Tango is not only a fascinating dance but also a fascinating philosophy, culture and lifestyle. The search of tango is the search of connection, love, fellowship, unity, harmony and beauty, i.e., an idealism that is not consistent with the dehumanizing reality of the modern world. The world divides us into individuals, but tango unites us into a team, community and species. In tango we are not individualists, feminists, nationalists, Democrats, Republicans, etc., but interconnected and interdependent members of the human family. Tango calls us to tear down the walls, to build bridges, and to regain humanity through affinity, altruism, cooperation, and accommodation. It is a dance that teaches the world to love.



November 2, 2011

Tango Embrace


Tango can be danced in a variety of ways. For example, it can be danced in a virtual embrace in which the two partners dance around each other at a distance without any physical contact. The man leads the woman with a visual signal from his torso to show how he wants her to move, and the woman follows the visual lead to carry out the step. A visual lead is difficult to perceive because it must be seen and cannot be felt. The differences between different signals often are so subtle that they are difficult to discern with the eye. It's quite a challenge for the man to send a clear visual signal and for the woman to apprehend it. Also, a virtual embrace lacks the physicality, sensation and comfort of a physical embrace. It disables movements that require physical support. Despite these limits, the virtual embrace discloses an important distinction between lead and follow. The former is ploting the dance, and the latter is beautifying the dance. (See The Gender Roles in Tango.) It also reveals the fact that lead and follow is not just a physical process but also a psychological one, demanding mental concentration and comprehension. The awareness of this fact is important because we cannot dance well with the feet unless we can dance with the heart.

Tango can also be danced in an open dance hold like that in ballroom dancing, where the dancers only make connection with their arms and hands without the direct contact of their torsos. Arms and hands are extensions of the body. Even in absence of direct bodily contact the dancers can still sense each other’s intentions via their arms and hands. The open dance hold, also known by its fine-sounding name “open embrace,” provides more room for the dancers to maneuver their bodies, thus is favored by the movement-oriented dancers who like to do fancy performance. It is arguable, however, that in open embrace the dancers still lead and follow with their torsos as they theoretically should. In reality, due to lack of direct bodily contact, dancers tend to rely on their arms and hands to send and receive signals, which is not as seamless as leading and following with the torsos. Also, open embrace lacks the intimacy, comfort and soulfulness of close embrace.

Tango can also be danced using only torso communication without the help of the arms and hands. Torso communication is unique to Argentine tango, which separates it from other dance forms and makes it an intimate and feeling-oriented dance. However, beginners who are not used to this way of dancing often prefer to use their arms and hands to send and receive signals. To help students overcome that habit, tango teachers may ask them to dance only with their torsos connected, free from the help of the arms and hands. Some tango teachers may even put a piece of paper between the students' chests and ask them not to let the paper fall as they dance. People do not actually dance tango that way, but the torso leading/following skills obttained from this training will lay a solid foundation for their tango dancing. (See The Fourteenth Pitfall of a Tanguera.)

The most comfortable and communicative embrace is the close embrace in which the partners lean into each other chest against chest and face touches face, with their arms encircle each other's body. Close embrace provides the most intimate connection and most effective communication, thus is favored by the feeling-oriented dancers who enjoy the intimate, cozy and soulful interactions between the partners more than gymnastic acts.




Beginners may find close embrace hinders their movements, but that is only because they are novices. Dancing in close embrace requires skills and techniques different from those used in open embrace tango, such as dancing in a compact way, using small, simple and rhythmic steps, the command on dissociation, the mastery of cadencia, the ability to do spot dancing, the knack in floorcraft on a crowded dance floor, the focus on feelings rather than steps, and the emphasis on the elegance rather than flaunt of the movements, ect.

Experienced dancers also use some variations of close embrace to increase movement possibilities. One variation is the V-shaped embrace in which the two partners are connected with one side of their torsos and leave the other side open. Another is increasing the lean of the body to allow more space between legs. The combination of the two is yet another option. These variations require more flexibility and stamina of the body, and are less comfortable than the standard close embrace. In actual dancing the embrace often varies. For example, when dancing ocho the woman alternates from one side V-shaped connection to a chest-to-chest connection to another side V-shaped connection.

The choice of embrace dependends on many factors, including physical conditions (flexibility and stamina of the body), dance styles (movement-oriented or feeling-oriented), purposes (social dancing or performance), environment (floor density and milonga codes), music (fast or slow tempo), movements (fancy or simple, large or small steps), maturity (age and experience), and genres (tango, vals or milonga). Every embrace has its merits and limits. In the milonguero style of tango, close embrace is used to facilitate the communication of feelings. In the Villa Urquiza style of tango, a loose embrace is used to ease fancy footwork. In stage tango, open embrace is used to deliver intricate performance. (See Three Theories on Leading.)

Close embrace won tango a reputation of the “dance of the brothel” and caused its rejection by the hypocritical "polite society." The emergence of the open-embrace style contributed to the spread of tango. Some dancers of the younger generation saw a new vein for fancy performance in the open-embrace style and launched the tango Nuevo movement, which gained the momentum especially outside of Argentina where intimacy between the opposite sexes is a cultural taboo. (See Tango: Historical and Cultural Impacts.) As tango moved in that direction, it lost its original feel. Gymnastic tendency, antisocial behavior, the break of the embrace, the adoption of non-tango elements, the swap of gender roles, alternative music, same-sex partnership and other attempts to reform the dance come in succession, transforming tango into a hybrid dance. The old guards in the home country of tango, the Argentine milongueros, strongly defend its roots. Their way of dancing tango, known as the milonguero style danced in close embrace (See The Styles of Tango.), is still the dominant style in Buenos Aires today. But the battle between the traditionalists and the reformers continues.





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