Amazing skeleton, bad dorsal
27th April / 1st May
Not much to report these last few weeks. I’m badly missing teachers, I tell my friend on Thursday, missing the direction of stern, kind hands and clear instruction on how to do better, what to do next, what I’ve forgotten. My teachers are back in the country soon and I’m curious to see what they make of where I am now. I’m missing things to chew on.
Otherwise, it’s just been the standard roster of social dancing, with highlights and lowlights. At one point over Easter, all my regular milonga partners (bar one) are out of the country, leaving me a little bereft at socials. This makes room for good surprises, though; one Saturday, all these faces pop up out of nowhere: a friendly couple who come up from Southampton[?] every few months, for instance, who come along. I’m very glad to dance with him again. It’s a funny evening: all night an older guy tries to cabeceo me (we’d danced briefly in the friendly, swapping-partners tanda). I dodge him, until he sits down next to me, tells me my skeleton is amazing, and asks me to dance directly. What can I say. Compliment my body mechanics and my goodwill can be yours for ten minutes. His embrace is actually quite comfortable, and while he leads more soltadas than I’d ideally like (i.e., more than zero), he leads them well, which others rarely do. My friend is so surprised to see me dancing with him that he mouths ‘are you okay??’ at me while I’m dancing, which is pretty funny. I’m in a good mood. It’s a nice evening.
Other evenings I find myself more tired, my body not quite On It, my brain either there too much or there too little, my heart maybe not in it, my attention elsewhere. Through these waves, I’m particularly appreciative of the teacher I regularly dance with. He’s a wonderful dancer, with an initial minimalism that expands to something quite filigreed and challenging if he gauges that you can respond to it. The more I dance with him, the more playful he is, but he’s especially useful as a barometer. If I can dance very well with him on one night, I know my dance is in a good place; if I’m struggling to follow him, I know something’s off. Across the last couple of weeks I’ve had tandas with him where I’ve felt basically hopeless, and one tanda where I feel it’s the best we’ve ever danced. There’s little pattern to it.
One night, Easter Sunday, the celebs in town turn up and – to their great credit – join in the casual, partner-swapping tanda. I dance with him for thirty seconds, trying not to think about the fact that I am dancing with one of the most famous leaders in the world. He is, obviously, very nice to dance with, and gratifyingly easy to follow (my nervousness is always embarrassingly legible, via my heart, in these situations). That same night, a woman sitting films me and one of my partners dancing for 90 seconds or so, and sends us the video afterwards. I talk to him about it the following week, and what he made of it. It’s not a terrible video – it’s the only clip I’ve had of myself in nearly a year, and certainly the clearest so far – but he reckons she managed to get the worst segment of our dancing. Watching it, I don’t think I look good, though I mind this less than I would have done a year ago. I see very clearly the thing my teachers try and correct in me – an excess of flexibility or bendiness, so that when I want to be an organised, aligned, grounded thing, I’m too much like a twisty, structureless thing, too long and thin for my own good. I think about the work I’ve already put in on this – so much! to so little [visual] effect! I actually find it bizarre, reflecting on the cognitive effort required to get our bodies to do certain things. It’s not enough just to want your form to achieve something. You have to find a way of persuading it to get there, like teaching or negotiating with yourself, as your own other physical half. Weird.
***
Pause. I had meant to finish this entry in one go, as I usually do, and could have done if I’d been less lazy. So I’m resuming now. What I had meant to finish with is the mention of a little muscle strain, my left dorsal. I get it over last weekend, a weekend of good dancing. Friday new faces pop up, or newish to me, who are good to dance with; Saturday I go to see my favourite guitarist – favourite living musician? – then head to a milonga late. One of my practice partners is there, and other good dancers. I make the effort of dressing up, and enjoy it. But after Friday, a good few hours dancing and perhaps compromising my body for my partners a little too much, then a walk home from Farringdon to Camden, I’ve strained something in my back. In the morning it’s funny, like I have to find a different way to normal to get my body up. So on Saturday night I shouldn’t really be dancing at all, and feel a twinge of worry – isn’t this how Injuries happen? I’m lucky, it doesn’t. I walk plenty over the weekend, and Monday, ad find it makes the stiffness melt off. Monday is studded with good dancing, too, and I feel the positive effect of going for a long walk before dancing – in tiring the hips slightly, it makes them heavier and more relaxed, more certain in their own gravity.
Lastly. It’s time for me to buy new (non-tango) shoes. The soles of mine have worn away, so much so that when I finally take action over a stone which has been nurturing a cut in the sole of my foot for the last few weeks, I discover a large, sharp pebble, about the depth of the sole itself, which has taken up residence not in but actually as part of my shoe. What do I get, out of tolerating discomfort for a little longer than is necessary? There are no prizes.