Cabeceo tips and tricks

After hearing several people bemoan not being able to find partners at the last milonga and seeing several folks sitting staring at the floor last Friday, I think it’s time to polish our cabeceos!

What is a cabeceo?

A cabeceo is a gesture of the head, inviting someone to dance in the case of tango. The potential dance partners make eye contact. The person who is going to lead (usually) makes a subtle head gesture and or facial expression to invite the potential follower to dance. The person receiving the invitation can accept with a smile or an affirmative nod. One can refuse the invite with a “no” head gesture, but that is rare. Usually, the response is to not make eye contact with meaning that one does not want to dance.

Why do we cabeceo?

A cabeceo is very useful when in a crowded dance space. If you want to dance with someone, but they are across the room, the only way to forestall someone else getting there first, is to establish eye contact and agree to dance, and then make one’s way to the follower’s table or to a mutually indicated place to start dancing.

I was taught that the cabeceo protects the leader (traditionally a man) from the ignominy of crossing the floor to openly offer to dance, only to have the follower say no. Most people would prefer a private “no” to the walk of shame back to the other side of the dance hall, watched by the other dancers.

For me, if someone is looking eagerly at me, waiting for me to ask them to dance, I know that if I invite, they will probably say yes. Traditionally, this is how a woman invited the man to invite her to dance. It’s very circular, isn’t it?

Who benefits from the cabeceo?

The cabeceo gives the power of choice to the follower. There is no pressure to agree to a dance. Several beginner men in the Portland community have told me that they can’t get a dance because no one will look at them. As a woman raised in a patriarchal society, it is hard to say “No!” when offered a hand. It is much easier to say no from afar by avoiding a cabeceo.

The cabeceo also benefits introverts. As a shy person, it took me a while to get good at doing a cabeceo that required longer eye contact than usual in North American society. However, once I mastered that, it was easier to cabeceo than to walk up and ask folks to dance the way extroverts do.

Does the cabeceo still function?

In Portland, there are many dancers who have not practiced the cabeceo enough to use it well. There are other dancers who use North American versions of invitation, such as appearing at someone’s table and verbally asking for a dance or holding out a hand. On top of that, because many of us lead and follow, and many of us dance with partners of all gender identifications, it can be hard to figure out how to adapt the cabeceo to a situation where anyone might lead, and anyone might follow.

In Buenos Aires, I have only experienced this chaos at a queer milonga. No one seemed to know where to look. Someone asked me to dance from the next table. I danced with people, as a leader and a follower, and each tanda was a negotiation: “Do you want to lead? Or switch? Can you lead? I don’t want to!” It was a chaotic situation, much as it is at most milongas here in the USA.

I think the cabeceo is particularly useful for long distance agreements to dance. I sometimes initiate cabeceos, whether as a leader or a follower, with men or women. When I started to dance in the 1990s, this was not ok, but now it is accepted most places, and I do it as much in Buenos Aires as in Portland. Of course, after all these years, I don’t really worry about breaking some of the rules because I don’t care as much if I dance or not all evening :-)

How to use the cabeceo to your benefit

  1. Make sure your target can see you! For many of us with aging eyes, we might need you to stand or sit close to us to make eye contact. Wait until I put my glasses on to cabeceo!

  2. If you have someone specific in mind, sit up straight, send positive energy towards that person, and look interested in dancing! If you just want to dance, a more gradual pan of a group of potential partners will show you who is also searching broadly and may want to dance. Smile!

  3. Move to a chair a short distance away from someone. Make it clear that you are trying to cabeceo. If they still ignore you, that’s a polite no-thank-you.

  4. If someone has ignored you a few times, don’t give up on them forever, just for that night or a month or two, and then try again.

  5. If someone is in deep conversation, that’s not the time to cabeceo. If a person wants to dance, they will look around. Don’t waste your time trying to pry someone away from their best friend.

The cabeceo is a part of tango culture, and as such, we should teach it and practice it to understand tango’s history better, even if not everyone uses it.

Las Naifas is at Norse Hall Friday July 8th!

