The above was the title of my initial blog site.
At some point, I changed the title to DancingWithPresence, possibly because I was getting a little self-conscious about focusing all my attention on the physical or sensual and wanted to shift the focus to the emotional, relational, spiritual dynamics.
Not necessarily a bad thing, however, my learning has been that no matter how far into esoteric realms the dance takes you, it always begins and ends with touch. Everything else emanates from there.
Not surprising.
Touch is the most immediate and strongest way of connecting with the world around us, including – and especially – people. It just so happens Tango is an intensity boot camp in touch. Bonus.
But there are a few lessons (actually, more than a few) that one has to learn along the way to transform the dance into something that feels up close and personal.
Lesson #1: Not all touch is created equal.
Some touch helps you dance. Some touch helps you feel.
I recently bumped into a fabulous book: Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind. The author, David Linden, a neurobiologist at Johns Hopkins and author identifies two different types of touch systems:
One (A tactile fibers) … gives the ‘facts’ — the location, movement, and strength of a touch — and we call that discriminative touch. But then there’s the emotional touch system. It’s mediated by special sensors called C tactile fibers, and it conveys information much more slowly. It’s vague — in terms of where the touch is happening — but it sends information to a part of the brain called the posterior insula that is crucial for socially-bonding touch (nicknamed caressing touch). This includes things like a hug from a friend to the touch you got as a child from your mother, to sexual touch.
Lesson #2: Everyone is a type A dancer.
You have to be.
It is impossible to dance Tango without “discriminative type A touch.” On a basic level this is simply knowing your left foot from your right foot, but taking it a step further, it is first, knowing how to mechanically execute the dance steps, and secondly, being aware of where you are in relation to your partner and the dance floor and the music at all times.
The above skills are necessary for all dancing but they are especially tricky with Tango. Most other dances allow you the default of preset steps and patterns and the space to corroborate visually where your partner is in the sequence.
Not so Tango.
The improvisational character of Tango means that one has to be continually communicating the positioning, motion, and intention of your partner to know how to execute the next step. And to further complicate things, the close embrace keeps us from sneaking a peak to gather visual clues. All the information required for engagement must be acquired through touch.
Lesson # 3: Not everyone is a type C dancer.
And boy, can you tell the difference!
Tango is often nicknamed “the dance of love.” There is an assumption that just because we dance in close embrace, this ensures an emotional connection.
Not necessarily.
More often than I care to count, I successfully navigate myself around the dance floor quite capably without feeling any closer to my partner than when I started. In and of itself, all that close physical proximity communicates is body positioning, the how of the dance, the information gathered by type A nerve fibres. None of this discriminative touch in and of itself, adds an emotional element to the dance.
Specifically, the emotional connection or heart intimacy is stimulated by type C nerve fibres. It takes A+C nerve stimulation to give the heartwarming connection that we are looking for.
Lesson #4: You have to learn how to be an A+C dancer?
An A+C dancer knows how to execute the mechanical how of the dance and at the same time massage the emotional connection, the why of the dance. This is a skill that requires not only practice but also an openness, receptivity, and relational intelligence – lots of really sophisticated life skills that are equally valuable on and off the dance floor.
How do I blend A+C touch?
It’s tricky. Not at the same time.
Next blog. Join me
… for some really interesting and fun tricks. Your partner will thank you. (On and off the dance floor, maybe, if you are lucky).