TRANSCRIPT ~ EPISODE 15

EPISODE 15: Instinct Tango, with Aníbal Dominguez

Producer/Host: Liz Sabatiuk | Music: “En un Bondi Color Humo” performed by Daniel Melingo with lyrics by Luis Alposta | Image Credit: Alejandro Persichetti

[MUSIC]

LIZ: We're recording now. If you could just say your full name and the first thing that comes to your mind about yourself.

ANIBAL: Hm. My full name means with all my names?

LIZ: However, however you want to say it. [LAUGHTER]

ANIBAL: Um, I'm Aníbal Dominguez and I'm a dancer and, um, curious human.

LIZ ID INTRO:
I'm Liz Sabatiuk and this is Humans of Tango, where we explore what tango has to teach through
the experiences of those who dance it.

ANIBAL: 
I was a six year old and I got a grandmother that used to listen the only tango radio that we have here, which is a historical radio called Clarín. First touch with the music was to listen that radio from day to night, every day for 10 years, uh, as long as I didn't have the chance to have my own radio, I had to listen that. And, well, then after all those years, I moved from my house and suddenly I have some new friends who were involved into carnaval here. So this friend that I have, he was participating in a group for carnival and dancing… And he offered me one day, you know, if I ever wanted to dance something, what it would be and I say naturally tango. I never really thought about it. It was just something that came from the inside. Because if you asked me, I would also say that I didn't like the music. I just liked the idea of getting together, you know, in the embrace.

And a few months later, this guy, my friend, show up with a teacher and say, well, you say you like tango, well, I have teachers for you. So I went just because this guy recommend me. And these two teachers were one is Eduardo.

[LIZ ASIDE] That's Eduardo Ferrer.

And Claudia Pisani, which is a wonderful dancer that I got the luck to meet. She helped me a lot, and she also recommend me to take contemporary dancing classes to help the process, because it was not easy for me to learn how to dance. My first year was really difficult.

The first thing this teacher was focused with me, he was trying to understand how [to] create a space without the intention of moving someone else, but by creating this space with my own body. It took me like two years to get into something with that, because it was a lot of learning. But after that, I got this impression that every class that I went, I got my own translation. 

LIZ SCRIPT:
I think of Aníbal Domínguez as my first tango maestro, though he never formally gave me a lesson. Aníbal had already been dancing for several years when we started dating while I was living in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the mid-2000s. I was just starting to learn to follow in tango after years studying ballet, modern dance, and a little bit of jazz. My dance experience up to that point had all been based in choreography, and it took me a while to wrap my mind around the concept of improvisation. Aníbal used to say, estás bailando sola.” You're dancing alone. And he liked to switch things up when we practiced to make sure I wasn't just memorizing sequences.

Aníbal always encouraged me to slow down and relax into the learning process. For years after we were no longer together, I continued to uncover little gems of insight that I hadn't been ready to understand when he first shared them. Even that early in his tango journey, Aníbal was totally dedicated to tango and totally independent in that dedication.

ANÍBAL:
Actually, I got kind of not really, uh, welcome in some tango classes because when I started in the first years, like in the fourth year, a place we used to go together, I used to go there to the class and when something was not working for me, I used to change something and make my own choreography with what the teacher was proposing. And the teacher used to not like that because it was kind of not respecting what the teacher was offering to you. And for me, it wasn't that. It was just not staying frustrated with things I cannot do and try to do something that comes out from myself.

I think I was very young and even when in our countries we're very used to embrace, to kiss everyone, you know, to be into this intimate moment for three minutes with someone, it was really something that it shocked me at the first time. And I can't say that that was not part of my passion.

Then after all these memories of all the time that I was listening all the music, you know, they came all together and it kind of started to make sense to me. And I started to listen the same music from a different perspective. And then the luck that I have, that I have this teacher who helped me from the very beginning with the contemporary dancing and the ballet training. You know, I never became a fan of contemporary dancing, but it changed my point of view and it created conditions to enjoy what I was doing. So I think it helped in a certain way to have a passion. 

Once I went into the tango, after two or three years, it became an obsession. But then I understand that people who had different interests will not do all that effort that I was doing at that time. Because it's not that the tango is your entire life, you know, tango is just a part of your life that you enjoy very much. And you have other things that you also like - a career, a job, a hobby. I just had tango at that time.

