Willingness Vs. Eagerness

What kind of partner do you want to be...What kind of partner do you want to share this experience with?

What is the difference between someone who is willing to go on a date with you and someone who is eager to go on a date with you?

Who would you hire a person willing to do a job or someone eager to join your team?

Who is going to learn to play the guitar faster, the eager student or the one willing to give it a try?

Enthusiasm makes all the difference!

Drill That Will Improve Your Tango (For Leaders and Followers)

On a floor that will allow pivoting put down a large X with tape (the X should be about two meters square).

Put a small staight backed chair on the X, centered, with one leg of the chair on each of the lines of the X (you may have to adjust the tape to ensure that each of the legs of the chair are on a line).

Imagine a circle around the chair about one foot from the legs of the chair.

Start the music.

Now do Giros around the chair keeping your shoulders facing the chair at all times and stepping only on the tape X (at the places where it would intersect with an imaginary circle a few inches out side of the chair) Keep your chin up (don't tilt your head toward the floor) Remember that both shoulders MUST face the chair squarely at ALL times (pivot your hips only), and you must step only on the tape.

Occasionally change the direction of the turns only after a front step or back step by pivoting and doing two front  or back steps one after the other. (circular front, or back ochos)

For some people it may help to do front steps at the front of the chair, side steps at the sides of the chair, and back steps at the back of the chair. (This will help ingrain the Front, Side, Back, Side Front...norm for doing turns)

You must do hundreds and hundreds of molientes alone to get them to work without effort so you might as well get started.

Give Her a Chance to Shine

How is this done, you ask, Welll...

Slow Down... when the music calls for it, and sometimes when it doesn't.

What do I mean....

Instead of stepping on every beat or every other beat, take a full bar, maybe two, to make a step (a whole step would be from the time a foot has zero weight on it yet is still fully extended...as it approaches the other foot...as it brushes the weight bearing foot in passing...as it reaches the fully extended position with the ankle relaxed so that the the sole of the the foot is nearly parallel with the floor...as the heel touches the floor...as the weight slowly begins to transfer to the new foot...as the weight begins to roll forward to the new foot and roll off of the old foot...as the weight finally is completely over the new foot and the old foot is still fully extended yet bears no weight).

This will give her a chance to express herself musically, with adornments, foot taps, lapiizes, traspies, or give her the opportunity to make the same type of slow motion step that you are making if that's what she wants...

The point is give her a voice in the dance (more often than not she is a much better dancer than you are)

I consider it a compliment when a follower that hasn't been dancing much starts getting lots of tandas after we dance.

Dancing the Phrase

In my last post I put up a video in which the speaker demonstrated the development of a musician from the age of seven, at which the young player struggles to hit each note and Really accents each and every note of a classical piece. The speaker then goes on to further demonstrate the development of the musician and at each step the student's accents grow steadily further and further apart, with the end result being that he is able to play the entire piece with out hesitation. It is at this point, that the beauty of the composition shines through, and the emotions of the listener are stimulated quite dramatically.

I am correlating this to my own development as a Tango leader, sadly having only recently (within the last two years) being exposed to this idea, it has taken some time for me to fully express this idea through my dance.

The results are amazing!

In the beginning I stepped and led (often very badly) each beat of the music, stopping and hesitating, unable to feel the passion that was there in the music all the time.

Eventually I was able to dance an entire bar without accent.

Now, it is beginning to flow and I am often able to dance through an entire phrase, caring less about whether or not the follower does exactly what I have suggested, rather working together with her to let the music carry us into the passion.

A Few Thoughts on Your Feet

1. Your foot is about 6 or 7 inches long from the heel to the balls of the foot.

2. By landing on the heel and transferring your weight to the balls of your feet you move your axis forward (or backwards) by that distance, assuming that you keep your axis over your foot.

3. Your follower is doing the opposite of what you are doing when she is walking backwards (landing with weight on the balls of her feet first and transferring weight to her heel) as indicated by your lead.

4. If you try and put your weight on your toe first (as a leader) you are effectively telling your partner to put weight on her heel as well as stopping the indication that you want to continue forward motion. If that is what you are trying to achieve this is one good way of doing that.

5. Followers should use their heels (as opposed to keeping weight solely on the balls of their feet all of the time) to avoid serious foot problems and possible injury.

6. Pivots should be done with the follower while her weight is on the balls of her foot.

7. As a leader you are responsible to make both of these things happen as required for what you are trying to lead.

8. During single axis turns (when the follower is keeping her shoulders with yours) the follower needs to have her weight on the balls of her feet while her axis is leaning away from the axis of the turn, knees must be bent at least slightly for these things to occur at the same time.

Breathing and Tango

Being centered is essential to good tango, and breathing and self awareness are essential to being centered.

I have found that breathing in the way of Tai Chi, is the most effective way to create this internal self awareness.