Please join me to dance to DJ Robert Hauk at Norse Hall on Friday for Las Naifas Matinee Milonga! The lesson at 5:30 PM is beginner-friendly, as is the space and the people. The bar will be open downstairs for a drink or a conversation. Vaccinations required, masks optional. See you there!

Improve your tango musicality

Dance like a robot?

Many people come to me as advanced beginner or intermediate level tango dancers, and they ask me to improve their dance. I suggest that we dance, and I often spend the next few minutes being laboriously moved ON THE BEAT for several tangos. It’s like dancing with a robot. Somewhere along the way, someone has drilled into dancers’ minds the necessity of being on the beat. Now, I am not against knowing where the beat of the music is, and I like dancing in a rhythmic fashion HOWEVER I do not teach this as the basis for tango.

Basic tango musicality elements

In tango, we have the basic beat (tiempo). We can also dance in a syncopated, faster way (dobletiempo). We can pause (pausa) for one beat or two beats or for a looong time, depending on how the music speaks to us or the leader in front of us creates situations. Then there is slow motion (camera lenta) that smooshes around, stretching out the dance, moving away from the beat. If we use all of that, we have a dance that is more interesting than the robot step-on-the-beat dance, even if we just walk.

Outside of the box musicality

Can we take musicality further? Absolutely! All over the world, musical forms have evolved that explore and push the edges of what music and dance can do. Listen to jazz or rebetiko or blues or fado or Kultur Shock (who describe themselves as a gypsy punk band but whose main singer taught me a haunting Bosnian table song with no underlying beat at music camp). Sometimes, going away from the beat allows you to find new beauty in how you are moving, singing, or playing.

Why can’t tango go there too? It can! Try arriving a little ahead of the beat, or a bit behind it; or wander around near the beat, landing on it occasionally to ground your dance and prove to your partner that you know where the beat is, and that this is a push-the-envelope moment you are allowing yourself, not a where-are-we moment? You don’t have to be a musician to do this, so if you just said to yourself, “Oh, well I can’t do that!” ignore that little critic in your head and come play with me!

A note of caution

Some people prefer to dance with robots. If you explore, they will shove you back onto the beat. They are not comfortable with enlarging the dance. This is not meant as a torture device to be used against less adventurous dancers! If you are dancing with someone who is freaking out because you are playing around with what you hear in the music, then you need to respect your follower’s needs (or your leader’s bug-eyed expression) and tone it down a bit. Save it for the other out-of-the-box dancers.

Tango vs. vals and milonga

When it comes to vals and milonga, I am more traditional. I prefer a groovy beat for milonga and a nice heartbeat of a vals. I still don’t want to dance with a robot for those dances, but they are more geared to sticking closer to the beat. Save your very out-there explorations of music for tango. Again, this is only my own opinion, but don’t make me dance triplets in vals just because you are a musician, and you would like to prove to me that you CAN dance triplets.

The end verdict IMHO

Make the musicality emerge from the music to the dancing people. Try to stay out of an academic approach: play with what the music has to offer. For all three dances, I want to feel, not think when I am on the dance floor.

Listen to tango music from the 1920s right up to new tango bands. Even the old music has pauses, slides, stretching of the beat—all the ingredients of experimentation that you may have missed while only focusing on the beat.

Robot dance or human dance? I vote human! Go out there and mess around with your musicality! I will see you on the dance floor.

Use yoga tools to help your tango!

Yoga jellies for yoga

Yoga jellies are great for people with sensitive wrists and hands to use in yoga poses that put pressure on the hands. Made from silicone, the dome-like supports allow you to adjust your hands and wrists to protect them when doing yoga. They are washable, easy to use have proved popular among my yoga students. I had to buy multiple sets for my group yoga class so that everyone with wrist issues could use them and one student has already ordered their own pair. If you want to try some, just ask at your next lesson and you can try some of mine to see if they work for you.