[MUSIC FADING IN - LYRICS IN SPANISH]
En un bondi color humo,
que  al  trocén  se  dirigía,
presencié  una  fulería
que  resultó  una  función.
Vi  como un  pobre  chabón
palpándose  la  sotana,
le  batió  a  un  punga  la  cana,
y  éste,  al  verse  acorralado,
buscaba  desesperado
aligerarse  del  paco,
fruto  "digno"  del  atraco
que  le  fuera  deschavado.
[MUSIC FADES]

LIZ: You know, I certainly remember feeling the frustration that people had sometimes with the, like, little brother relationship with Buenos Aires and Montevideo and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about what it's like being from Uruguay as a tango dancer.

ANIBAL: Well, uh, it's a kind of difficult relationship. The label Tango Argentino created a big business for a lot of people from a very long time ago. And we’re included into that because we as Uruguayan, we mix very easily as Argentinians everywhere in the world. So it's not a thing that you should complain about because you could be part of it. 

But at the same time, you're part of a different country. So once someone adds a label to the tango and say this is Argentinian tango, it looks like you have to be Argentinian to dance that tango, you know. At the same time, the tango is very known in the world because the Argentinians mostly spread it around. So it's not about denying all that, all those facts, but it was uncomfortable at the beginning to feel like, well, we are Uruguayan and there are also big tango musicians and people who were involved into the tango who were Uruguayan, and they’re being totally ignored because they don't have the label of Argentinian. Uh, like, Canaro-

LIZ: Or people assume they're Argentinian.

ANIBAL: Yeah. You know, Francisco Canaro is Uruguayan, for example. A big example of that.

[LIZ ASIDE] Canaro was a successful composer, violinist and band leader during tango's golden age.
And, fun fact, I got into his music while living in an apartment on the two-block street named after him in Montevideo.

ANIBAL: And in real terms, that doesn't mean anything because we're part of the same geographic place where these cultural events were happening. I was kind of, you know, my first tango travels were going some places where people say, “oh, you do Argentinian tango and you speak as an Argentinian, but you're from Uruguay,” you know. And it was kind of fun to explain that history and to explain that it's not only Argentina who owns the entire history of tango. They have the 95 percent, but maybe 5 percent - maybe less - it was also created in other place, which is very near from Buenos Aires. But, uh, you know, at the end of the day, no one cares. And it's okay, you know, it doesn't matter at all. So I stopped doing that a long time ago. And I started enjoying the good things of being Argentinian, which is a lot of good things.

I always try to explain that for me, tango is like football, you know, like who cares that the English invented football? Because finally, nowadays when you have the World Cup, you know, you're not going to get an advantage for being English. So I was kind of against this thing, the Argentinians, maybe some of them tried to spread in the old times, which is that you will never be able to dance like us, you know, in a way that we have something that you wouldn't understand. You know, it created a lot of issues with self-esteem in people, you know, because they really thought they couldn't do it. 

Nowadays, you see someone dancing on a video, you have no idea if these people are from Russia or Argentina or anywhere in the world, because anywhere in the world, people can dance beautifully and make things awesome. And they kind of stepped out of this crazy idea of only Argentinians have the fifth element in the tango - which Uruguayans never believed. 

LIZ SCRIPT:
I asked Aníbal how the tango scene in Montevideo has evolved since my years there. He noted that Montevideo's smaller size makes it more like tango communities in other parts of South America than Buenos Aires, which he described as a unique environment for tango that Uruguayan dancers are very thankful for. Aníbal did share one area where the Montevideo scene has shifted in an exciting direction over the last 10 years.

ANIBAL:
And we also have tango on the streets, on the squares, which is kind of new for us. And this is very good because people has this democratic access and we assure as a community to give them a good quality milonga. We have four hours with one hour of class and three hours of milonga with the best teachers, the best DJ, doing everything for free. So everyone can experience what a milonga is, but outside. And we thought that would bring people into inside places, which haven't happened. 

LIZ: But has it grown the community? Like, would you say that there are new people who just- they only go to the outdoor milongas, but they are getting into tango?

ANIBAL: Yeah, yeah, I think it's been very productive for tango to be on the streets because otherwise a lot of people would never- not even have a clue that something like that is going on on the city. So it was really helpful in that sense. But on the other hand, it hasn't created, as some of us thought, a mass movement and a cultural revolution on tango. It just created another category of people who prefers to go dance on the streets. You know, maybe some people go there because they don't have a choice to pay to get in somewhere or they just don't want to get closer to an inside place. An inside milonga, you might get to need shoes, proper clothes, some training, you know, on the streets, you don't need all that. You can, uh, let that go. So I think that helps a lot.

