Milonga with Eric Jorissen

Eric Jorissen at Tango El Corte.
Screenshot from "This is El Corte!" film.

This was my third workshop with Eric Jorissen at Dance Manhattan. The previous two workshops about a year ago focused on colgadas and volcadas and were so well attended that there was barely any room to move, just like in a milonga. This time there were fewer people, plus I was in the middle of an energy dip, so I was phoning it in most of the time. However, looking back, I conclude that this workshop was useful.

Eric first observed the group dancing (oy vey!) and pointed out that many people were making quite large steps. Eric then proceeded to define a “footprint” of milonga as the length of the step that one can firmly take without reaching or lifting the heel of the leg that bears the weight before the step. This distance is surprisingly small, about shoulder width. Eric then asked the group to step and transfer weight from one foot to the other. The easiest direction to step out of the "footprint" area is forward. There was hardly any problem making small, tidy steps sideways or back, but the temptation was great when stepping forward. Since the leader mostly steps in forward direction, it is up to him to set the scale of this movement. The feet stay close to the floor; and the faster the pulse of the music, the smaller and cleaner the steps become.

Eric then moved on to the quality of the milonga steps, which are clean and firm, with a staccato rhythm that follows the pulse of the music. For some mysterious reason, achieving this quality is a big problem for students in NYC.

Eric showed several examples of a milonga “run” – corrida – a series of short, double-timed steps executed within a whole interval between beats. Each run ends with the full commitment of the weight to one foot, which usually happens on the strong beat of the music. This is important for communicating the lead, especially if several runs are done in a row.

Eric showed how corrida is usually a part of a pattern that is done on an arc, either upward or downward (or, as our late math teacher would say, “convex up” and “convex down”). An upward arc is probably more common. Eric showed how a run looks without and with such articulation. One of the women in class wonderfully noted that the first version was "like Prussian army" and the second one was "like Latin America". For an inexperienced dancer executing this change of levels is difficult. In my experience, the leader often ends up doing “the Little Swans Dance” en pointe instead of making shorter and stiffer steps.

Eric then showed a short pattern that I called “a broken box with a cross”, but embellished with a rakish double-time series of weight shifts in place and a leg kick for the leader, while the follower is doing a simple box (front salida-side salida-back with left-cross-resolution), with the side salida and the resolution executed with a 45-degree turn (thus “a broken box”). As it often happens at DM, the most impressive and instructive for me was dancing with Rebecca Shulman. Observing how her body moves in response to the commands of her mind is fascinating and enlightening. Watching Rebecca dance with Eric is always a joy, but they are just too darn good.

Eric’s base camp is in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where he has founded the celebrated Tango El Corte, “tango paradise”, where one can learn and dance tango and even stay overnight for a tango marathon [is that Homer Ladas's trademark cap on their front page?]. In class Eric always radiates such joie de vivre as though his life is a perennial resort, which it cannot be, because he travels all over the world half the time, and life on the road is draining. But in this wonderful film (“This is El Corte!”, Vimeo, 49 min), Eric looks exactly the same nearly in every shot, even when he is obviously very tired. El Corte appears to have wonderful atmosphere, and the quality of their dancing is enviable, so enviable. Apparently, in Nijmegen not only can they step on the beat, but also do well a variety of other things, such as run a first-class medical imaging research facility.

Finally, Eric’s maestro, Pepito Avellaneda, had his own trademark style of dancing milonga. Here he dances milonga with his wife Suzuki, as well as with women notably taller than he is: No. 1 (Milonga Brava/Canaro), No. 2 (music?), and No. 3 (Asi es la milonga/Tanturi) - and it looks fine. Here Pepito and Suzuki demonstrate their vocabulary: first corrida for him - plain steps for her; then corrida for her - plain steps for him; then corrida for both (Milonga: "Señores, yo soy del centro"/Angel Vargas). Pepito is short and stout, so he can afford making wider steps relative to his body size compared to somebody like Eric, who is over six feet tall.

The lessons learned at this workshop were somewhat tangential to what was actually taught:

- It is very easy to lose the concentration of the group, even the most receptive one.

- Making progress in milonga requires fluency in at least one of its elements. Like with driving, something has to be automatic, or fully internalized: either the steps or the rhythm (ultimately, both). If both the steps and the rhythm require thinking, no progress is made. Rhythm is more difficult to learn, so the vernacular of typical steps should be internalized first.

- For milonga, beginner leaders need to be taught how to place their feet on the floor. Business as usual - heel-toe roll - does not work for short, quick steps. Essentially, men need to step like women in high heels, with a stiff foot placed on its center. 

- Corridas appear to be challenging in terms of coordination. The direction of energy during the corrida probably needs to be addressed. It seems that the energy is directed into the floor, instead of being parallel to the floor.