Maintaining Shoulder Parallelism

Milonguero-style tango, known for its close embrace, emphasizes an intimate inner experience and embodies a beauty of cohesion, compactness, elegance, and harmony. This dance style requires partners to maintain chest-to-chest contact and keep their shoulders parallel to achieve maximum connection and effective communication.

Many dancers underestimate the importance of shoulder parallelism. Some women place their bodies on the right side of the man's body, with their left arm hugging his right side, instead of being chest to chest in front of him with their left arm hooking over his shoulder, causing a misalignment of the bodies. Others make contact with only one side of the torso while keeping the other side open, forming a V-shape with their partner. Some compromise shoulder parallelism to execute movements, even positioning their shoulders at a vertical angle to their partner’s. Many women rotate their entire bodies instead of dissociating at the hips, disrupting shoulder alignment. Additionally, men often lead complex movements that force women to sacrifice connection and shoulder parallelism. These habits contradict tango’s intimate, feeling-oriented nature and diminish the artistic quality and harmony of the dance.

Beginners must understand that tango is not about executing steps but about expressing music, emotions, and feelings through an intimate close embrace and physical interaction. Maintaining chest contact and shoulder parallelism is essential for preserving the connection, intimacy, comfort, and emotional depth that define the dance.

Dancers must overcome the mental barriers that prevent them from learning and dancing tango properly. Many beginners feel shy about physical closeness, causing them to instinctively create distance from their partner. To fully embrace and enjoy the comfort, sentimentality, and intimacy that tango offers, they must let go of cultural preconceptions.

From a technical perspective, the close embrace necessitates mastering dissociation—a technique in which the upper body remains stable while the lower body rotates. This skill is key to maintaining shoulder parallelism and ensuring a seamless connection throughout the dance (see Dissociation and Gear Effect).

Men should avoid leading women into overly challenging movements and instead use natural, simple steps. The range of dissociation at the hips is limited—exceeding this limit disrupts shoulder parallelism. Therefore, men should refrain from leading steps that require excessive hip rotation, and women should strive to maintain shoulder alignment while executing movements.

In conclusion, maintaining chest contact and shoulder parallelism in close-embrace tango ensures maximum body connection, which is crucial for fully experiencing the intimacy, sensuality, and emotional depth that make this style a soulful and comforting dance. It also enhances the dance’s aesthetic appeal, reinforcing its cohesive, compact, elegant, and harmonious visual beauty. Tango students should strive to overcome habits that contradict the essence of tango and polish skills that align with its purpose (see Contra Body Movement in Dance).

Beauty Will Save the World

People who are drawn to tango are captivated by the inner and formal beauty that the dance represents. By learning to tango, dancers cultivate their aesthetic taste and improve their mannerisms, making sure their performances exude refinement and sophistication. Through this pursuit of perfection, tango dancers add beauty to themselves, their lives, and the world around them, creating an environment where art and elegance truly shine.

Despite this dedication to beauty, however, there is often a paradox within the tango community. Many dancers, while graceful on the dance floor, show less flattering sides of human nature in their interactions with others. Indifference, unfriendliness, arrogance, and a tendency to show off are not uncommon. Some may even go out of their way to squeeze out competitions. These behaviors stand in stark contrast to the elegance and harmony that tango embodies, creating a dissonance between the beauty of the dance and the attitudes of its practitioners.

True beauty is not confined to the aesthetics of appearance; it is holistic and consistent with one's integrity, encompassing the way we treat others, the kindness we show, and the respect we give to fellow dancers. Real beauty transcends the superficial and penetrates deeper into our character. A tango dancer who exudes elegance on the dance floor but treats others with disdain is not truly embodying the spirit of the dance. To be genuinely beautiful is to maintain consistency between one’s outward expression and inner values.

Dostoevsky once said, "Beauty will save the world." This profound statement speaks to the transformative power of beauty, not just in art but in life itself. The pursuit of beauty inspires people to combat all forms of ugliness—be it cruelty, arrogance, or indifference—and to strive for a better world. When we immerse ourselves in something as beautiful as tango, it should motivate us to carry that beauty beyond the dance floor, influencing how we engage with the world.

Tango dancers have a unique opportunity to lead by example. By working on becoming better people, we can close the gap between the beauty of our dance and the integrity of our character. This transformation starts with being self-aware and committing to align our behavior with the grace and elegance that tango stands for. When we show kindness, humility, and respect, we don’t just improve our own experience—we help create a more welcoming, beautiful community for everyone.

Ultimately, the beauty of tango is not just in the dance itself, but in the people who dance it. By striving to be better individuals, tango dancers can inspire others and help build a world that reflects the true essence of the art they love. The dance of beauty is not limited to what we do on the dance floor; it is a lifelong journey of becoming the best versions of ourselves.

Contra Body Movement in Dance

I didn't pay enough attention to contra body movement (CBM) until I watched the following video. Although the video focuses on ballroom dancing, I believe tango dancers will also benefit from it.

CBM is an essential concept that involves turning one side of the body toward the opposite moving leg. For example, when the right leg moves forward, the left side of the body turns slightly toward it, and vice versa. This natural counterbalancing action is not unique to dance - it occurs in many everyday activities. When walking or running, for instance, the slight torso rotation toward the forward-moving leg helps maintain stability and propels the body forward efficiently. Similarly, swimmers use CBM to streamline their motion through the water, while cyclists rely on it for balance and power. These everyday examples illustrate how CBM is deeply ingrained in human movement.

In ballroom dancing, CBM often refers specifically to dancers' shoulder rotations, because as their arms are fixed in the dance frame, these coordinated shoulder rotations are a visual sign of their CBMs. Unlike in everyday activities, in dance, this shoulder movement is exaggerated to enhance artistry. The quality of the dance depends largely on the dancers' understanding of CBM and their ability to rotate their shoulders consistently. When both dancers maintain perfectly matched CBMs, their movements appear balanced, coherent, and beautiful.

A similar shoulder parallelism is required in tango when dancers execute movements involving dissociation, such as walking side by side, turning around each other, zigzagging, changing positions from one side of the partner to the other, and much more. While in ballroom dancing, shoulder alignment is achieved primarily through CBM (rotating the torso), in tango, it is achieved mainly through dissociation (rotating the hips). This is because tango dancers’ torsos are connected in a closed embrace, dancers need to rotate their hips when dancing around each other to maintain shoulder parallelism, ensuring maximum body connection and the inward focus and intimacy that tango embodies.

Moreover, by keeping their shoulders parallel, dancers are able to make their movements more coordinated and harmonious. As a result, the artistic quality of their performance improves compared to when they do not keep their shoulders parallel, as shown in the video below.

This coordination relies heavily on the dancers' suppleness and responsiveness. Stiffness and tension disrupt harmony, acting as barriers that halt energy rather than generate it. Flexibility and relaxation, on the other hand, help produce both energy and artistry, enabling dancers to respond effortlessly to each other’s movements and maintain a natural flow. The key to preserving harmony in partnered dancing is not resistance but “going with the flow.” A supple, flexible body and the ability to rotate torso and/or hips allow dancers to adapt to one another without resistance. This adaptability is crucial in maintaining seamless connection and cooperation in dance.

Dancers must balance technical precision with responsiveness to their partner. Correct movements are not just about meeting technical standards; they are about fostering a harmonious partnership where the two dancers move as one. CBM and dissociation are interconnected techniques that facilitate this coordination. By mastering these techniques and embracing suppleness, tango dancers can perform in harmony, stay perfectly connected in complex movements, and create a visually captivating and emotionally satisfying dance.