November 29, 2013
Men's Common Mistakes in Tango
1. Not listening to music
Some men fail to dance to music because they don't know how to listen to tango music (see The Characteristics of Classic Tango), others because they are so focused on leading steps that they cannot hear the music. The former is a problem of musicality. The latter is that of attention allocation. Dancing tango requires the ability to assign attention to many aspects simultaneously, including embrace, posture, connection, partner, relaxation, coordination, music, feelings, movements, choreography, etc. Among them listening to music must be the first priority because dancing tango is dancing music, not steps. The latter is but an expression of the former. In leading, the man must first pay attention to the music. He must not only think about the steps and forget about the music.
2. Leading difficult steps
Some men like to lead difficult steps that are beyond their comfortable zone, which take so much of their attention that they become heedless of other aspects of tango. Beginners often mistake complexity for beauty, but in fact one has nothing to do with the other. On the contrary, elegant beauty lies in simplicity. By keeping things simple, the dancers can better distribute their attention, relax their bodies, refine their movements, focus on the music and feelings, and enjoy the intimacy. Unlike stage tango that features performance, social tango emphasizes the inner experience, so simple steps are more suitable. Dancing social tango with difficult steps of performance tango can easily backfire (see Social Tango and Performance Tango).
3. Leading with arms and hands
Novice men lead with their arms and hands for various reasons. First, using arms and hands is a hard habit to break. Second, they do not know how to lead other than using their arms and hands. Third, many women prefer to dance in an open dance hold, leaving men little choice but using their arms and hands. Fourth, some teachers allow students to use open dance hold when practicing steps, reinforcing this bad habit. However, leading with the arms and hands conflicts with the essence of tango, that is, intimacy, oneness, and synchronization. Tango is a close-embrace and torso-led dance from the beginning, which separates it from other partner dances. For a man, learning tango is learning to lead with his torso, not his arms and hands. Beginners must overcome the habit of using the arms and hands and develop the habit and ability to lead with the torso.
4. Sending mixed signals
He who uses arms and hands to lead usually does not know how to lead with the torso. When his arms and hands put forth strength in one direction but his torso does not move or turn accordingly, that sends mixed signals. While improved body-hand coordination may help, the fundamental solution is replacing hand leading with torso leading. Arms and hands should be used only to form a comfortable embrace and not as tools to lead and follow. Unaware that his body can affect the woman's movements, the man may try to lead the woman with his arms and hands before he has completed the weight change. But since the two dancers are connected, the incompleteness of his weight change means that she, too, has not completed her weight change. Making her take a step in that situation with the arms and hands is demanding the impossible. The woman must complete her weight change before she can take the step. Such errors could be avoided if the man leads with his torso instead of his arms and hands (see The Functions of Various Body Parts in Tango).
5. Bending over
I must emphasize that you should lead with your torso, not your chest, because the entire upper body is used in leading. Chest leading is a misguided concept. Which part of the torso is used to lead depends on the heights of the two dancers. If they are about the same height, then using the chest to lead is correct. However, if the man is much taller than the woman, using the chest to lead will cause him to bend over and stick out his buttock, which not only looks bad but also adds pressure on the woman, causing her to bend backwards. A tall man should keep his body straight and use his abdomen rather than chest to lead a short woman.
6. Bowing the head
Tango partners often put their heads together when dancing, which is nice if they are about the same height. But if the man is much taller than the woman, that could cause him to bow his head, curve his torso, hold his chest in, stick his buttock out, and bend his knees. Not only does this look awful, but it has a negative impact on the woman's dancing. A tall man and a short woman better not tango together because it neither looks good nor feels comfortable. But if they choose to dance together, then the woman may rest her head on his chest, but the man should not bow his head over to meet her head. Instead, he should maintain a good posture by keeping his body tall, head up and knees straight.
7. Coercing the woman to submit
An immature leader may think that the woman should surrender to him and obey him unconditionally during the dance. But the fact is, surrender and obedience must be mutual. Tango is teamwork. The two partners need to cooperate and accommodate with each other. To lead is not to coerce, but to guide, support, collaborate, adapt, protect, and help the woman to unfold her skills and beauty. Just as the woman should follow his lead, the man should submit to the need of the woman in order for the two to dance as one coherent body. There must not be any coerce in leading.