To start with you should be relaxed and stacked up, head, over heart, over pelvis over feet, like a stack of blocks. Secondly your head should feel suspended as if it were filled with helium, or hung by a string from above. Your feet should be very grounded as if they grow roots into the earth each time you take a step. Finally the tip of your tongue should lightly touch the pallet just behind the ridge.

To describe what I am talking about think of it this way (I am only a casual student of Tai Chi and do not consider myself more than a beginner, but I have gleaned some very useful insights even through this limited study). First of all think of your breath as being able to go down much further than your diaphragm, think of it being able to reach the area near where your bladder is. When you breath in try to visualize the air taking a path down the inside of your sternum and reach the area I have described (Tan t'ien), you "belly" should be relaxed and expand outward (this allows more room within your abdomen for your diaphragm to deflect downward as well as lowering your center of gravity, a very good thing when it comes to maintaining balance). Additionally you pelvic floor should relax and expand downward during the inhalation.

Visualize the air following the path I have described and gathering into a spinning ball in this area maybe the size of a large tomato or small cantaloupe, this is your center in my thinking, and where your movements should initiate from, the position is not static and may be moved in many directions, for example forward, backward, diagonally, up, down, or sideways.

When exhaling the opposite of what I have described should occur with the air flowing up your spine, your "belly" contracting (exhale from the bottom up, never completely retract your abdominals), and your pelvic floor rising to complete the cycle(all our muscles should remain just right, that is to say nothing too tight nothing too relaxed). One should always think of this ball I have described as being in position and spinning (down in front up in the back) with some amount of weight (not floating as a balloon would, more like a ball of energy sand, if you will). By maintaining the position of this ball of energy a person will be able to control weight transfer more effectively.

This is a very simplified description of what I want to get across but I think it is sufficient to get a person thinking in a positive way about breathing control and centering.

When leading I try to always be aware of my breathing and use it as an indicator of when I am about to do something for example taking a deeper breath before doing a traspie, or sacada etc... I'll also try and tune in to my partners breathing as another level of connection, very satisfying!

Enjoy the experience, and I hope you get as much out of it as I have.

Teaching Patterns

For myself, as a leader and occasional instructor, I have found that the realization of the fact that any pattern learned in a class or workshop can be broken down into many smaller movements was the crux in learning how to lead in an actual social situation. It has been the patterns that have taught me the various possibilities and where I might insert those smaller movements into real time situations. No pattern is ever set in stone, floor craft simply will not allow it. Many instructors of tango disregard this simple fact when teaching, and it is a shame because it is the very thing that makes this dance so fulfilling as well as challenging. I might also add that in my opinion the improvisation required to navigate on a crowded pista (as in Buenos Aires) is responsible for almost all of the movements that make Tango what it is.

What is helpful is when the instructor explains the reason for each particular part of a pattern so that the students might begin to explain the nuts and bolts of what they are doing rather than blindly repeating.

One good thing about patterns, when everyone in the room is doing the same thing it makes it much easier for the instructor to see what is wrong or right with what the students are doing.

Patterns might be useful during some type of Tango Fantasia for show tango or as I said earlier as a teaching and learning tool but the dance is about leading and following and giving yourself to your partner and to the music. What is dance if not movement. As Gavtito once said anyone who steps on to a dance floor is a dancer, and should think of themselves as one.

Best Tango Workshop So Far!

Today I attended a last minute workshop from one of my favorite instructors, Nick Jones, along with his current partner from Denver, Amy Anderson. I say last minute because it only came about last Monday when Nick called Scott and let him know that they were going to be in town for a demonstration, and wanted to know if they were up for a workshop.

Nicks classes are always fantastic, this one was out of this world. during the class he never showed us one step, or pattern and basically assumed that everyone there had proper technique (except that they did point out that without proper posture and balance none of what they taught would be easy and they said that if something isn't easy you weren't doing it right).

The classes had to do with leading through disassociation, for almost the entire day all of the leading was done with absolutely no contact between the leaders and the followers. Toward the end of the class it was almost effortless I've been thinking about this principle since the first time I saw a video by Murat and Michele, here (there was another video that was better, but it is no longer on youtube).

Anyhow, if you ever get a chance to experience a class with Nick teaching do it, his style of teaching is so relaxed and easy, fun and dynamic, like I've said before he makes what seems impossible seem easy.

What Could be Sexier!

This post has to do with changing your style of dance to fit music, or the mood of the milonga that you happen to be dancing at to make the tango your own and the experience unique, mostly about bringing the tango connection home.

To illustrate what I am talking about I'm posting two different videos of a pair of my favorite dancers




This is my idea of tango which can be be danced in a milonga that somewhat, but not to crowded, when you have a partner who is fairly progressive and you both feel a little more adventurous and when you both want that real close physical connection, or when the music just screams "tradition". Of course a lot of the time I like to get even more conservative than this, even to the point of just walking, (with the right partner of course).