No food, no fuss, no stress, no demands – completely alone in Seville with the keys to a dance studio, great Tango music and 2 hours of hard solo practise every day.
And a chair.
Category Archives: Tango Learning
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Call and Response as Tango dancers
There is a fantastic explanation of the call and response ( question and answer ) nature of much Tango music here – by Tangomonkey.
This is part of the great site Tango Musicology.
This is such a good article to read – in fact for non-musicians like me the whole site is well worth browsing through. But I particularly have been thinking about the whole issue of call and response – and that once we become sensitive to this as Tango dancers how should we dance within this intricate musical structure?
Hearing it clearly is one thing, and fulfilling in itself – but as one of my teachers expressed so well – “our job is to show the music dance”.
So how should we move within the structure of a call and a response? How do we express this dialog between our bodies as we dance?
The first way I think is purely a matter of phrasing. Phrasing is so important to the enjoyment of Tango – and in the context of this post it could clearly be a foundation in our response if we make sure that we pause at the end of the question, and again at the end of the answer.
Blundering through everything is just going to be inappropriate and frustrating for our partner. In other words we clearly acknowledge the two sections.
The second is perhaps a little too literal for some – but we can echo the rise and the fall of the question and answer by how we pause. The end of the question, for me at least, cries out for a suspension – and the end of the response can be more down, more into the floor.
Executed well level changes have a lot of meaning that I think can be used within this structure.
Then we have the inevitable and for me fascinating exploration that at least in the traditional world, and within the structure of the Tango dance itself – it is the leader who might be expected to pose the question – and the follower who might – if she wishes to do so – indicate a response.
At a basic level the response might be ‘not yet’ or ‘perhaps’ or ‘no’ or ‘yes’,
Or perhaps even ‘yes but I cannot’ – or ‘prove yourself first’.
Or she may wish to indicate that she heard the question, but wishes for now at least to hide her answer. Or that she is not interested in even finding an answer – but then perhaps this might not be Tango at all. She has decided to dance by herself.
So perhaps the leader can confidently and clearly lead her to the cross as a question, where really the follower is strongly lead and she responds by moving very confidently and connected to him as she clearly acknowledges the question. But as she comes back towards the leader, pivots and turns across him the leader might provide a lot of time for her to execute this response with many different approaches and styles.
So it seems to me that the call and response is a way to hand over and take back the essence of leading, just as we would speak and then listen in the natural flow of a conversation that involves a question and an answer.
It is another aspect, I think, of the essence of inviting her first, seeing that she responds and only then as a leader following her – that we all feel in the essence of the way we walk in Tango.
What must be very frustrating is when we as leaders do ask the question, but completely forget to listen to the answer that our partner has all the technical skills and emotions to provide.
She too is with the music, let her show you her response.
When your Tango foundation collapses from under you
I so want to improve – I seek out and work hard with truly great teachers.
But sometimes the floor just drops away – everything you thought you knew is questioned and shown to be weak. Not just one thing – but absolutely everything.
I normally welcome the learning experiences so much – I know that I dance as I do and I so want to be better. I think we are all comfortable with incremental progress.
I absolutely do not want to dance now in the same limited way as I did last month.
But sometimes – like for me right now – it is so hard. I feel I am drowning – fighting for the support of a floor that is no longer there.
Exciting, full of potential – but demoralising and actually physically and mentally painful.
My head is so full I feel that I cannot move. Nothing will flow for a while as my head is shouting thoughts at me – and yet to dance we all need our bodies to be free and not blocked.
Everything I thought I knew is being questioned and I am being given a new instruction set to rebuild it so it will stand up to the hardest of examinations.
I always needed to move forwards – but sometimes when we ask for whole new levels in our dance technique, musical understanding and awareness of ours and our partners bodies – just sometimes it actually happens – and then that floor drops away so far into the deep that we feel we have lost everything – and we cannot breathe.
That is me right now.
Completely breathless.
I asked what they thought about my Tango – And they told me..
Determined – as ever – to improve – I asked my teachers and followers that I so respect – and who dance with me a lot – to tell me what they thought. I asked them to give me a score out of 10 – on 11 aspects of my dancing.
