Until lately I thought travel to unknown milongas was a good thing. It got me out to milongas and heaven knows judging by the "I haven't seen you in sooo long" 's I don't do much of that in Scotland. Going away I met new people, sometimes even danced. But it was getting harder to do. I was having fewer bad dances, true. I was getting better at spotting, by look, guys who would feel good but I was dancing less and less and it was stressful somehow. There was the worry about figuring out, within a limited time, who the good dancers were from a packed room of unfamiliar people. There was trying to avoid guys who walk up to invite and there was the stress as you realise that with every tanda you don’t dance the guys are thinking: Why isn’t she dancing? And then there was the worry they think you are too picky / too snobby / can’t dance / won’t dance / are just too much hard work, when after all, so many girls are nice to dance with and are on the edge of their seats waiting to be asked. I am not even long-dancing nor have any "technique" to speak of but given that attitude perhaps I just need to get a cat, a hunky lover or move to Buenos Aires.
But aren’t we supposed to just control our attitude and everything magically turns out fine? A lot of what happens to you depends, we know on one's own state of mind. If one goes to a milonga closed, nervous, cross or stressed or becomes like that while there then the connections with people in dance or chat are, to state the obvious, unlikely to flow so well. It is not an easy thing though to walk into an unknown milonga alone and mentally hold your own while you are not invited by the guys you want as for example happened to me in La Bruja and on Thursday in El Cielo. Still, I have a lot of resources: I don't get bored listening and watching; I love milonga chat and find it easy, not to mention the experience of other cultures and at least some languages. Even so, I don't know that I could walk in again and again to unfamiliar milongas if I didn't have at least the option of switching roles. You reassert something in yourself when you get to invite, to dance, something that gets crushed when, as a girl, you are ignored, not invited or feel invisible to the guys you would like, or - worse - start to fall into the paranoia of suspecting the indignity of being invited for a "pity dance" from one of these. On the other hand the few milongas there are with great music or even ordinary milongas with just a few decent tandas have often transformed my mood.
Tonight, my husband called me to watch something with my kids. I love the cinema with the kids, but I can't bear watching the rubbish the three of them will, left to their own devices, watch on TV at weekends. Yet within minutes and for the first time I was hooked. The series was I think a kids science programme called Brain Games. It said that the brain doesn’t like unfamiliar situations. It produces the stress hormone cortisol when faced with them. It said when the brain is faced with familiar situations it produces oxytocin, the happy hormone, the love hormone - something along those lines.
It crossed my mind: have I been punishing myself in going to all these foreign milongas alone? Is this why so few girls I know do this - because they are sensible and obey their natural reactions? Is it a cortisol reaction that is making it harder to go to these unknown milongas? Is my body saying: Unfamiliar, scary environment, low payback, don’t go there! And how come - if familiar makes us all warm and fuzzy - I, like so many others say secretly - don’t love my local milonga scene? I have become one of those picky tango people who travel. I console myself that when I travel I prefer the local milongas. I haven’t (?yet) sold my soul to be selected, abjectly, by marathon and encuentro organisers on the basis of my /nationality /age / clothes and (but seriously!) Facebook friends.
I guess I do it for the challenge, the interest, the novelty and the chance of enjoying it though even that isn’t necessarily the main driver. I wonder what those hormones are called because I guess it isn't the same thing happening as with oxytocin rush induced by familiar situations. It turns out, said Hannah that, strangely, the reasons I travel to unknown local milongas are very like the reasons she is a mountaineer and fell runner. “Unknown milongas are your mountain tops” she said. Maybe I mentioned before that besides having two kids and a job in a completely different field she has a PhD in brain science. I’ll ask her what those hormones are called that make us do what we do.
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