many times in which I was talking to a Tanguero (with or without plans to dance later) and a overly-eager lady came to grab him away from me. Results vary, but still I think this is the kind of thing I’d just rather not do…

I don’t always want slow - I think that playful and, um… not slow?, can be just as sensual. I like to play with the music as well - you’ve seen it in my footwork
But fast or slow, cool steps or no cool steps, none of it matters if the guy doesn’t find where I am in the music. know what I mean?

I happen to know which video you’re talking about, and I happen to think it’s good, real Tango - not boring at all… full of beauty, music, emotion… it’s not how many ingredients you put into a food, it’s the quality of the few ingredients that matters
By the way, who says walking isn’t a cool step? It’s my favorite thing! I like to take something so seemingly “simple” and put as much elegance into it as I possibly can.

Osvaldo y Coca won the tango world championship a few years ago and they didn’t need high boleos or a large vocabulary of tricky moves to get there.

While I generally agree about “less is more”, especially when I see some leads doing a lot more than they should and forget about their partner, music and people around them. I myself have slowed down a lot in the last year and I am doing a lot less. So less that when I watched a video of me dancing last week, I thought geez, I am not doing any cool steps, just walking, pauses, ochos, cross and occasional ocho cortado and a turn. No boles, vocadas, colgadas and all that stuff… and if you saw me dancing a year ago you would see a huge change. A year ago my walking sucked and at the same time I was too much into all kinds of cool steps. Now it is almost complete opposite and I like the change but now I am thinking again about additing a thing or two to my usual vocabulary to spice it up a bit.

Do not forget that we are GUYS and we cannot be as sensual and as slow as you want us to be ALL THE TIME — we like to play too! So give us a little freedom to do our own steps once in a while as long of course as we do not overdo them. It is part of the game!

Getting rid of tension can be quite difficult. I’ve found that if I’m feeling relaxed but my partner is very tense then bringing my left hand in close to my left shoulder, or even placing the followers right hand on or just below my left shoulder can help a lot. To get rid of tension in myself, I usually only accept “comfort” dances until I feel relaxed.

David

There’s a good reason why inappropriate behavior at the milonga such as teaching is usually done by people who aren’t very good dancers. The reason for this correlation is that it takes time dancing before you get good and it takes time being immersed in tango culture and socializing with other tango dancers before you learn the proper etiquette. I think the most useful social function of this blog is sharing this kind of information. However, most people won’t read this blog so I would encourage people who know, to communicate such things to people willing to learn them. For instance, for at least a year since I’ve started (I got into tango somewhat slowly), I saw little practical difference between a practica and a milonga. Then during a private lesson with a dancer I admired, she mentioned that she and certain other well known followers are in agreement that they don’t like to be “practiced on” during milongas. What she told me changed my attitude towards and my behavior at milongas. This seems an incredibly obvious thing in retrospect, but if we learn from behavior of others and that behavior is inconsistant from person to person, it’s hard to learn the rules. It helps to have somebody you trust and respect explain it to you directly.

Relaxing is another thing that came slowly to me. I still have problems with that at times. I think it’s ok to mention it to beginners in practica, though tact and good sense is called for. Also I think that non-verbal communication can be more effective and also acceptable at both practicas and milongas. For instance, re-adjusting the embrace can be relaxing to both you and your partner. A common area of tension (and the bane of my tango existance for a time) is the arm and shoulder that make up the open side of the embrace. Not sure how you would communicate that as a follower, but as a leader, when dancing with a follower with this issue, I slowly but deliberately move my left arm around until I feel her relax. Done consistantly, I think it helps your partner break that bad habit in the long term and decreases both your discomfort in the short term.

That said, the issues with the other arm, while probably less common and easier to fix, are more dangerous because they can mess up your back. If your partner doesn’t get the non-verbal communication of embrace re-adjustment, speak up or walk off the floor.

I agree, slower is better, tango is not a race, at best it’s a leisurely stroll for the spirit.

Cheers