[Tango-L] Stop the Figures and Concentrate on the Connection and the Music

[Ron Weigel]

This relates to what Deby was saying about concentrating on the music
while dancing.

Last night in a class we were teaching on musicality, one of our
followers, who has been dancing for one year, was anxious to know (off
topic) when we were going to teach giros with sacadas. She didn't know
what it was called, but when I demonstrated a 3-step clockwise giro
with sacada emanating from a rock step (we teach close embrace) ending
in a walk to the cross, she identified it. I explained we hadn't
taught that in her sequence of courses yet because there is rarely
enough room on the floor to complete it and thus we would need several
weeks to introduce the options for entry and exit at each step and,
besides, there's a lot more useful stuff to learn that can be used on
any dance floor, e.g., interpreting the musical structure of tango,
milonga, and vals.

After class Susana told me what was behind this. Our student dances
very well for someone dancing one year, but she had encountered
someone at a festival who actually dropped her in the middle of the
floor during a song because she couldn't follow his giros. What kind
of message does that send?!!

There are thousands of dancers out there (probably tens of thousands
worldwide) who learn tango as a set of steps to be executed. The
mindset of these dancers is think a figure, then execute it. They do
their figures without having basic knowledge of partner connection and
musicality. These dance robots execute a set of memorized patterns,
without understanding the leading and following technique that create
them. Dancing set figures may be typical in ballroom dancing, but it
is far from the essence of tango as a social dance.

Embellishments. Last night we were also teaching some embellishments
women can do during pauses (context: dancing to Pugliese). We
emphasized that embellishments need to be done within the time and
space provided by the leader, and should not disrupt the man's
balance. I commented that embellishments are elements that are ADDED
as spice to a dance, to be used sparingly at appropriate moments. They
should not BECOME the dance.

Yet it seems as much as there are Figure Kings by the thousands out
there, there are also thousands of Embellishment Queens. There is
something wrong with a tango educational system that teaches WHAT you
do on your own instead of HOW you dance with your partner and HOW you
dance with the music.

Ron