Yoga jellies for tango

Now that you have yoga jellies to help your wrists for yoga, let’s use them for tango! If you know me well, you know I am always looking for innovative ideas to improve tango technique and speed up learning. One morning, I looked at a student leaning to the side who felt they were completely upright and grabbed a yoga jelly out of my yoga tool drawer. “Put this on your head!” I told them, and immediately saw an improvement in balance. Aha!

Try it yourself: turn a yoga jelly upside down on your head and walk. This is the best way I have found to keep a kinesthetic sense of “tall axis” while dancing. The weight of the silicone yoga jelly is just enough to push against to lengthen my spine. On top of that, if you drop the jelly, it does not break! It works with hair, without hair—if you stand up, it stays up. If you lean off-axis, it falls off. That’s a direct indicator!

Yoga jellies for tango inspire yoga jellies for yoga

I showed my new drill for tango to a student. He responded well, lengthening his core, and standing straighter. He took one look at the jellies and happily decided to go back to yoga and try it with yoga jellies, as his wrists had been a problem in his yoga practice. How’s that for a circular inspiration?

Note: This is not a paid ad. This product is great, and I have bought several pair of the yoga jellies for my students to use in yoga class. There are cheaper versions available if the price tag seems too high, but I prefer this brand. I should have bought stock . . .

Las Naifas is Friday!

Friday, June 10th, 2022

Please join us at Norse Hall (111 NE 11th, @ Couch St.) for Las Naifas on Friday, June 10th! I teach the lesson at 5:30 PM, with a focus on survival tango and games to make tango fun and creative. The music for dancing runs from 6:30-9:30 PM. The DJ, Ariel Marsh, is impressive and I think you will enjoy her music choices. The bar is open downstairs, but grab a snack before you come dance, as we no longer have catering available. $15 cash at the door.

Masks, vaccinations, and all that

Although masks are not mandatory, with the current surge in Omicron, I suggest wearing a mask to stay healthy! We are still requiring vaccination proof, but if you have been to my classes or to a prior Las Naifas this year, all you have to do is check your name on the contact tracing list. You don’t have to show your card again.

Free parking available

Norse Hall has a lot at 10th and Couch. You are welcome to park there if there is space. Street parking is free after 7 PM. There is room to lock your bikes to the railing in front of Norse Hall. There are also bus lines running right past the venue. Scooters, Uber, . . . so many ways to come dance!

What to wear

This is Portland, so if you are wondering how dressy you should be, don’t worry. Some people dress up but some have come straight from work. As long as you are dressed, it should be fine.

Planks to help your tango technique

Over twenty years ago in Omar Vega’s milonga class, he used me as a helper to show moves. The whole time he told me, “Higher, higher, higher . . . NO! Lower! No! Higher!” I had no idea what he was talking about until the day he finally said, “Yes, that’s it!” I could sense how stretchy my body felt at that moment and tried to memorize how I had achieved the feeling he wanted. It took so much core strength to do what he wanted!

I have a much stronger body now than back in 1999. Yoga has helped me build and maintain my deep core, and that improves my tango as well. You can have a stronger body too if you incorporate a few exercises into your week.

Shoulder blade to sacrum

My trainer, Seth Watterson, helped me focus on the line from the bottom of my shoulder blades to my sacrum to build my back strength and anchor my shoulder blades on my body. This helps me avoid injury from followers pulling on my shoulder to balance themselves. It also helps my technique as a leader and a follower because I can connect to the floor on axis and thus communicate my intent to my partner more clearly.

Forearm planks for shoulder blade stability

All planks can help with shoulder blade stability, but I find it harder to cheat when doing forearm planks. In this video with one of my yoga teacher trainers, the first exercise is forearm planks. She explains it very well: try it!

Armpit to belly button

My Portland yoga teacher, Suniti Dernovsek, helped me identify another place that I lacked connection and strength in my practice: the line from my armpits to my belly button. Before that, I had worked hard on my pelvic floor-to-belly button line, but still face-planted when trying to do any move that required me to trust my arms to hold me up. After working on it in yoga, I realized the same focus improved my tango posture, even if there are no arm balances :-) Omar Vega would be proud of me.