8. Self-centeredness
A self-centered leader often fails to take into consideration the axis, balance, time, space and support that the woman needs in dance. Examples of his self-centeredness include taking care only of his own balance and ignoring hers, leading her to take a step before she has completed her weight change, letting her rotate on a tilted axis, leading her to move but blocking her path, not giving her enough time to finish her step, leading her to do things beyond her ability and so on, which can cause her to feel coerced and rushed. The man must think from the standpoint of the woman and adjust his embrace, posture, axis, weight, speed, lead, etc. to accommodate her needs and facilitate her movements, so that she can feel free in dance.
9. Not giving her enough support
Letting her dance freely does not mean letting her dance alone without your support. An inexperienced man often sends a signal and then waits for the woman to follow, but fails to provide her with the support that she needs in her dancing. In fact, such support is crucial because she is leaning on you. Failure to provide her with the support may cause her to lose balance and compromise her dance. When she moves into you, you have to retreat without losing your support for her. When she moves away from you, you have to move with her to maintain your support for her. Otherwise she will feel falling away.
10. Overlooking ancillary actions
Unfamilliar with the structure of the step is another problem for a beginner. Most tango steps are not made up of only one action but a serious of actions. For example, doing ocho at cruzada includes five actions: unwinding the crossed leg, taking a forward step with that leg, swiveling the hips and pivoting, taking another forward step with the other leg, and swiveling the hips and pivoting again. Thus the entire sequence needs to be led with five actions. If you do not break down the sequence and attempt to bring out two actions with one lead, that will be difficult for the woman to follow. A beginner tends to focus on the featured step and overlook the ancillary action. For example, he leads the woman to take a forward step without unwinding her crossed leg first, or leads her to make a step when she is yet to complete her hip rotation.
11. Untrained musicality
That problem is particularly reflected in his handling of music. The musicality of a beginner is crude. He might be able to recognize the rhythm and keep her foot on the beat, but his handling of the ancillary actions is often unmusical. Still use the example of ocho in which he tends to focus only on the featured action, the forward step. Once a forward step is made, he immediately lead the next forward step in the opposite direction. While both steps may be led to music, the transitional actions between the two steps, namely hip rotation and pivot, are led off the beat. Such lead cannot satisfy a mature follower who expects the leader to handle all aspects of the entire sequence in an exquisite way that every action of the sequence meets the rhythm, melody, speed and mood of the music perfectly. Only in such a fashion dancing tango becomes a real treat.
12. Self-exhibition
Some men use their partner as a foil to their own performance. They invent more and more fancy steps to show off at the milonga, drawing eyeballs to their own exhibition. In my opinion that is a bad trend in social tango today. The man's job is to plot the dance, stir up the woman's feelings, let her resonate with the music, bring her skills into full play, shine her, protect her, and let her fully enjoy dancing with him. Instead of drawing eyeballs to his own performance, he should focus on making her the center of attention. The maturity of a leader is measured by how well his partner dances and how satisfied she is, not by his own exhibition (see Partner-Centered Leading vs. Self-Centered Leading).
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"Catch us if you can! We were young with all of our hearts!"
ReplyDeleteMost of us did not start doing the tango in order the get the ocho just right. Most of us saw elegant, dramatic and erotic moves in a performance that took our breath away. Then we take tango lessons and dance among older people who look down their noses at beginners for not doing the details as well as they can, who are quite conservative in their tastes, who are uptight about the eroticism, who are offended when attractive young people look better at the erotic movements than they do, and who are too weak, inflexible, heavy, and cowardly to do the more dramatic moves. You try to get along with the teachers and older established dancers, so you take on some of their cautious attitudes. Then you find you're getting more and more fussy at a very different dance than the one you wanted to do in the first place.
It is impossible to do something bolder or more creative without mistakes. In any creative community (dancers, artists, poets, scholars) there is a playful, tolerant attitude toward people trying new stuff. If you try something that doesn't work, instead of saying you're being egotistical and selfish, they laugh, say good for you, you took risks, and added to the creative possibilities of our community. That conservative "no new movements", (or at least not unless you can do them perfectly) attitude is the death of creativity, evolution and life. It maintains tango as an antiquarian cult.
