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A Japanese experiment, a nameless hero, and the night when the milonga stopped.<\/strong><\/p>\n Recently I\u2019ve found myself at several tango nights where, from the beginning of a song to the very end, we advanced only a few meters \u2014 the ronda<\/em> simply stopped. If you don\u2019t know the Spanish word \u201cronda,\u201d it means the circular circulation of the dance floor in tango. While the music would have carried us forward long ago, the line didn\u2019t move, the circle stalled completely, and the dance gradually lost its momentum.<\/strong> Have you heard of the phenomenon called a phantom traffic jam<\/em>? You wouldn\u2019t believe how closely it relates to our topic. In 2008, Japanese researchers put 22 cars on a circular track of 230 meters and asked each driver to maintain a speed of 30 km\/h.<\/p>\n At first the traffic flowed perfectly, but a single driver\u2019s slight deceleration triggered a wave of congestion moving backward. One by one, the cars braked and then stopped, even as the front of the line could move again.<\/p>\n
On one hand, I get it: there are more and more dancers, and milongas are getting denser. Sure, you can get used to it \u2014 the leader adapts, and the follower may not even notice that the dance has gone into \u201cstandstill mode.\u201d But it\u2019s still a pity, because we may ruin our own or others\u2019 chance at tango flow.<\/strong><\/p>\nPhantom traffic jams and the Japanese experiment<\/h3>\n