Side planks to build core stability

Out of all the possible ways to build core, side planks help me connect my armpit to belly button line of my body. Again, there are many planks that will build your core, but I like side planks because I can focus better on the armpit-to-belly button line of my body while I work. I don’t study with the woman in the video, but I know other dancers who do. She explains some variations of side plank clearly here.

Human kinesiotape

I add one more thing to my side plank: instead of reaching my free arm up, I wrap my hand into my armpit and LIFT up to help me connect better to my deep core. Like kinesiotape, touching the skin above the muscles you want to use triggers the muscles to work better. I use this approach in many of my tango exercises to get my muscles to work more efficiently for me. Try it!

Polishing millimeter by millimeter

One of my yoga teachers says that you improve “millimeter by millimeter” in yoga. That is true for almost any endeavor. Subtle, tiny details eventually create substantial changes.

Shoelaces

My current tiny fix in my life involves my shoelaces. I am not joking: if you have studied with me, you will know that I manage to spontaneously untie my shoelaces while dancing at least once an hour. This has been the case for years. I triple-tie my shoes and accepted that there was no way to remedy this annoying issue.

One of my students told me that, if I tied my shoes in a square knot instead of a granny knot (i.e., left over right, then right over left instead of left over right two times in a row) my shoes would stay tied. I felt skeptical but tried it out. He was right!

I could not BELIEVE how hard it was to change how I tie my shoes. I learned to tie them in kindergarten, and I know that because it was one of the skills on our skill board on the wall in school. That means I had performed the same kinesthetic task every day for over 50 years. The concentration required to make my fingers change the direction of that action was enormous the first three days. For the next week or so, I could do it, but I had to think hard. A month later, I no longer think about it.

Tango yoga and the like

As you polish your movements and make them work better for you, your brain WILL hurt from the concentration. Remind yourself that growing new motor connections takes time. Would you yell at a five-year-old who can’t tie their shoes? No! You would be patient and kind: treat yourself like that five-year-old. Be nice, be patient, encourage yourself. Millimeter by millimeter, you will gain that new skill. Millimeter by millimeter, you will improve the old skill. You can do it!

Ways to survive a group tango class as a follower

Several of my tango students who prefer to only dance as followers, harbor trauma from their initial group tango classes. They feel the new leaders dragged them around and expected them to guess what move should be done, but they were not taught how to follow. On top of that, they paid as much as the leaders, but did not feel the teacher instructed them, except to help the leaders feel good about themselves. I know that is not everyone’s experience, but if you are feeling frustrated in a class that seems to ignore the followers, I have some pro-active suggestions.

Lead!

For those of you open to leading, learning to both lead and follow is the best way to learn tango. That way, you have a more holistic view of the dance. In addition, in a leader-info-heavy class, you can use all the information taught in the class and you will remember it better than someone only leading or only following. On a deep level, trying to lead something makes you understand what the leader needs from the follower AND what the follower needs from the leader to be successful. You also gain the added bonus: you can recognize when you ARE following exactly what the leader led and stand up for yourself if you hear the “why aren’t you doing what I led” reproach.

I like to lead and follow for several reasons. First, I learned all my couple dances this way. The group of dancers available when I learned to dance at Carleton College was small, and we needed everyone to contribute. We all danced both parts. I have continued to learn and teach that way, whenever possible. Second, I feel strongly that doing both parts allows you to dance when you want. When your favorite song plays and none of your favorite leaders are available, YOU can grab a friend and lead. The leads to a less competitive attitude between followers in a community and to more friendships: two positive points!

Focus on your own technique

If you do not want to lead, that’s fine. Perhaps you lead enough in your off-the-dance-floor life that you just want to melt into someone’s arms and NOT lead; this calls for a different approach.

Group class is the perfect time to practice your technique. Most people learn technique in private lessons and practice with others at group classes. Your teacher knows what you are working on in individual lessons and can guide you in the group class to apply your knowledge to various situations that arise. It’s Tango Princess time, no matter what gender you subscribe to: work on looking good, dancing well, expressing yourself musically—and if the leader leads the move, it will happen. If the leader does not lead the move, that is not your problem! Articulate through your feet, maintain your axis, breathe, practice adjusting your embrace to work well from person to person: these are the deep, subtle skills of tango, not the moves!