[MUSIC FADING IN - LYRICS IN SPANISH]
A  pesar  que  el  gratarola
le  dio  a  la  declamación,
no  lo  convenció  al  botón,
que  se  mostró  intransigente.
En  medio  de  tanta  gente
y  ya  frente  a  un  oficial,
teniendo  corrido  el  dial
se  le  acabó  el  reportaje,
y  al  revisarlo  de  ultraje,
en  una  forma  fulera,
lo  portaron  en  galera
y  el  bondi...  siguió  su  viaje.
[MUSIC FADES]

LIZ SCRIPT: 
Aníbal taught me a lot about letting go of control in order to dance more honestly and accurately in the following role. When we reconnected for this episode, I learned that he's been on his own journey to let go of control in the leading role. For Aníbal, immersing himself in a completely different dance form was the key to take his tango to the next level. 

LIZ: When we spoke before, you talked about, like, a binary between the structure of tango and the structurelessness of contact.

[LIZ ASIDE] AKA contact improv.

LIZ: So I'd be interested in revisiting that and hearing about how you got into contact and how that fits with tango.

ANIBAL:
I think I started with the contact 8 years ago because I was involved into Periférico. Periférico used to be a tango company that used contemporary dancing and tango to create a show- I don't know if show is the right word- una obra. And, uh, it was very interesting for everyone to achieve that mix where you really get contemporary dancing and tango in the same body.

Contact for the dancing started in United States in the 80s. And it was started by contemporary dancers, ballet dancers, who were trying to achieve a technique where they’d involve everything on stage instead of saying, “I'm dancing this and then that.”

In Periférico, for creating our plays, we use the contact improv technique of saying, well, we have this ability to create and there is no rules. And here in Uruguay, let's just say for people in tango, the milonga version, [they] have a version of contact improv, which is encounters where everyone can show up with no experience even, and you can just mix with the people dancing there. Everyone is silent. You can dance on your own. You can sit down. You can dance with 20 people at the same time all together. So I heard there was these encounters and I went there and all the years of learning techniques, which wasn't really what I was enjoying - for example, contemporary dance has floor technique and you have, of course, the rest on your legs. But on the floor, it was a mess, you know, just to go on the floor and do things. For me, it was a kind of waste of time. And once I went into these encounters and I was not pushed to think on doing this choreography - which I hated, I hated the floor choreographies on contemporary dance - but then I realized how good [it] was to do all these choreographies because now I knew how to move myself in the floor. And that was the contact improv for me. That was the freedom of using whatever technique that I learned with my body in any way that I like with no problems because no one is there to say what is wrong. You just have to take care of yourself, take care of the others, but, uh, it's an open place.

So with the time, I started to enjoy a lot more the contact encounters than the milongas, you know, because in the milongas I started to feel, like, in a dictatorship of movement where every movement is designed and this is how it should be. And till that moment, I was about to leave tango because my body was hurting a lot. I have pains created by these strict movements that you repeat very much. And it was kind of exhausted, it was kind of… I enjoy dancing, but after dancing, I started to have pain on my back, pain on my knees. And once I started with the contact improv, I realized how anxious, uh- anxious? Ansiedad?

LIZ: How much anxiety?

ANIBAL: Anxiety was on my movement when I was dancing.

LIZ: Or tension. You had tension in your body when you were dancing?

ANIBAL: Yeah. Unnecessary tension all the time. And when I was dancing contact improv, I was able to do whenever I want any movement. And I started to recognize movements that I was doing in the wrong way and I learned how to let go this anxiety.

I realized that once we touch, there is a conscience of touch that is not going to the brain. It's like the bodies themselves, they talk to each other in a way where once you activate someone and start dancing, you can follow that body. And you don't need to lead in a sense that you don't need to tell that body what to do. But you're leading at the same time because you're the one in the position of leading.

LIZ: So is there no real difference between the roles then for you? I mean, and you dance as a follower as well, right? So, is it all the same in the end?

ANIBAL: Yeah, there is a way that you can realize how when you get into the bottom of our connection, the leading and the follower are very related. Actually, in my opinion, the most beautiful dancers are the ones where if you really look close at what they're doing, there's no need to know who's leading. Because it's impossible to know. To really know where that movement is coming from, it's impossible. So at the beginning, it's very good to know, okay, I'm leading, I'm taking care of the space. But then at some point, you can realize yourself that even when you're in the role of leading, you don't need to lead. And you don't need to tell the other that you're not leading. And then you can achieve how to get into instinct movements through that.

