The word ‘Floorcraft‘ sounds a bit like the word ‘witchcraft’ but is so far from that it’s not even funny. Floorcraft is not something that gets taught a lot or talked about, and yet it’s the very foundation of nearly everything we do at a Milonga while dancing tango. To be clear, the definition of this word doesn’t necessarily fall under the category of ‘Codígos’ but they’re intricately related to each other. One sets up the practice for the other. So we would be somewhat remiss if we didn’t at least mention it. At the same time the definition for this word is a bit nebulous and requires a bit of unpacking but we’ll give it the old college try:
Floorcraft refers to the idea known as Tango Floorcraft, which is in its simplest, very reductive form:
• The space or distance between yourself and another couple either ahead, behind,
or next you on either side.
• The choice of tango vocabulary that is applicable to the moment within a given musical beat,
musical pause, musical phrase, or paragraph of the music.
• The fusion of items ‘a’ and ‘b’ above in time to the music to generate a pleasant
dancing experience for yourself and your partner.
Why are we talking about Floorcraft ? Because this is structure, in a way, of how we dance and keeping the ronda of the floor going. In short, it’s what we do as dancers.
At our Milonga we like to have dancers that adhere to some level of Floorcraft that keeps things contained and clean to generate a pleasant dancing experience for everyone. Which is to say, keep your vocabulary choices very small, and extremely contained, please try not to be ‘showy’ but rather extremely respectful of the people around you while you are dancing. We don’t want to inhibit your choices as dancers but rather just to make you aware that there are other people on the floor around you that are affected by what you’re doing. So if we can keep things moving, and safe for everyone that is far more important than anything else.
Thank you!