Learn by peer teaching

One of the best ways to solidify your own knowledge about tango is to peer teach. If a dancer unused to following and you are not used to leading (or if they are much bigger than you are), it can be daunting to lead someone to show them how their lead feels to you or what is not working. However, if you can describe what needs to happen, you will find you understand the move much better yourself.

Find ways to help the leaders understand the move from the follower’s point of view! Every single person I interviewed for my thesis on leading and following in Argentine Tango in Buenos Aires said the SAME thing: “Make the follower feel secure so that they will feel comfortable and let themselves be led.” The leader wants you to feel comfortable and happy, despite complaining that you aren’t doing the move. Remind them that leading as difficult as following, and that it takes time to get it right.

Plus, a leader who has suddenly gained understanding of a move so that it works, can express gratitude and you will feel great for helping create a leader who will (later) both dance better and remember your help.

In defense of move-driven classes

Last week I taught a class that was larger than usual. Dancers ranged from complete beginners to 10-15 years of experience. On top of that, most of the women in the class were working on lead and follow. Some of the men were also switching roles (not all happily, but I appreciated their willingness to try!). Normally, I spend at least half of my class on general technique and follower technique because I know most classes do not. However, with such chaos (and so many tentative new leaders in the mix), I talked more about leading. The few people who were not leading at all, got the short end of the stick. Don’t judge a teacher or a class from one interaction on one night: if you see an ongoing pattern that does not work for you, tell the teacher. If there is no response/change, try my tips above and/or find a new class!

And to my students who came to me with years of trauma from group classes that ignored them as followers (one described herself as a tango robot doll), keep dancing as you heal emotionally!

Create an energized, fluid tango by learning to stop

Tango pauses vs. micropauses

I think of the pauses in tango as the white space around a haiku on a printed page. To have a lovely dance, you choose when to move and when to pause so that your dance has music and spatial flow. This is NOT what I am talking about today.

What I want to discuss today is the question that three people have asked me in the last week: “Why are you making me stop at the end of each step???” The argument is that they don’t SEE anyone doing what I ask them to do when we are working on the deep technique of tango.

I call these tiny moments “micro pauses” within the dance. You don’t see these mini stops when watching someone dance, but they form the basis for a fluid dance that SEEMS to not stop between steps. The human eye likes to track movement, and once you have mastered these micro pauses, even your partner may not be aware of them. When you watch people dance on video, especially performers, remember that a. no one is in their way and b. this is a choreography. Therefore, the partner already knows what is coming next and they aren’t going to hit anyone if they can’t change direction.

Micro pauses improve your balance

When you are learning to finish/start each move on balance, you must stop as long as you need to get completely on axis. At first, this will feel like you are doing the graduation walk REALLY SLOWLY (hum Pomp and Circumstance as you practice to make it more fun!). It’s hard to get your brain to slow down this far, so check out the exercises below to see how I cheat my brain into slowing down enough to finish each step.

It’s ok to put both feet on the floor! On a good day, 1% of your weight might land on that other foot, enough to move a sheet of paper under your foot but not get stuck on the floor. On a day when balance is a challenge, you may have to use that moment to land on both feet, get on balance, and then try again. Which do you prefer: a partner who falls over, or a partner who catches their balance? Yeah, I thought so.

I try to use the end/beginning of each step to adjust my balance and the balance of my partner if I am leading. That way, I never fall too far off balance. I am not perfect by any means, but I have practiced enough that most of the time, my off-balance moments are private, and I fix them before other people must deal with them. This subtle level of awareness adds to your quality of movement and provides your partner with a much nicer, fluid dance overall.

Micro pauses improve your musicality

Micro pauses provide what I think of as the heartbeat of tango: the Bum, Bum, Bum of each step having power, energy, balance, the sensuality of a big cat ready to pounce. Without them, the dance is set in motion and moves down the floor like a robot set in motion: no heartbeat. A dance like that is like a flat line on the heart monitor: it’s dead. Get your tango off life support and use those micro pauses!

