Por Una Practica

Temperature:  a balmy 19c/66f

I have many things to write about - so many that I will have to spread them over several days. Fortunately, this is the July 4th weekend, so I have the day off tomorrow, and then a whole weekend.  So I have several days over which to spread these posts.

First, my cat is back!  And, oh my goodness, is she cute!  I have already snuggled her and petted her and kissed her so much that I think she may avoid me the next time she sees me. Interestingly, for her there were perhaps 10 minutes in which she sniffed the floor of the flat, had a wander around its rooms, and then she flopped on the floor as if she'd never been gone, before falling asleep in her old spot, next to my head.  It's nice to know that I wasn't, as I feared, forgotten.

Contemplative cat

Noble cat

Cat in impossibly cute position on bed

But enough kitty porn!  On to tonight's other news (or should I say, other mews.  Hahahahaha): I went to a practica.  Indeed, I went to the practica, which is also the milonga, because it's all WhereIlive has in the summer.  It took place in a large room at the back of a restaurant, and on the threshold of this large room someone had spilled something like jam (I know this because I stepped in it.  In my dancing shoes).  Attendees at the practica included me, a young couple practising for their wedding tango, a girl in town for a month or so, an older gay gentleman, and the teacher. And...that's it.  Hum.  Well, first I danced with the older gay gentleman, then I danced with the teacher (a fantastic leader), then I danced with the girl (another fantastic leader).  The teacher evaluated me, and would you like to know what she said?  I bet you can guess... She said, "Slow down.  And you keep your right arm too tense."  Argh!  Four months of lessons, 6,000 miles of travel, only two weeks off, and I still retain both my problems.  Indeed, one of them I got back again, because I had conquered my tendency to go quickly.  Great.

Be that as it may, dancing with the man and the girl was an interesting experience for me.  Both of them had been taught by the teacher, and both of them did exactly the same thing:  they kept their right arms loose, and used it to steer me  into various positions.  Now, in the tao of tango that I've been taught, the right arm stays essentially still, at least as far as I can see:  you lead with the chest, although there is some movement with the left arm, and holding the right arm still gives a sense of stability for the follower.  In fact, I've noticed before that when the leader uses the right arm it gives a very unpleasant feeling that you are being jerked back and forth - I suppose because you are.  And when you add to that the fact that the man, at least, was a very emphatic dancer - quick, slightly jerky, what I would call "determined" in his guiding - dancing with him (although the best in terms of level, since he was most advanced) was not comfortable.  Dancing with the girl, in contrast, was comfortable, since she was slower.  She was also more experienced, even as a leader (she'd been leading for more than a year, and had been dancing for three years), which I'm sure made a difference.  With her I even did a couple of what I would call backward ganchos.  Very fancy these:  she did a sanguchito, then removed the inside leg rather than the outside leg (as is usually done).  This left me stepping over her outside leg, then doing a gancho toward her body rather than away (as is usually done). A new step to me, and one I like very much.

The teacher, oddly enough, danced very much like my FTT.  We did close embrace, and I could feel her taking collections of small steps, which he also likes to do very much.  When I say "small steps," I don't mean she led me into small steps, although she did that, too.  I mean she herself performed small steps, usually as she was guiding me into a simple or larger step, or as she was keeping me still.  My FTT does this, too:  when we dance I can often feel him fitting his own quick footwork into a beat or phrase.  I like this, because I like people who play with the beat in this way, making it hold more than you think it can.  This ability of his is one 

of the reasons why I think of my FTT as a nimble dancer (a description he loved - he liked the word "nimble"), but also why I think of him as a tidy dancer (when not applied to houses or rooms, "tidy" is one of my adjectives of highest praise, as it means precise, clean, done swiftly and with little to no unnecessary excess): he fits those steps in cleanly, quickly, and precisely. Plus, like the tapping that both my VTTT and now sometimes S.A. do, it delights by its unexpectedness.

You will notice that the description of the practica in WhereIlive has led me to a description of a dancer at home, and this is not coincidental.  I enjoyed this practica, and I enjoyed dancing with the teacher, and I'll go again next week, but the fact is that it made me miss my home practicas.  Not because I know the dancers there - that's not necessarily a good thing - but at least in part because there's a broader array of better dancers.  Which is, well, better.

I'll tell you something else I noticed.  When I first moved here from the East, I couldn't get over how friendly and touchy people were:  they hug you, and they put their hands on you.  Tonight, I had the experience of being too touchy for the South.  When I was talking to the others, I noticed that they actually backed away when I leaned in:  only a tiny bit, but enough to be instinctively noticeable.  Since I had brushed my teeth and had a shower beforehand, th

at wasn't it.  And I realised that all that going to Cambridge milongas, where we sit squashed in a row or in huddled-together chairs, or stand in small spaces, and that being in Cambridge itself, where most of my friends are Southern European or from Asian backgrounds, and where EVERYbody I know kisses hello (and usually good-bye), had made me stand too close for Americans - even for Southerners!  My body language has changed.  Who would have thought that going to England would promote intimacy in your habits?

I have arranged to have a private lesson, but I think I'll wait until just before I go back.  It will be a warm-up lesson.

And, because I realise not everyone is as riveted by my cat as I am, tonight's real photo is a photo of the outside of my house.  Somewhat obscured by a new tree, but what can you do.

That's my car on the right.

You may say, With a flat that the house size suggests must be big, a cat, and a car, why on earth would she want to leave?  And I would say, Because the practica only had four other attendees; because the weather is eternally hot as blazes, and because I like being squashed in a row on a stage and kissing people hello.  Especially those people.