Here is what I asked them to score me on – with my highest average score at the top and the lowest at the bottom :
Focus as a student
Supportive and not critical
Focus on the follower
Embrace
Musicality
Creativity
Dance vocabulary
Allowing her time
General pace – not rushing
Posture
Pausing
Before I comment on the new perspective this has given me …
Everyone ranked me 100% on my focus as a student. I was pleased with this not because I am some kind of twit but because I have to trust the data, as much as I can. I already know I am a ‘good student’ – it is in all of Tango the only thing that I can control. So I focus on this – I hunt great teachers down help them to care about me – and I try all the time to practise, learn and understand.
If someone had ranked me as weak in this area I actually would have disregarded all of their feedback – as ultimately there is some objective reality that needs to underpin such a hard to quantify space.
So – to what I have learned – as a radar plot of the averages:
This was exactly what I was looking for – a clear guidance – a strong message – to get better I need to work much harder on one set of closely related aspects:
Allowing her time
General pace – not rushing
Pausing
And then I also – as I know – need to always concentrate on Posture.
What was surprising – and therefore educational – was that I thought was strong in the above 3 areas of giving her time and pacing – clearly I am not – what fantastic information.
But here to me is the amazing thing – the complete variation that each person feels dancing with me!
This is hard to assess visually – my main take aways are to do with aspects of my dancing that do not fall in the areas most needing of attention according to averages. Specifically :
- One partner ranked me as the lowest of all her scores in creativity. For everyone else this was a strength – with one 7 and all the rest 8, 9 or 10
- One teacher gave me the worst scores on musicality – everyone else thought 8,9 or 10. This at a time when I have been studying musicality at an obsessive level, for months on end.
- 3 people ranked me very low on dance vocabulary – when I thought I knew too many steps and am now always looking to simplify the dance in terms of ‘choreography’ – believing that ‘less is more’
The lesson here is a strong one – each partner is evaluating ‘ME’ in terms of ‘US’. Of course they are – they naturally care about themselves – and their own satisfaction and joy in the dance. For each of them I am a fit only in as much as I enable them to experience the joy they are each looking for.
They all want different things, they all have different backgrounds and desires to explore different parts of themselves through Tango. I either match what they think they are looking for – or I do not.
This is such an important lesson and I will be giving this a lot of thought. Can I be all things to all people? No. But I can learn from this :
- If I want to work on creativity – and I do – then I should work with the person who feels I am not creative enough – not those who already enjoy my creativity. Now I know who that person is.
Creativity in Tango absolutely can be studied and worked on – and I also have a wonderful teacher for that.
To have the teacher and now the partner identified is so helpful for this next phase in focussed learning.
- If I want to learn more and more about musicality turn to the teacher who feels I have more to give in this area.
- Keep increasing the range of dance vocabulary I have – even if in any one dance I may choose to only use a few. Balance the ‘less is more’ principle with having the appropriate tools well learned and available.
Tango is about two people and the music. I can only make sure my part is the strongest it can be when trying to create something with this person, in this moment, to this music. And this person is an individual who has their own expectations of me as her partner.
I need to find out what they are and to help her – with all of her complexities and expectations – to dance in the way she just loves.
That is my job and if I can do this with sensitivity then my own ultimate goal of being a brilliant social dancer will indeed be tangibly closer.
Pugliese : Pata Ancha
So I disappear down another rabbit hole.
Breathlessly pursuing Borges, Pugliese and the Spanish Language through echoing caverns of meaning and history.
I think as native English speaking Tango students – when there is a lyric – we at least stand a chance. We can google, find someone else’s talented work in translation. Learn from it. Add to this over time.
It may be poetic, it may have a lot of Lunfardo – but we can normally get the essence, and maybe that helps us to interpret better.
But when as dancers we are responding to something as dramatic as the more passionate Pugliese instrumentals we can feel lost. There is just nothing individual to hang onto. Yes ‘Pata Ancha’ has the classic Yumba sound from the first moments – that signature marcato that might bring to mind the heartbeat of the city, or the metalworkers in the factory – but we need more.
So google will tell you that Pata Ancha means – ‘wide leg’.
Well that’s good – it doesn’t mean some kind of fish pate then. But what on earth .. Sex? Solidity? Strength? The brutality of ugliness?
No. But of course this is pointing us towards the answer. It is at least a start.
I am in such very severe danger of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing – and I do welcome help from anyone – please – but Martín Fierro (El Gaucho) is an epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. Published in two parts n the 1870s.
And in this poem is ( the first? Most relevant?) mention of a colloquial meaning of the phrase ‘Pata Ancha’ – “Dealing with anger to any danger”.