Again, if you are completely on balance at the beginning of a move, you have more choices of how to play with the music. If you are off-balance, you usually have only one speed and direction you can go. I like to have choices to play with in the music. This moment gives you time to choose whether to move, to pause, to switch feet, to catch your partner’s balance—way more fun than just walking on the beat for ten minutes.

Exercises towards a balanced, fluid dance

I had to make up exercises to slow my brain down when I learned to finish each step. My brain was SURE that my body had completed a step long before I arrived on axis. I am certain that I am not the only human with this problem :-)

Walking with adornos

The point of the adornos is not to scribble all over the dance: it’s to encourage pauses and to help keep a dynamic balance during pauses. For each step, FINISH the step and then explore the world of your free leg. If you arrive on balance, there is a lot here to mine for quality of movement and musical expression. For me, I started to do this because otherwise I would try to slide through the end of move into the next step, missing that crucial moment where I was between the steps. Mantra: the last step is past; the next step has not yet happened. There is only this moment.

Change direction every step (the grid game)

Pretend you are on a piece of graph paper. For each step, you must step direction forward, side or back, as if on a grid and you CANNOT go two steps in the same direction. Find out which of your steps are easy to finish, which make you fall over, and focus on the difficult ones. Put on music and play with different speeds (or add adornos) to make this feel more like a dance.

Mirror game

Facing a partner but not touching, try to complete steps in slow motion, again changing directions often. Don’t begin a new step until your partner looks like they are totally on balance. For more challenge, pause longer at the pauses sometimes, and other times try to shorten the “micro pause” timing, moving when it feels like your partner has arrived on axis, but before they start to adorn and play.

It gets easier and faster

Remember that when your brain gets this idea fully wired into place, you will suddenly be able to speed up the process to where other people can’t see the micro pause, but they can feel the improvement in your balance, energy, and musicality! It does take patience to slow down enough to really practice this, so good for you for doing the extra work to make your dance truly fluid by pausing!

Add healthy hips to your body map

Whether you are dancing tango, doing yoga, or just walking and taking part in your daily life, you need healthy hips. Let’s look at how the hip moves, what issues affect it, and how YOU can enrich your understanding of how you need your hips to move to balance flexibility and strength for lifelong mobility.

Hip joint structure

Most of us will touch the outer edge of our pelvis when we think about our “hips” instead of focusing on the joint that connects the leg and the pelvis. To feel that spot, flex your leg up towards your body, and put your fingers into the crease that creates. Your hip joint, or femoral joint, lies only a short distance from your midline.

The shape of your femur and your pelvic bones affects the shape of your hip joint. Also, the ring of fibrocartilage (labrum) that helps hold the femur in place, can vary in shape, making the depth of the joint different. There are three big ligaments that hold the joint together as well. On top of that, the angle of the head of the femur, compared to the shaft, varies as well. This will affect how much you can move your leg laterally out to the side (abduct). It also affects how much you can rotate your leg in the hip socket.

How does this affect you? All exercises that increase the range of motion at the hip are limited by the shape of your body parts: there is no “right” visual shape, so you need to learn what the “right” shape is for you by becoming more aware of your own body, building your proprioception. Learn about YOUR body, map how it can move, and then make sure you are using your hip correctly: don’t just depend on your teacher!

Ways we can move at the hip joint

You don’t need to remember the names for each way you can move the hip but go through these and move your body. Feel what is possible at the hip joint.

