The posture

The walk

When I first started tango less than two years ago, I did a lot of scraping on the web. Tried to get the idea of what is good tango. Tango and Chao has given me a good sense of the physics of walking. Yet I had been struggled to develop a consistent walking style.

In fact, one third of my privates with Javier and Andrea was spending on getting my walk straight. And in NYC, when I work with my partner and Maestro Carlos De Chey, we spend most of the time on walking as well. Carlos has stressed a lot on cadencia, less on the mechanics of the walk itself. Javier taught me how to concentrate on the foot that is on the ground and how to walk naturally without bending the knee intentionally.

Towards to the end of the my private sessions, I got the feeling of walking naturally and straight. Then again, it has a lot to do with the follower’s embrace and walk as well. I feel that I am losing my new gained smooth walk fast after I came back and danced in the milongas. Fortunately my partner had private session with Maxi Copello and readjusted her embrace. Thee few practicas that we had together was stressful, but for a few moment we both felt that our walk was smooth and very comfortable. Then again, to have the walk perfect, it will probably take another six months to 1 year if not longer.

There are many different styles or way to walk. But the fundamental is the same. Tango and Chaos has detail analysis on walks of different milongueros. Great reading. Highly recommended. This is my favourite one by J&A (of course):

The embrace

Embrace is very important aspect of dance, if not the most important one. Yet a lot of schools/teachers don’t stress embrace and leave the students to discover on their own.

A lot of people say and teach close embrace as two persons hugging each other, like friends, lovers and family. That is probably the biggest misconception. Granted, there are many different ways to embrace in tango, and the embrace is changing and readjusting throughout the dance. If you watch a lot of youtube clips and pay attention to the best (or ex best) dancers’ embraces, you will find similar characteristics.

This is the embrace that is taught by Javier and Andrea. Man, the leader, opens his chest, feels it expand grande but not to stick out his sternum; left palm faces his left ears, relaxes his shoulders and chest; tuck his navel in, tighten his abs and rib cage (requires works on your core); and breathe in your chest. Then he invites the woman to come to his embrace, by holding her right hand up and over without any tension of pulling, embrace her at the level of the bottom of her breasts line, as if he places her breast over his chest and lift/support them by natural expanding his chest.

The woman, the follower, comes to the man, places her chest over his, as if she hangs herself on his chest with hers; and her left arm places naturally over the man’s shoulder or upper arm, sometimes her left palm presses in and upward to allow better connection with the man without weighing on him.

In this embrace, I find more freedom for both to move. And the woman gets much better sensation which I will talk about in “Don’t wake her up”. This is just the technical aspect of the embrace. It is just half of embrace.

A perfect embrace starts with the cabaceo, through the eyes, which also called windows of the hearts, of two persons. The man takes her right hand and invites her to the embrace. At this moment, he should show his confidence that he is the best of the floor and he could take care of her in the crowded pista and give her two wonderful minutes. The confidence is so strong that the others on the floor feel it too, so they will respect his space when he dances around.

It is when the woman feels the confidence in the man, she takes the last step towards him and allows him to embrace her. Then she completely surrenders into the embrace and waits for him to show her two blissful minutes.

“I can teach you how to dance, but I can’t teach you embrace.” Maestro Carlos told me once.”…I am glad that you’ve found your own.”

Shy, intimidated of dancing with one of the best, and nervous of making mistake or causing injury to her. Not until I put away those emotions and started envisioning myself as the best, did Andrea Misse tell Javier and me that the embrace was “Perfecto”.

” keep this embrace. Don’t lose it.” Javier nodded at me.

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Afterword:

A man does not automatically embrace the woman. Instead, he takes her hand; invites her and waits for her acceptance. The woman takes the last step to allow the man to embrace her.

There is no step…

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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