Tango is an amazing practice for relationship skills. It requires attentive listening and adaptation to one’s partner, while at the same time tending to one’s own positioning, axis and musicality.
Consider other partner dances. I can come off the floor from doing a jive or line dance or whatever, having had a wonderful time, and not knowing anything about my partner other than whether they were a good dancer and remembering little other than if anyone got kicked in the process.
Not Tango. I learn more about a person in a 10-minute tanda than from an hour-long conversation. Sure I don’t get facts and details but I get a sense of how they are in their body: their responsiveness, openness, creativity, generosity, and respectfulness. The list goes on.
The reason for this depth of communication is not merely the embrace, but also the extemporaneous stylizing, the non-mirrored steps and the differentiation of the lead and follow. This allows for an exceptionally articulate conversation with an unlimited vocabulary.
But the strength of the Tango is also its potential flaw. Because this conversation style is sophisticated and complex, the focus in dancing as well as in teaching, is often on how to communicate rather than on what we want to communicate.
As a lead, most of the instruction I have received over the last 20-plus years has been on how I need to move to get my partner to respond in the way I want. At the same time, my partner is learning how to read my lead and respond in a way that matches my intention.
Eventually, as one continues in their Tango journey, the follow is taught how to decorate and adorn the steps and claim some of the musicality for their own. At the same time, the lead is encouraged to slow down and create space for their partner to express their own creativity. And so, for the most part, everything evolves and it all looks good and we have a great time and what is there to complain about, except …
A red flag goes up.
OK I am now taking a giant leap from the dance floor to the therapist’s couch. (A lifetime of counselling and being counselled has hardened a tendency to view things through that lens).
When someone is relating with the primary focus on how one’s actions will affect the other person or determine how they will react, it is called manipulation, co-dependency or many other non-complimentary names. If it is with good intentions the damage is maybe not harmful, except that it is often an excuse for being dishonest or reluctance to be open or present or invest oneself fully in the relationship, which in the long run is bad. When discussing with my therapist relationship issues, she will always bring the focus to how I am feeling and what is my truth. Then, only secondarily, do we explore how I can communicate this with honesty and respectfulness to my partner.
Notice the difference? No manipulation or strategic calculations here. I venture into the engagement with no guarantee that my truth will be accepted or received without condemnation or will not disrupt the whole relationship.
Now the same is true with dancing. Who knew?
Something became clearer to me during COVID isolation when I had to spend 1 ½ years practicing in isolation, listening to and learning from my inner dancer.
I developed a practice regime which combined my years of Tango with my decades-old practice of Tai Chi, meditation and prayer, and occasional experimentation in improvisational dance. Blended together, they revealed a deeper and integrated sense of how my body wanted to move instinctively. I played with stretching out the timing of my movements to allow for more artistic expression. I identified core ergonomic structure to movements that had to that point seemed unnaturally complicated.
Only after honouring my personal dance needs did I consider how they might play out on the dance floor. There was no way of knowing whether what I had created would actually translate into a danceable form until dancing resumed.
And to my amazement, it worked! My self-attentiveness strengthened and clarified my lead and brought depth and richness to my dancing that hadn’t been there before.
The essential difference, apart from some stylistic and ergonomic adjustments, was that I attended to my dance first and how it was feeling to me before I transferred my attention to my dance partner. I danced out of fullness rather than neediness. I came with no agenda or expectation other than that we would meet in the middle, each bringing our own musicality and creativity.
Manipulation, expectation and judgement are displaced by curiosity, acceptance and self-expression. I like it.
Thank you, COVID?