  • Flex: make the angle smaller between the front of the leg and the front of the hip (pulling the leg into the body, or folding forward over the leg)

  • Extend: Make the angle between the front of the leg and the front of the hip larger (reaching back with our leg)

  • Outward rotation: Turning the front of the leg open towards the outside edge of the body (think ballet, turnout)

  • Inward rotation: Turning the front of the leg in towards the midline (think of how some kids sit with their knees together and their feet out next to their hips—I can’t do this :-) )

  • Abduction: Bringing the leg out from the midline to the side (think of standing with a stretchy band on your legs and then standing on one leg and pulling the other leg away to tighten the stretchy band)

  • Adduction: Bringing the leg in towards (or past) the midline, across the body (tango people: the cruzada does this)

That’s a lot of different movements at one place! When you add the idea that most motion combines at least two of these ideas, you can see why the hip joint is so complex. Plus, you can’t walk or sit or jump without it: you NEED this joint to work well! A terrific book that can serve as a reference for you: Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain. The book has clear drawings, basic information and easy to understand descriptions. I use it to teach and I recommend it as an informative book to own.

This is NOT at the hip joint!

Many people move at the lower back when I cue movement at the hip joint. A lot of us think arching our back or tucking our pelvis under, is the same as moving at the hip. This is a main reason I teach yoga classes to find the hip and lower back and to build body awareness. Many people (often women in heels) complain to me that tango hurts their body, and I can see that they are trying to hold/stretch in the lower back instead of balancing at the hip joint—that’s much harder on the body!

Tight jaw, tight hips

If you have tight hips, check out your jaw health! I know that sounds crazy, but the two are very linked in the body. As the fetus develops, the jaw/mouth area and the pelvic area are the opposite ends of the digestive system, of the spinal system, etc. Chains of fascia connect the two: if one is tight, it affects the other section of the body (this is a gross simplification: if you wish, go down this rabbit hole on the internet).

Try releasing your jaw, mouth, and lips as you stretch your hips, and see if it works for you. If you are feeling tense in your jaw from stress, try some hip stretches and see what happens! I only found out about this a few months ago, and I find it extremely useful for my own body.

To get more flexible

Many people spend hours per day sitting in chairs and getting tight hips. Remember all the ways that the hip joint can move? One stretch won’t fix your flexibility issues. I use a set of four stretches per leg, 2-3 minutes per stretch (so about 20 minutes of stretching) that I call the pretzel. I stole this from Rita Honka, my West African dance teacher (thanks, Rita!). It stretches the front, back, lateral, and central sides of the joint. For many people, one or two or even three sides of your hip joint are flexible enough to function. By stretching in this “pretzel” you can discover which parts are easy and which are challenging and then only focus on the challenging parts to save time. This video shows the four stretches.


If you are a person who has tight hips, I recommend yoga to untangle your lower back and hip joints. Doing a little yoga every day will help you develop more long-term mobility and flexibility and strength and balance: what’s not to like?

Hypermobility: balancing flexibility with strength

For those of us who are hypermobile, we need to strengthen our hip joints, upper thighs, pelvic floor, and lower back, rather than stretch further. It took me years of injuries to understand that I need to hug my muscles into my bones to support my joints. Someone like me has more passive flexibility than I can use given my muscle strength. If you are hypermobile, you MUST learn your own body map and protect your joints because many teachers do not understand hypermobility and don’t teach to this flip side of not-flexible-enough.

I keep learning

I am learning a lot about building body maps from teaching my yoga class. We range from hyper-flexible to very tight bodies—and everything in the middle. I love that everyone feels they can ask questions, try different modifications, and find what works for them. That’s why I am keeping my class small right now: no big class can provide that level of focus on the individual. My goal is to have people learn enough about their bodies that they can join bigger classes in dance and yoga and continue moving in their optimal way.


Balance around your axis

Balance is a dynamic quality in both tango and yoga. Can you stand perfectly still on balance? No! Your heart is beating (I hope!), your lungs are moving in and out as your breath, and your body consists of many moving parts that all must adjust to each other to remain balanced. But that’s a GOOD thing! Who wants a statue when you can have a person?!

Start at the feet

Build the basement first: the arch

There are nineteen muscles involved in your foot and ankle. Add to that a system of arteries and veins, fascia, and bones, and you have a complex system that connects your body to the ground. There are three arches in your foot that need to adjust for optimal balance. Think of this system interacting with the ground: there is always something moving: trying to grip for balance will not help. Instead, embrace the equilibrium dance!

