A former
student of mine told me once that she was confused about how she should respond
to the embrace of the leader: some of them ask for a firm, almost tense embrace
and some ask for a very loose and relaxed one. She asked me what is the true
and correct answer to her dilemma and what is the technique for it.
The truth
is that there is no truth here. Or better yet, the truth is somewhere in the
middle. When a follower is in the first year of her tango, she’s merely
defining her posture and understanding her body, its reactions, its natural
state of being. And she tends to take for granted what a leader is asking from
her, especially if the leader is a more experienced one. The danger here is
that usually a more experienced dancer doesn’t speak the beginner language
anymore. This is not a judgment! Fact is that when we consider ourselves let’s
say intermediate we start taking some of the basics for granted. For instance,
we tend to forget the trouble we went through when learning the simple caminata
and now that we “own” it we think it’s the most natural thing in the world and
all dancers should know how to do it. So when a beginner comes along and has
“existential” questions about the simple things, we have trouble explaining
simply. We complicate it with all the other information that we gathered along
our own tango discoveries. Therefore, when a follower is seeking her embrace, a
leader’s answer – like “it needs to be more present” or “ it needs to be more
relaxed” – can confuse even more that follower.
The embrace
is not a thing that can be taught very easily with technique. Ok, a teacher can
explain the position of the body: where you put the arms, how you keep your
head, where’s the point of contact or where the points of contact are and how
they change and so on. But that helps up to a certain point. The part with the pressure,
relaxation or presence is a little bit more difficult to explain.
So, I told
my student that there should be pressure neither pressure, nor relaxation, but
presence. And to make it more relevant, because the term “present” is also very
ambiguous, I gave her a metaphor. Imagine that you are in a conversation with
someone in a café. You’re sitting in a comfy chair and the conversation is
rather boring. So you’re relaxed, sitting back, your body would react slower to
any kind of change in position. Let’s suppose the conversation shifts to an
unpleasant topic and you get all tense. You sit straight and stiff and again,
your body would react slower to a change because it would have to get out of
the tension first. And in the middle of these two extremes is the state of
presence. Let’s say that the conversation becomes very interesting, it’s on a
subject that gets all your attention, it’s very lively and your interlocutor is very talented in telling
the story. So your attitude changes, your body is more alive, your back is
upright, you may even lean a little bit forward and your speed of reaction
increases. You’re present in the conversation as if living the story that’s
being told. It’s like the entire world around has disappeared and you’re there
only for each other.
She told me that
she’d never thought of the dance from this perspective and it made a lot of
sense for her. And I have her confirmation that she got compliments on her
embrace some time after this story : )
It’s one way to
look at things. And it’s not technique that will make your embrace memorable,
but feeling and understanding the relationship we have with each partner. And,
most of all, it’s about the particularities of that relationship and the
presence of each of the partners in the “conversation”.
Enjoy your
embraces! See you in the ronda ; )
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