Searching for the Heart of Tango

We are all looking for the magic ingredient to take our dance to the next level, to make it more engaging, more inspiring, and more soulful. 

We all are in search of the essence of the Tango.

Is Piazzolla Tango?

I recently watched a very interesting documentary on Piazolla, a brilliant musician and composer who almost singlehandedly carried the Tango music genre into the 21 century with his innovative blend of Tango, Classical and Jazz elements. 

But is Piazzolla really Tango? One of the slams against Piazolla is that you can’t dance to music (with a few notable exceptions listed below).*

Two professional dancers in the documentary underscored the inseparable link between music and dance in the Tango by putting on a spectacular athletic performance, full of enough kicks and spins to leave the rest of us dizzy. Interestingly, they were not dancing Piazzolla. 

More pivots and spins?

This brings us back to our search for the essence of the Tango.

Is it a certain rhythmic quality of the music? The mournful lament of the bandoneon? Or the flawless execution of innumerable, lightning-fast pivots and giros?

A particularly poignant comment from a visiting Tango teacher remains with me after over a decade. About halfway through our lesson, he asked me, “How long have you been dancing?” “Ten years,” my reply. His puzzled response, “Well then why aren’t you any good?”

I took his critique to heart and went about improving my dancing the only way I knew how; I learned more steps. I focused my energy on adding more and more flourishes and choreographed step sequences. 

My Inner Dancer

Some 10-plus years later, where did it leave me? A better dancer?

Yes, now I could cram 15-20 fancy sequences into a tanda. There was an awareness festering in the pit of my stomach that something was lacking. I had not yet tapped into the heart of Tango. 

Then COVID dealt me a back-handed lesson. 

For the better part of 2 years, there were no milongas in our community. I was without a practice dance partner. I had the option of sitting back and waiting until this whole mess blew over (still not done with it) or devising a practice regime which was fun, engaging and did not require a partner. It also had to include lead and follow techniques equally since, when I got back to teaching I would likely be teaching on my own. 

Two years of parading around my kitchen floor – walking, pivoting, free movement – took me into uncharted territory. I was moving beyond stylistic concerns and sequences into a more fluid, free-form expression of what movement and dance felt like for me. My evolving practice accentuated an inner fluidity and rhythm, reinforcing core dance techniques. 

Masculine and feminine stylistic elements merged wherever it seemed to enrich my overall creative expression. And I began to uncover what felt like for me authentic, nurturing, ergonomic dancing, the essence of Tango. I was adhering to the old adage, dance as if no one was watching, because, of course, they weren’t.

Dancer or Engineer?

As it turned out, there had been a whole lot of dancing that I was missing as a male lead By focusing on steps, I had understood my participation in the dance as a functionary: my role was to set up a step or sequence so that my partner could fill in behind with support and without encumbrance. 

Which presumably works really well for my partner. But where does it leave me? Rather than a dancer, I am more of an architect or engineer. 

I returned to Carlos Gavito’s adage: we are not mechanics (?), “we are artists painting the floor with the music.”

I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to feel the dance within and express it with every movement and every beat of the music. I wanted to attune to the inner dancer first and foremost and to bring that to the dance and my dance partner. 

Tango Flo

A shock to me, the dancing emerged not from the steps but between the steps, in the subtle dips and shifts and body dynamics that happen in and around the transition between foot placements. All this led to the development of some exercises that developed into what seemed most appropriately titled Tango Flo.

Over the next few blogs, I will elucidate the particulars and principles included in this practice as well as post a few practice videos. The movements are core ergonomic exercises that reinforce a sense of dance and elegance. They are particularly formative for beginner dancers but are also helpful for hackers like me who find themselves continually searching for the essence of Tango.

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*In defense of Piazzolla, one of my (everyone’s?) favourite Tangos is Oblivion. Also, the most beautiful Tango presentations Patricia and I have ever seen was Milonga del Angel, performed by our first Tango teachers, Ernst Eder and Tamara Hartman in conjunction with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. There were two other memorable performances by Vince and Cindy Davis and Cristina and Vincente Munoz on the same program, also to Piazzolla.