Steps were/are/ will be created by dancers, mostly the leaders. If you fixate on the steps, spend much of your mind of memorizing the steps, and try to recreate these steps in your dance, then you are forever trapped in the tango labyrinth. At a certain stage of your tango journey, you would realize that you are the creator of the steps, not the slave of them.
“How to do a nice(perfect) giro?” I asked Javier after my imitation of one of his moves. “What’s a giro?” He answered. Instead, he had me standing relaxed, feet together, in practice hold.
“Close your eyes” Andrea translated “now try to remember this movement.”
Javier slowly drew a counter clockwise circle with my upper body. “This is the sensation. Remember that.” Then he and Andrea danced to show me the body movement and energy, but not the steps…
I used to be fascinated by Javier’s unique footworks (steps). I had spent hours loading his Youtube clips in Flash and watched them frame by frame, tried to break down his steps. I wanted to dance like him.
After the private lessons with him, I realized that I didn’t want to dance just like him any more. I want to dance like myself. Of course, I will carry certain distinctive/signature Javier features, ones which he probably learned from his maestros: the embrace, the energy… It was what he taught me, however, freed my mind, my fixation of those fantastic steps of his.
The repertoire of tango is muy grande. But it is also very simple: natural: listen to your body, your body will tell you how to dance…
Your mind tells your body how to move, your body then tells your feet…
Think of whereabout of the fellower’s foot (always on one foot), not your feet during the dance.
—Javier Rodriguez
Understand how to dance elegantly, how to dance sensually, the essence of tango, the connection between the two.
Think of the feet as paint brush, the floor as a canvas. You dance as painting on the floor with brushes.
—Maestro Carlos De Chey
Understand these, I begin to dance with more freedom.
Afterword:
For those who haven’t developed the ability to control their body movement or understood the above, if you strongly feel that you must learn the steps, at least learn how your body leads to the steps, not how your feet steps to the steps.
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