Phrasing Anyone?

Visualization

This is a link to an interesting artical/blog Benefits of Visualization

Tango Posture Imagery

I've found fantastic imagery applicable to Tango.

Notice the differences between the five posture types represented here, White, Blue, Red, Green Yellow.

For the purposes of tango my preference is the posture represented on this link by the red figures...if I had a tail it would point back, but not up (do not cause yourself pain or injury).  My hat would resemble a baseball cap. My eyes would look straight forward.

The white isn't bad it's just that the red is ideal for leading of following tango (notice that the white figure represents the standing leg being straight rather than slightly bent...bent is good for balance and grounding in tango).

The link is Here

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.

Body Spiral, Three Tracks, Turns, and Pivots.

There are normally three positions for walking:  outside partner left, directly in front of partner, outside partner right.

Use body spiral for effective lead prepositioning and pivot tension in your own body.  This is true for both parallel and crossed systems.

The following video is provided for to illustrate spinal movement discussed in this post (turn the sound down or ignore it).


Lumbar Spine Inter-vertebral Movement Rotation... by MedilawTV

Anytime you are doing a front or back ocho correctly (separately or during a giro) or while using contra body position during the walk while in either outside position your body is in spiral tension (torso down tension) and is set to lead a turn effectively or to pivot on axis.

You may also place your body in spiral tension as a leader by prepositioning your feet and hips to create spiral energy for pivots or lead energy for turns. (floor up tension).

Some possibilities you may consider:

preposition yourself outside left for turns to the right

preposition yourself outside right for turns to the left
pretension the spiral energy in your body to lead a turn by taking a crossing back step close to your own axis on the side of the direction of the turn that you intend to lead.

Remember that the followers back step is common to both linear and circular movement and is a good place to transition between the two (in to and out of the turn), this has the effect of letting the follower know what the next two steps of the turn will be following the normal  (back, side,  front,  side...) way of turning while going in to a turn.

Example;  while walking forward, from the leaders prospective, if the leader positions himself outside of the followers right side when the follower takes a back step with her left he may step forward with his right (contra body position right) and lead a side step and then a front step circularly around him in a counterclockwise direction using his torso only (the follower feels the need to take a front step because she has just taken a back step followed by a side step so naturally she will want to take a front step) .  At this point the leaders body is in spiral tension so that he may pivot to continue the turn or possibly lead a front ocho to change the direction of the turn to a clockwise direction (leaders body is already in the proper spiral tension to do so).

Guaranteed Way to Get More Dances at a Milonga (The Paparazzi Method)

It's very simple really...Smile. Smile when you are dancing, smile when aren't, laugh at yourself, laugh at life.

Do this experiment for yourself...look up photos of people dancing online, facebook, whatever...look for people you don't know.... that you would like to dance with, most of the time they will be smiling...look for photos of people that are not dancing, often they will not be smiling. Smiling often just makes people more approachable!

We have all seen photographs of ourselves and if we aren't smiling, many times we will cringe at our own image and wonder why the photographer took such an unflattering image of us, guess what, it's our own fault for not putting our best forward as often as possible. Pretend that someone is just waiting to take secret photos of you while you are at the milonga (Tango Paparazzi), sell yourself to the public.  The paparazzi method I've described will also help you with other very important concepts in Tango as well, things like posture, step technique, etc...

Smiling can actually change your mood. So put a smile on, even if you don't feel like it, and pretty soon you'll be smiling for real.  (Fake It 'Til you Make It!)

When looking for a partner to cabeceo, this is very high on my list.  I'm sure I'm not the only one.  I want my partner to smile, it reflects well on my dancing ability.  And I've seen photos of people dancing and making almost painful facial expressions, no one wants to dance with a sourpuss.

I know, Tango is serious business, and some of the lyrics are well...depressing, but believe me it works.

You don't have to grin like the Cheshire cat, but you can!

Foot Technique for Followers

I recently visited a practica in a small community where at least half of the followers present were dancing with weight on the balls of their feet exclusively (never using their heels at all). I'm not sure if this was due to someone teaching this poor technique or if they had just picked up the habit and the instructor/s there hadn't noticed. Many of these followers were dancing in flats (I assume this was because they were thinking that the heels were causing them foot pain and wanted some relief during the practica). The shoes are bad enough (I don't see how followers wear them at all) but they have heels for a reason: the heels are meant to be used to help support your weight while walking backwards by helping you maintain your balance and axis (thus taking maybe forty percent of the pressure off of the delicate metatarsals of the supporting foot).

Here is an exercise that everyone should try in order to demonstrate why this is such a bad practice: Stand naturally with your feet together and shift your weight forward so that your weight is totally on the balls of the feet, transfer weight to one side so that your weight is totally on the ball of one foot...now extend the free leg back as if you are going to take a back step without transferring any weight to the free leg without using the heel, now try a forward extension without transfering any weight (I think that almost everyone will have real difficulty doing this). Now bring the feet together and shift your weight back so that your weight is evenly distributed along the entire length of one foot from heel to toes, now...once again extend the free leg backwards in preparation for a back step, now try the front extension...Isn't this much easier to accomplish with proper technique?!

Leaders need to be aware of this and bring the followers weight onto the ball of her feet before leading pivots (very easily done, and this will happen without much conscious thought after the technique is practiced properly for awhile).

One of the followers at this practica has been dancing longer than I have, and I have to say that she danced quite well (although I could tell right away that something was wrong when I danced with her). When I explained my position she told me that her reason for doing this was that she had been caught with her weight back on her heels many times, and she was trying to avoid this by keeping her weight forward. (see the note to leaders above).

I hope this helps someone, does anyone have any thoughts or reactions after trying the demonstration above? I would love to hear from you.

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)

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.

What Does it Feel Like to Lead

I really like this,
when you watch it pay attention to the followers legs, specifically how the "light" falls mostly on her legs and body, much more so than it does on the leaders legs and body, this is where your attention is as a leader (after the connection). Just very well done in my opinion.

Watching Tango Makes You a Better Dancer!

I watch a lot of videos on Youtube (at the time of this posting over 7500 mostly tango related). I know, I should get a life, but remember, I live in a Tango Wasteland. As it turns out this may actually stimulate the same areas of the brain that are used during the actual dance (see the link below for reference if you like).

I am not saying that one can learn to dance Tango on the internet, they cannot.

I know one couple that took a few lessons and decided they could study this way and improve their dance. They do dance, and it is unique. It is not tango by any stretch of the imagination, mostly a lot of very poorly executed big moves (volcadas, leg wraps, ganchos, etc... mixed up with a few snipets from other dances all smashed together) Painful to watch! Painful to be anywhere near them while they are dancing, yet they enjoy themselves (who am I to judge).

On the other hand according to this article once someone has a personal knowledge of a dance and has experience actually dancing the dance they can process what they are seeing and actually learn something purely through the visual.

There really is no substitute for one on one personal instruction from a competent instructor.

ref link

Also this

Tango Epiphanies 6

Video does not lie and will show you the reality of your tango. There is no better way to learn from yourself.

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!