The Body is Boss

How to keep your thinking out of your dancing.

“We practice technique to get to know our own bodies. And then we take what we know of ourselves, our movements and musicality onto the dance floor to join up with our partner.” Carolina Bonaventura, milonguera y profesora. 

Me first? Who knew?

Sure, there was always the airline stewardess reviewing the safety pamphlet before takeoff, “Put your mask on first before you help someone else.“ But was I paying attention?

The Gift of COVID

Then came COVID. That got my attention. 

Remember those days? Dark days. No dancing. For close to 2 years. Especially not Tango. Nothing affronts “social distancing” more than Tango. 

So I was left alone, with the choice either to ice my dancing for who knew how long or to create a personalized private dance practice. 

Not only me first but me only.

Codependent Dancing

Solo practice is a challenge for tango dancers, particularly for leads. As they say, “It takes two to tango.” As a male lead, I learned to move in a way that supported or directed my partner. Rather than expressing myself as a dancer and playing with space, I functioned as a mechanical engineer, trying to construct something solid or rigid to fit the choreography.

What has my therapist been saying for the past 20 years? “Codependence is an unhealthy model of relating.” 

Definition of codependency: Rather than bringing your authentic self to the relationship – vulnerable, naked, undefended – you come with an agenda for the other person. Your relating is construed to influence the other’s behaviour and elicit a desired response. Code word: manipulation.

Unconscious Competence

Thanks to COVID, now I have only myself to please, to attend to, to dance with. No risk of codependency.

I put on the music and dance as if no one is watching (because, of course, no one is).  I ignore traditional step sequences and focus on how my body wants to move instinctively, where the energy comes from, the power, what feels comfortable, natural and intuitive. 

For the first time, my body is boss, calling the shots, with instinctual movements rather than stylistic overlays or structure. 

Problem: My thinking apparatus doesn’t know how to let my body be boss. My head is used to being boss, to take over, tell my body how to do body things, essentially get in the way, complicate everything, mess with my unconscious competence.

Let’s face it. Our heads don’t know squat about how to move. Like trying to learn how to ride a bicycle by reading a pamphlet. 

As soon as I started thinking about what I was doing, I became paralyzed. I would stare blankly at my feet and wonder why I suddenly didn’t know the left from the right. I would instantly lose my balance and become awkward and clumsy. Movements that my body knew how to do unconsciously, like walking for example, pretty basic, became a comedy routine. 

Conscious Competence.

I had to learn a new mental skill: to listen to my body rather than attempting to think through my movements. The body took the lead and my head watched, paid attention, took mental notes and filed them away into memory. 

“Oh, that’s how you do that,” observes the brain. “That is how it feels to walk. That’s how I keep my balance, how my foot pushes forward, how my torso twists. Apparently, I always knew that. I just didn’t know I knew that.”

Tango Flo.

Rather than getting bogged down in the technicalities of my role as lead or the complexities of the music, I invited the dance to flow from within with its intrinsic motion. I began dancing with more energy and creativity. I uncovered a natural connection between my instinctual movements and most of the Tango steps. This felt like dancing from the inside out. 

Several principles surfaced for me which formed the basis for my Tango practice.

The journey is the destination. 

I focused on movement and phrasing rather than stepping, not where I was going but how I was getting there, not the stepping but the transition between steps.

Onesies

My movement style became basically unisex, (strangely similar to how women/ follows are taught to move), which felt much more ergonomically sound: Angling the foot, raising the heel, maintaining floor contact with the large metatarsal.

The Dancing Leg.

For the first time as a lead, I focused on dancing with the free leg rather than on where I placed the supporting leg. My application of Gavito’s advice:  “paint the floor with the music”. The foot of the dancing leg became a paintbrush. Fun!

Full body movement 

Surprise. When one part of my body moved, all parts moved. When I moved my upper torso one way, the lower torso turned the other. There was even a name for this: contra-body.

When I cupped my knees my chest turned. Called: Leverage.

When I softened my knees my hips opened and my steps lengthened.

Collecting

Every Tango step begins and ends with collecting. This can be so much more than my feet brushing each other in transit. It involves tightening my core, settling, shifting weight, bringing the knees and thighs together, and sculpting the lead with contra-body.

It sounds complicated – and it is – except that I have been doing it since I was two. No new movements as much as simply becoming conscious about what I was already doing. 

Exercises.  

Only after I became conscious of all the ins and outs of my dance movements did I permit my head to make any suggestions to my body as to how we might sculpt the instinctual movements stylistically. 

I created exercises that were so simple they almost felt silly or childish (which they are ). I picked code words like Raggedy Anne Shuffle, Slinky Slide, Power Skate, and Cat Walk. 

The Test.

When I finally did get to take my dance back to the dance floor, my dance had changed. My lead was stronger, my balance better. Most significantly, I was slowing down, making more with less, filling every movement with feeling and meaning. 

It was a seasoned blending of my decades of Tango, Tai Chi, spiritual practices and yes, the droning counsel of airline stewardesses.