“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 really paying attention?
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.” Right. Rather than offering one’s authentic self to the relationship, you come with an agenda for the other person. Your personality is construed to influence the other’s behaviour and elicit a desired response. One word: manipulation
The Gift
Thanks to COVID, now I have only myself to please, to attend to, to dance with. No chance 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.
Unconscious Competence
For the first time, my body is boss, calling the shots, with instinctual movements rather than stylistic overlays or structure.
Problem: My thinking apparatus didn’t know how to let my body be boss. My head wanted to be boss. To take over. Tell my body how to do body things. Essentially get in the way, complicate everything, mess with my uncsoncious 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 and pay attention to my body without attempting to dictate the process. I flipped it around. The body took the lead and my head watched, listened, paid attention, took notes and filed them away into memory.
“Oh, that’s how you do that. That is how it feels to walk. That’s how I keep my balance. How my foot pushes off from the floor.”
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 creative intuition and much more pleasing and satisfactory.
I uncovered a natural connection between my instinctual moving 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, the transition between steps, not where I was going but how I was getting there
Onesies
My movement style became basically unisex, (strangely similar to how women/ follwos are taught to move), which felt much more ergonomically sound. Angling the foot, raising the heel, maintaining floor contact with the metatarsal.
The Dancing Leg.
For the first time as a lead, I focused on dancing with the free leg rather than where I placed the supporting leg. My application of Gavito’s advice, “paint the floor with the music”. This was far more intriguing and creative.
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. Contra-body.
When I cupped my knees my chest turned. Leverage.
When I relaxed my knees my hips opened and my steps lengthened.
Collecting
Every Tango step begins and ends with collecting. 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 setting the lead with contra-body.
It sounds complicated and it is, except that I have been doing it since I was two. Really no new movements as much as simply becoming conscious about what I was already doing.
Exercises.
Only after I became familiar with all the ins and outs of my dance movements did I permit my head to make any suggestions as to how it might work in consort with my body and 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 suffering through the interminable drone of airline stewardesses on auto-pilot.