I just saw the new X-Men movie, Wolverine. It is set in Japan and I found the women in it very appealing. Often my thoughts wandered back to Dance Manhattan and the Japanese tangueras I met there.
What I absolutely love about New York City is the opportunity to meet women from other cultures. I grew up in Pennsylvania’s coal fields, a very ethnic place. I went to school with Russian-Americans, Ukrainian-Americans, Slovak-Americans, etc. In New York, the people I meet are actually from other countries.
Dancing tango with these people gives me an insight into their culture that I could not get any other way. I get to feel how they move. I know if they're confident or anxious, what they smell like. I might even discern how they think. What I usually discover is that they are just like everybody else.
At Mariella Franganillo’s Saturday practica at Dance Manhattan, at any one time there may be three to five Japanese ladies present. It took me a long time to gather up the courage to ask one of them to dance and I was rejected several times. In hindsight, I realize that cabeceo is the only way to get together with these girls. They seem to be very sensitive to how others see them and I think they don’t want to be seen accepting a verbal invitation to dance.
I guess that could be said about a majority of tangueras but at most of the places I’ve been, the guys just ask.
That was several years ago. I was a much different man back then. I was loud and crude. If a tanguera didn’t want to dance with me then I just moved on to the next one.
Before I would dance with these women, I had a very crucial lesson to learn.
Guys grow up different than girls. I never paid attention to what was happening to the girls as they were socialized but I should have. I was too busy being a little boy: running, jumping, competing, kicking things, picking my nose, farting, burping and learning how to break things. All necessary skills to have if you want to be a juvenile delinquent......or a whitewater river guide.
When I took up tango, I eventually became aware of a great sadness born by many women. There is something about the rough nature of men that distresses them. I sense that they need something more than just our willingness to dance. When they join in the embrace and don't find what they are looking for, they become despondent, like a gambler who has been dealt a losing hand seventy-two times in a row!
This may be the secret to tango’s hold on the fairer sex. In tango, she finds hope that there are men who are pleasing to her senses. That hope is revealed to them because tango teaches a man how to hold a woman. This is not an easy task. It takes a man at least three years of tango training to master this seemingly simple assignment.
Using my own experience as a guide, I’ll detail a man’s path to acquiring such a skill. In the first three months, a tanguero is certain he will become proficient very soon. The next three months he is obsessed with patterns, convinced that he could be a pleasing partner if he just had a few more combinations of movement in his shoe bag.
After six months, the novice tanguero resigns himself to the complexity of this dance and contents himself to dance with beginners. A year later, he is bored with beginners and desires to join more skilled tangueras on the floor. For the next six months, he delights in the discovery of women who have the ability to move with him to the music. He finds his appetite for proficient partners increasing.
Between one and two years, he meets more skilled tangueras and finds that they only dance with him once. After two years, he resigns himself to the fact that he must start over from the very beginning. He realizes that he must be able to move on his own balance while in the embrace of a woman. This is a humbling discovery but it is the beginning of true progress.
During this time, a man also realizes how truly sensitive a woman is to everything about him; the way he smells, his leaning, bending, twitching, throat-clearing, his confidence, health, anxiety, etc. This is an epiphany for him.
When a tanguero recognizes just how perceptive a woman is to everything he is doing, to all that he is, then he starts to become aware of the disappointment women often experience when they embrace a man and find that he is not what they were seeking. He can't define what exactly it is that these ladies need so he opts instead to discontinue the actions they find displeasing.
After three years, a man learns to keep his mouth shut. He doesn’t know why but he has learned that talking is counterproductive. He also focuses on controlling his breathing so that he appears to be relaxed. At this point in his education, he can move on his own balance and is finally getting to dance with more skilled tangueras.
By now, he has finally learned how to hold a woman. There are no shortcuts and a man has to continually work at overcoming the obstacles he unknowingly places before himself.
I had finished my third year of tango education when I began to desire dances with the previously mentioned Japanese tangueras. It wasn’t until my fourth year that I began succeeding.
At Mariella’s practica, I would attempt a cabeceo with at least one Japanese woman each time I went. I probably succeeded once a month. I moved away at the end of my fifth year, so the quantity of my experiences with these women is probably limited to twelve tandas.
In my embrace, these ladies are just like many other non-American women I’ve encountered dancing tango: diligent and focused.
American women have a tendency to be less attentive and less centered. I think that has something to do with having the ‘home field advantage’. I’m certain that if I was in another country, I’d find that the American women there worked harder and put more thought into what they were doing because they were in an unfamiliar country.
My cabeceos to these women only succeeded if I made the invitation as discreet as possible. Also, when the tanda ended, my partner would usually turn and walk straight away. Even though I thought most of my performances with the Japanese tangueras went well, I suspect their impression was quite different. I have to wonder if I wasn’t doing something wrong at the end of those tandas.
I know from my experiences with milonguero-style dancers in Albuquerque, that a certain amount of finesse needs to be applied when ending the embrace. I had been breaking the connection too quickly after the music stopped. What I needed to do with these milonguero-style dancers, and all close embrace partners, was to wait about three seconds after the melody completed and then slowly let my embrace dissipate.
Be careful, here, there is a fine line between three seconds and inappropriately too long!
Be careful, here, there is a fine line between three seconds and inappropriately too long!
While I watched the movie, I realized that I am attracted to Japanese women. When I tried to quantify what it was that I found so alluring, I decided that it was their demeanor. Most people fidget when they are not moving. They shift their weight, change their posture, look around and touch things. This is not so with the people from Japan that I have observed; when they are not moving, they are still.
I suspect fidgeting is beaten out of them when they are in school, much the same way the nuns unsuccessfully tried to do to me when I was in the Catholic school system. Maybe this is the source of the wound that brings them to tango for healing.
I am glad to have had a chance to dance with these women. Unknowingly, they became the fruit that enticed me to pull the wagon forward on the road to becoming a better tango dancer. I can’t wait until I see these same ladies again. I am hopeful that our next meetings will not be a disappointment to them.
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