Echoes of the meaning of “Mandria’ – ( D’Arienzo ) – not just as worthless – but as the way Gauchos used to knife fight each other – not to the death but until one of them was facially scarred and so was worthless to a woman.
And so it comes back again to the Gaucho roots of Milonga / Tango – of course Gauchos wore wide pants.
They were passionate, rural and proud – they in many ways defined their lives in harsh terms – wanting to die proud – to respond by putting themselves on the line.
And it is this essence of the early Milonga that as I understand it Borges wanted to get back to. He resented the loss of the guitar, the introduction of romanticism, Lunfardo and even vocals at all. To him the essence was the Pampa, the space, the freedom and a man finding himself.
And at this point I am just going to stop and refer anyone interested to a really worthwhile, fascinating and academic reference ( also attached so hopefully one will work borges-milonga ) that Borges and Pugliese led me to as I chased them down a rabbit hole, about 4 hours ago. And I am still falling.. and falling.
Enjoy.
Lead me but keep the follower’s embrace
So much is said about followers and leaders – but surely what matters is communication so that we can together share the dance and the music to take it in whatever direction we each feel.
A wonderful exercise – that thanks to the inspiration of Joao Alves – I have been including in my tango schedule for a couple of years now – is ‘dancing with no arms’. In his lessons the general approach is normally consistent – solo exercises with him and the mirror, then dancing with no arms, then drawing the embrace – and then the lesson.
After thinking about this for a while I am starting to extend this now to a structure where we as a couple will dance with no arms, but my partner can communicate to me – with her body – that she is now the leader. And then we can communicate the change back. It is going to be hard work – but so fascinating.
Our goal is that this can be completely natural and seamless – so that at any time in the dance she can take the role that we refer to as leading – and then hand it back.
All with no change of role expressed through an embrace change. That is something else entirely. With no con tricks – just a passing of the setting of the structure of the dance from one to the other, through communication between our bodies, whenever this adds richness to our experience.
We work on this ‘with no arms’ precisely because this way of moving together has already lost the symbolic confirmation of the asymmetrical embrace – and so it is much easier to break down our preconceptions.
My next goal – for many months into the future – is that from the natural follower’s embrace she should be able to take over, express herself, and then – if she feels it is appropriate to the music – to lead me simple things like an intent for either one of us to boleo or planeo.
So she takes the lead over not just so that she can express her emotion through what we think of as embellishments – to demand her emotional space – but so that she can also request a specific response from me. And I will be a good enough listener to answer her.
And then jointly agree to change it back.
Our task is in no way for her to learn the detailed role of the figures and complexity of being a leader – but instead to be able to take over the setting of the intent. And to use this to request emotion back from me in more than just those figures that we naturally associate with the role that has to work within – and not disturb – the structure of our dance.
It’s so very, very exciting – I hope so much that it works.
Precision and Posture
I have been watching videos of professionals dancing with students – and in particular my own teachers. From those videos I take stills. And even in the stills it is staggeringly obvious who the professionals are.
To me that’s intriguing – they don’t even have to be moving to show the world that they are a great tango dancer.
So what does this mean? I think it shows the importance of
- Precision
- Posture
- Line
- Expression
Lets take a simple side step. Surely I can manage one of those?
When Joao makes this side step you know exactly what it is – and that this is the point of the moment, His torso sits firmly on the triangle of that expressive definite step – everything is strongly connected to the floor. The lines are precise and he is totally grounded. Even though he is of course in motion.
A definite expressive sense of the moment – it is this – it is a side step.
And the same with Kirsty – she is showing the world what a side step is.
Clean lines, definite, precise.
I find it amazing that great dancers – in motion – can be frozen in time and they still express exactly the nature of Tango. They show components as they move from axis to axis – always showing the world – and their partner – what Tango is.
- Precision
- Posture
- Line
- Expression
That’s the next year of practice sorted out then!
Starting to Hear Tango in 3D
I am feeling like a new world is opening.
For the very first time I am able to listen to different layers of Tango music – simultaneously. It is a very new experience – so much richer, deeper – and full of information. Like white light broken down into it’s components – each ready for me to react to.
The music comes to me as a whole – pre-packed and launched by the lyricist, composer and all of the individuals in the orchestra to match a creative vision – handed down and perhaps embellished with new variations through the decades.
