[Tango-L] So, what is better, heel of toe?

[Huck Kennedy]

Igor writes:
> Imagine this: one lands on the heel: weight is not transferred yet ( this is
> the way ). This is phase one. Then there is phase two when the weight is
> brought to be projected above the heel. Than it could be the phase three
> when one transfers weight from heel to the ball. This could be the whole
> step by itself ! Each of the phases gives birth to a variety of feeling,
> influences, responses, and rhythmical plays..

     Ah yes, Igor, now I remember why I prefer Argentine
tango to ballroom dancing:  Some instructor isn't
constantly badgering you with all this sort of intricate
deconstructionist crap, and you get to just have fun
getting entranced with the music and embrace instead.  :)

     To tell you the truth, this is not something I think
about all that much.  Sitting here at my desk typing,
I imagine I go ball-first more on slower and more dramatic
stuff and heel-first or flat-foot on faster stuff, but
I couldn't swear for sure.  These days more and more of my
tango is right-brained instead of left-brained, thank God,
allowing me to simply enjoy the music, my partner, and my
sensory perceptions in general, instead of actively
plotting and scheming like a general in battle.

     It's kind of like how when you first learn to drive,
you struggle thinking about every little thing you do,
but when you're older, you often arrive at your
destination before you've really even thought about
having left the driveway.  But still, you're paying very
rapt attention (actually, some people never pay enough
attention while driving, but let's not go there)--but
it's right-brained, rather than left, ie. very sensitive
to perception, but reacting in the moment in the more
unconscious right-brained way of an animal instead of
the more usual for a human, highly self-aware, self-
conscious logically strategizing left-brain way.

     It's like a spell--and if either your dancing partner
on the floor or your companion in the passenger seat in
the car starts babbling, the spell is broken.

     This is why people who just casually babble away
about anything and everything while dancing don't have
the slightest idea what tango is about, by the way.  It's
not because if you break the no-talking-in-tango codigo
then haaaaa haaaaaa, you're not being authentic like
a porteno, nyah, nyah, nyah--it's because it distracts
from the right-brained trance and breaks the spell much
like a bubble bursting, bringing you back from your magic
unthinking tango escape and unceremoniously dumping you
with a thud right smack back into the mundane earthly
plane, DUH.

Huck