Exercise for Good Tango Posture

This is a great exercise for posture improvement, concentrating on the shoulders (95% of non professional dancers need improvement in this area).




Give it a shot, it's really almost painless. (One of the things Tango dancers notice most about people is their posture, this holds true when deciding who to dance with...just saying).

The goal is too eliminate hyperkyphosis (excessive outward curvature of the spine in the thorax region) this is why I encourage people to open their rib cage upward.

It is also important to keep your head centered "on top of" your axis rather than "in front of",or "behind" your axis.

I do not agree with her idea that the hips should be tucked in! ( for examples of proper posture please search Youtube for videos of the most accomplished tango followers or leaders...i.e. Marina Montes, Geraldine Rojas,...etc...     I believe that the hips should be held back slightly to create a space between partners hips and feet and allow for a bent standing leg rather than locked knees and no room at the hips and below (please notice that the hips should be held back slightly, this does not imply any bending at the waist, rather it allows for and accentuates the natural curve of the spine.




For more on posture see
Tango Posture Imagery

and Movement Invites Movement (blog)

Learning Involves Change (Don't Settle for Mediocrity)

During the last six months I have been trying out a new way of walking and I have made a few adjustments to my posture, embrace, and body alignment (more estilo salon, less estilo nuevo, less estilo milonguero), when I started this study of tango I was convinced that the "milonguero" style was the only way that I wanted to dance, later I found freedom of expression and more chance for creativity in the "nuevo" style. I still have those tools in my toy box and will (and do) take them out if the mood strikes me. This is nothing new, I've changed these things constantly over the past seven years all in the name of educating my self and building depth into my Tango, and I've watched as people who were far more experienced than I was have stagnated in their dance to the point where it seems to me that they have not improved at all (these were people I once held in high regard as excellent dancers). I've also witnessed people who started about the same time as I did stop progressing when they settled for one thing or another. How boring it must be to not grow over that many years!

It's impossible to learn anything new if you have already decided that what you are doing is the best, and/or only way. (I've heard it said that you can't add water to a glass that is already full, I like to think of it as getting a bigger bucket to hold several glasses of water). I also feel that adding something new allows a person to focus on the new things and allow the things you have learned in the past to happen automatically without thinking about them. Nature rewards adaptation.

The results of these adjustments are beginning to become second nature and have drastically improved how grounded I feel to myself and the women I dance with often, as well as an improvement in the clarity of my lead to my followers. I also feel that this new style has allowed for more possibility of musical expression for the follower (less about my Tango and more about our Tango). The new style does require the follower to use proper technique (no lazy following) and therefore makes leading easier after the technique becomes second nature to the leader.

One thing that I have noticed over the past maybe three years is that I have not hit any plateaus, just a slow but steady improvement...Where's the Like Button!

Relax Your Body, Free Your Soul!

I've been browsing a couple of cool books lately (always thinking of Tango naturally).

1. Conditioning for Dance

(Eric Franklin, published by; Human Kinetics ISBN 0-7360-4156-7) This book is loaded with tons of awesome illustrations that let the reader visualize things that are happening inside of your body when you are dancing (in my case, tango), it also shows many techniques that will improve posture, balance, axis...etc... and, as the title suggests conditioning. (they are trying to sell Thera bands, or at least are highly recommending the product, but I guess that's O.K.).

I got massive amounts of information about things instructors have tried to teach me in workshops etc.. but sometimes I need a picture (they are worth a thousand...).

2. T'ai Chi Classics

(Translated with commentary by Waysun Liao, published by Shambhala Classics
ISBN 978-0-57062-749-1) T'ai Chi interests me very much and some day I will explore it in great detail, but for now I found that the sections on breath control and Tan T'ien seem to be applicable to Tango (imagine that!) Eric Jorenson once made a joke in a workshop I was at about feeling each others "bellies" it really is where you center is,

by the way T'ai Chi roughly translated means "The Ultimate"

I also found the treatise by Master Wu Yu-hsiang very informative.

Yin/Yang, energy, movement, direction, meditation, how much more tango can you get!