A Tanda is a series of a few Tango songs. In a standard social Argentine Tango party (called milonga), it is customary that the couple dances the few songs successively. The Tandas are separated by a small piece of music called Cortina (Curtain), and when they hear Cortina, they return to their seats.
After the last blog entry, I sent out the manuscript again. To celebrate the re-submission, I went to Tulsa for their monthly milonga on Friday (the third Friday of the month at the Tulsalseros dance studio).
There were some partners I had not danced with for a long time. And at the very first dance, well, the dance was not working well with the partner. But after a few songs, we began to adopt to each other's dance habits and styles.
The extra time a Tanda can give; that is the reason why they dance Tango in Tandas. In many social dance settings, it takes more than one song to adopt to each other and achieve the Tango. Dancing Tango is, after all, somewhat like developing relationship.
Social Tango is a different game from working on a show Tango, in which familiarity to each other to pull off fancy choreography is a key. Show Tango practice is much more like other dances with choreography. To some extent repeated practice takes away the special air from the Tango, and makes it more regular dance.
In social Tango, on rare occasion, there is a great chemistry between two strangers/social dancers to set the dance off right away. But it is rare.
Usually it takes some time to figure out and adopt to the new partner, and achieve the dance. One song may be too short, all night may be too long, and a few songs may be a good amount of time to "converse" in a satisfying manner.
In a sense it might be likened to a Catholic marriage. If you are prohibited to divorce as a rule, religiously, you got to set your mind to get the marriage work, and work on it harder. There is no way out of divorcing. Tanda rule is, in a much smaller way, prohibiting you from separating. You got to work harder to get the dance work in the limited time.
Speaking of the dance that did not work well at first? Later on we got each other, and we had very satisfying dances. I enjoyed them a lot. I love this aspect of social dancing.