This entire song is there for me to listen to and react to – but now perhaps I start to have the tools to break it back down to its components – to react as a dancer in my upper or lower body as best I can.
I have my torso and my legs – and her. They have the melody and the rhythm – and each other. They have the limitations of notes on a page, but a charismatic orchestra leader with a vision – I have my hearing, my understanding and my emotions. And her.
Then I must move.
And most importantly – as I move of course I invite her to respond based on whatever she hears when she listens to the same music.
I choose a melody and my torso responds – but perhaps she hears the underlying pattern of the beats – so stays in contact with me but her feet are with the floor and choose to dance to the rhythm.
Upper body, lower body – melody and rhythm. Her and me – us and them. Dissociations ripple around us. The light is broken down and analysed.
It doesn’t come easy – nothing in Tango does – I have to concentrate – but yes – for the first time it is possible. Perhaps. If I really care, if I focus – if I listen and then I actively choose. If I work hard. Maybe I can do this.
If I dance to one, and she takes the other – can we then together reassemble it? Can she clearly communicate with me? Can she lead me through these joint decisions?
Can we by moving together recreate the white light of Tango but illuminated now by dance?
Tango conversations – who is talking to whom?
All of us that have been dancing for a while will have enjoyed the moments where there is an interplay between lead and follow that we often refer to as a ‘conversation’.
Until very recently I never thought to question who was having the conversation – there are only two of us after all. But now I am experimenting with the idea that in these moments I am often listening – and the real conversation is often between the follower and the music.
But the key – I think – is that word ‘mostly’ – when she dances with the music she needs to know that I am there – that I have not abandoned her. There is a moment when I give everything over to her – and I remain as a stable engaged structure – but never should she feel lost – just playing with her own responses to the emotional landscape in isolation.
One of my wonderful teachers talks about the fact that the music knows nothing about dance, and our job as dancers is to introduce the music to dance. We take this role on as a couple – we accept the musical landscape and together we negotiate our response. It is natural that the focus of our relationship – the two dancers and the music – shifts in all possible combinations. Sometimes the music might suggest a walk, and the leader responds – he has listened and the conversation is between him and the powerful rhythm of the music. For a musical phrase the follower might just enjoy the result – and be walked. But then the focus changes – there is a wonderful series of complex tumbling notes that the follower responds to.
I think this role of the leader – to be always there – to always be dancing even in stillness – to never abandon her – to participate as the focus shifts again and again – is so important.
The skill is to jointly agree who has the focus, and to exchange our roles from leader and follower between the two dancers and the music so as to create a work that is creative, natural, balanced and spontaneous. And – ultimately – musical in itself.
As we all learn after a few years – the semantics of leading and following simply demonstrate a lack of vocabulary for what beautiful Tango consists of – the continual exchange and creation of meaning between two people and the music – with a constant flowing and shifting of the role of all 3.
When ‘Correct’ is not good enough
For so long as students we all strive to be correct.
We learn figures, we watch performers and teachers. We work hard – trying to be ‘right’. Trying not to make mistakes.
To learn to be more correct seems to be why we go to classes.
Recently I have began to feel that correct is boring. That the woman is in danger of disappearing – of loosing her individuality to the correct and familiar execution of what is asked of her.
As a leader I have been studying the footage of milongueros – building up video resources and notes – and the one thing I do not see is any sense of uniformity. They share fantastic musicality and creative skills, which they express in such extremely individual ways.
And who among us would have the temerity to describe them as wrong?
Just one example – I have been learning from clips of Pibe Avellande – particularly that wonderfully creative dance with Luna Palacios at salon Canning to Rodriguez.
Is there anything at all that is “correct” about the posture of El Pibe?
I can just hear the teachers now – ‘stand up straight’ .. ‘don’t hunch’ .. ‘be more gentle’ .. ‘don’t stretch the woman’s arm like that’ .. ‘walk properly not like a crab’ – in short – stop being amazing and just dance Tango like everyone else in the class.
Of course I don’t have the 40 years – or the talent – to be so creative and so connected to the music as this.
But I am already so enjoying it when people that I am lucky enough to dance with express their own individual interpretation, when the energy flows back and forwards between us. When neither of us are following or leading – and when right and wrong don’t exist between us in the same way that they used to.
It is so exciting when you feel on the edge – when you take risks, enjoy the moments of surprise – and stay with the emotional landscape of the music however the dice fall.