Because the other person is totally focused, thinking that it’s being leaded and you're not leading. So you have time to focus on other core of the dancing. And it's not about what you've been told to do. It's not to give directions. It's just to see where is possibilities. So you dance, letting the music to make you dance and you're not worrying all the time what to do next. That's very interesting.

LIZ: Have you explored that with other dual-role dancers though? Like being in a more fluid conversation between leading and following? Is that something that you do on any regular basis? Because the scenarios you're talking about sound like they're more, like, with someone less experienced, for example, from the leading role.

ANIBAL: Yeah, uh, I've done everything. I mean, I experience it with people who are experienced dancers. And then you get to a point where it starts to be very interesting to do it with beginners. Because you start realizing at a certain point that we are so sensitive to this structural teaching that even when we think we're not good enough, we really learn very fast how to move ourselves based on rules. And instead of being stressed on doing everything, you realize this is going to happen anyway. The dancing, the tango dancing is going to happen. And you don't need to push that hard. And for me, that was a big discover. It saved me after 20 years fighting all the time to make people dance, to make people do the craziest things, the most complicated movements, sometimes making damage into my own body. And once I got this knowledge from contact improv, you know, I don't need to fight anymore.

LIZ: [LAUGHS] That's awesome. Congratulations.

ANIBAL: Yeah, fight is over.

LIZ: Sounds like a big, big step. 

LIZ SCRIPT: 
Aníbal still loves to share what he's learned about tango. These days, he does so in workshops inspired by his experience with contact improv.

ANIBAL: I call it tango from the ordinary movements. 

LIZ: En Español?

ANIBAL: Tango desde el movimiento cotidiano. Which means that, you know, when you let the lady to pass and you don't pass, and she understands when you're stopping that has to go first. It doesn't matter if it's a lady or anyone…

LIZ: Right.

ANIBAL:
From these instinctive things, we have it everywhere. If you look for it, it's everywhere. And you realize this intelligence can be used.

In contact, you learned that you don't need to learn. It's kind of weird because on one side, it's very good to learn all the techniques. But then when you're in contact with people who are never been teached these techniques, and they get really fancy, crazy movements, you realize that you have an inner knowledge of how to move. For me, that is a main root that we have as a human for movement. And this root is before our rational brain tried to lead our movement. So to connect to that, you cannot go through teaching by itself, like saying, you know, move your arm. Because it's not even the same muscles involved when you're moving from the instinct than if you're moving from a rational way. When you're moving from the rational brain, you're probably going to use outside muscles, so you're going to see how the muscles on the skin are activating. And mainly when you're moving from your instinct, the basic movement comes from skeletal muscles inside your body. This is not a rule, but it's something I have observed in many cases. So for me, this original root can [theoretically] lead to same results in an instinct way - but you've got to know how to achieve that. And that's when the art comes.

For me, it was misunderstood with the contemporary and contact improv techniques mixed into the tango, because it's not to justify that you cannot achieve certain techniques when you justify it in a way that, you know, I don't do that because I dance free and I do contact improv, I'm not agreeing with that. So maybe from a perspective of contact improv, you can achieve that difficult technique, but just in a different way. It doesn't mean that you have to go into milonga and not respect the rules.

For me, it's very important to feel that people want to receive and I'm not trying to convince anyone. So I give very few lessons each year from some friends who ask me to come. And I'm very happy with that. And I got a lot because all that time with my crazy head, I'm elaborating. And then to see when these exercises, these things that I've been setting on my mind are on the class and it works, I feel very grateful, because for me, the big goal is - whatever I have learned or I have experienced in 20 years that I've been dancing, if I can translate that to someone in a minute, that will be wonderful.

LIZ SCRIPT: 
Here's to following our instincts and carving our own unique path to let the dance happen. Mil gracias, Aníbal. And thanks to Daniel Melingo, whose music I fell in love with thanks to Aníbal, and whose song “En un Bondi Color Humo,” based on a poem by Luis Alposta, is featured in this episode. Check out the show notes for more about Melingo and Alposta.

[MUSIC FADING IN - LYRICS IN SPANISH]
En un Bondi Color Humo
En un Bondi Color Humo
En un Bondi Color Humo
En un Bondi Color Humo
En un Bondi Color Humo
[MUSIC ENDS]