[Tango-L] Steps for close embrace in close quarters

[Victor Bennetts]

Mario and others,

I agree with everything Jay and Ed have said, that is pretty much my repertoire as well and I dance pretty much only in close now. Sure I know (or knew ;-)) other stuff, but it falls out of my daily dance if I don't find it useful in expressing the music. Mainly I find that it is the simple stuff that goes furthest.

So when walking in close embrace, for instance, you can get a lot of mileage by just considering all the possibilities. You can walk inside, outside, play with different tempos and lengths of steps all in parallel system. It really is amazing how interesting and varied it can be, but it is a lot harder than it looks. One important thing I found is that to do this well you need good disassociation which a lot of people find difficult, so hence my previous suggestion that you concentrate on exercises. In fact, I don't know why tango dancers don't stretch their torso before dancing. It would make a lot of sense.

To me the other main ingredient is posture. When I got back from Argentina I was dancing all exactly the same steps as before I left but suddenly people were commenting it was like I had grown two inches while I was away. In close embrace, errors of posture are going to have a much more significant impact than in open. From what I have been told by followers this has a direct impact on how the follower experiences your embrace as comfortable or not. So any repertoire is not going to get you very far if your head is down, not connecting with the chest, not dancing with a straight back etc. In fact, you can tell the guys who have not corrected these problems, they are all the ones still dancing tango mainly in open embrace after dancing for years :-).

Victor Bennetts

>Hi Jay,

>Very well said.  What you have written below is pretty much all I >ever do, crowded or not crowded.

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