The idea of dividing tango into social dance and "show" dance trivializes efforts to be more creative and to actually do the dance that we were attracted to in the first place. Performance is not just for tourists. It includes ballet, modern dance, jazz and other rich, culturally important forms. It can be brilliant and revolutionary, changing the way we think. It can give tango dance its Isadora Duncans, Sergei Diaghilevs, Merce Cunnihams and Astor Piazzollas. Tango and dance have always included a conversation between performance and social dance. Both should be respected as spaces in which creativity can take place. That's how art and culture evolve in living ways.
Some ladies like cautious dancing. However, most young ladies love it when you want to do something crazy, at least until the older, cautious ones tut-tut them into submission. Doing bold movements is not selfish. The "tango Nazis" who try to exclude the playful dramatic moves that young people can do are the selfish ones.
Should they run before they can walk? Yes! Young dancers can often learn bold lifts quickly and beautifully, long before they perfect going to the cross. There is no reason to delay teaching a lift to a young, strong, light, flexible dancer. We should learn the bold move while we can. We should not have to wait months or years until we are not physically capable of doing them anymore.
The commercial culture is all about catching and impressing, it promotes constant changes, repackaging, exoticism, "creativity" and "boldness". People grown up in such culture and philosophy exhibit a lack of depth and lasting quality. They confuse bizarreness with beauty, focus too much on flashy forms rather than substances, and constantly seek change and novelty. Commercialism is one of the reasons that get this culture into trouble. Unfortunately, some people don't realize it.
DeleteTango is a creation of modernity - of industrialization that formed a sophisticated, cosmopolitan, urban, working class composed of immigrants from all over the world. It's also a creation of modern mass media - the phonograph and radio - that allowed it to project around the world.
DeleteTango, as you say in your history, went through many changes. It grew and evolved. It has always incorporated outside elements. You point out correctly that the Tango shows overseas - first in the early 20th Century and again in the 1990s revived the tango.Those foreign elements in a way are not foreign at all. They are intrinsic to the tango.
I sympathize with your criticism of commercial culture. However, the modern world has exponentially increased the richness of our culture. There are, as you say, critics of commercial culture who hearken back to "Golden Ages" real and imagined - Luddites, catonists, and plain reactionaries. But at this point that is pretty clearly a dead end. Successful criticism of shallow,exploitative commercial culture is going to have to be creative to survive. Progressives, visionaries, and idealists, who get anywhere look to improving the future, not returning to the past.
Part of the reason creative idealists are more successful is that creativity, innovation, and progress have produced some great things. Some experiments don't work, or are uninspired, but enough of them have been truly inspired that most people see progress as a good thing. I would have to agree with them. Deep, rich modern art forms include modern classical music, jazz, blues, modern dance, jazz dance, movies, architecture, poetry, literature, theater, and so on. Tango is completely part of that. All of these art forms, including tango, have continued to evolve.
You say wisely, in your statement on why people quit tango that we need to be open and tolerant. Part of that is being open to experiments and changes that new members bring.
It especially requires being open to young people. Young people like to experiment. All of these new people will bring new cultural influences, as young people and foreigners have always done in Tango history.
One of the main things young people bring is greater physicality. They bring bigger bolder stuff. They can do it better than older people. We need to encourage young people to join us and to bring their changes, cultural inputs, strength, beauty and exuberance. Let them run. Don't make them slow down to our speed. When we were young we ran hard. We need to give them freedom to do so. Teaching young dancers, I learn more from them than they do from me. We try to catch one another if we can. We play. We enjoy dancing and tango brilliantly.
Most people understand the importance of creativity. But not everyone understands its drawbacks. Every time I bought a smart phone, a smarter one is invented next day. In economic terms this is called "creating demands," so people will throw away their perfectly functional old phones and keep buying new ones. How do you think the natural resources are depleted and the environment destroyed? Human creativity may lead us to a promising future, it may also lead us to destruction, if we think that is the only thing important. Whatever new steps you create, someone will outsmart you the next day, I promise. How do you think you can dance socially if everyone brings his new steps that you don't know?
DeleteOne negotiation between traditional, packed-dance-floor Tango and performance, Nuevo and open-space Tangoes is to acknowledge that the environment in which you are dancing, including social mores, varies a lot, and that dancing sustainably in a specific environment puts limits on what is danced and how.
DeleteIf anyone cries out, "No limits", I'll point at spinal cord damage.