The ankle

The ankle helps the foot to balance your body. It has mechanical receptors that communicate with the brain to constantly adjust your balance. There are other parts of the body that also relay balance information to your brain, but the ankle plays a key role in proprioception. For many of us, we tend to count on what our eyes see and not listen to the rest of our body. However, if you train yourself to listen to your feet and ankles, you can fix balance problems right at the base, which is easier than making bigger corrections higher up from the floor.

If you have ankle injuries, it’s important to strengthen and retrain your body to regain optimal balance. I have issues with hyper flexibility and injured myself often as a child and teen in sports events: I was always the kid in an Ace bandage. However, I have collaborated with trainers and physical therapists, and strengthened my ankles through dance, yoga, and exercises, and now I can easily wear stiletto heels. I understand the challenges of learning to (re)balance.

If you would like more in-depth information about the ankle, I found The Role of Ankle Proprioception for Balance Control in relation to Sports Performance and Injury an interesting read.

Steps to the first floor: Wobbly knees

When I started working on my tango balance, I put too much work into my knees. Instead, I found that, if I ignored my knees and focused on my ankles and hip joints, my balance and dance improved. Let your thigh bones balance on your tibia and fibula, with as little tension as possible. Your knees may feel wobbly, compared to the gripping that you may have been doing. When that happened to me, I got a lot of positive feedback from my leaders: “Wow! I can feel your feet really well!” That’s because, when you clench at your knees, the partner can’t feel from there to the floor (and that goes for leading too!). So let those knees wobble!

First floor: Find your hip joints

Now, balance your pelvis on your femoral joints, or hip joints. On either side of your pubic bone, your hips joints are not located at the sides of your body: they are only a few inches apart. As a ball and socket joint, the hip has a lot of flexibility and give. That also makes it more difficult to figure out where to position your pelvis on your leg bones. I will go into more detail about the hip in the next blog. For the moment, lift your pelvic floor and your deep belly, creating a little space at the hip joints. Then play with the balance at your joints until you find a spot that feels like you have a lot of room. Again, this might feel less secure than dropping into your knees and clenching your gluteals, but it will provide better balance even if it feels more variable.

Second floor: Stack your spine on your pelvis

Your spine stacks on your sacrum, which is part of your pelvis, so there is less of a dilemma about how to connect from pelvis to your core. There are a lot of ways to put too much strain on the lower back in tango, and I will address this in a future blog. For now, let your deep core muscles and your breath hug into your spine and support it in your natural alignment. Adjust lower down so that your spine feels comfortable.

Attic: Balance your skull on your spine

Your skull attaches to your spine at the level of the upper palate in your mouth. Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth and your thumbs at the sides of your skull. Adjust it until your neck feels comfortable and stretchy both at the front and back. I find this easier to do with my eyes shut so that I don’t readjust to where I am used to looking. FEEL the new position.

Even if the rest of your alignment is not “fixed” yet, training your neck to stay long and lifted to balance your skull will cut down on neck pain and headaches, as well as aid in improving your balance for tango and yoga.

Homework

You can’t build the attic without first constructing the second floor. The second floor won’t work unless the first floor is solid. The first floor won’t be stable until the basement construction holds up the building that is your body. Be patient and give yourself time to build your balance and your body map, piece by piece. Eventually, it will all work together, without you thinking about it! I promise :-)

HOWEVER, sometimes there is a piece of the puzzle that makes the most sense to you and it’s not the foot or ankle. If some other element that you understand, run with that. Build up/down the part that works, rather than trying to do from the floor up. You know yourself best, and you can use that knowledge to improve your alignment, balance and endurance in the way that works for you.

See you on the dance floor and the yoga mat!

Note: There will be no yoga class on Wednesday, April 6th. It’s my birthday and I’m taking the day off!

Small group yoga class Wednesday at 12:30 March 23rd

I will teach an in-person, small group yoga class @ my house, 12:30-1:30 Wednesday. Limit of 4 students. Cost: by donation. I will give any donations to Direct Relief as part of the milonga fundraiser this coming week, organized by Linda Remes-Machtelinckx.

The class will be beginner level yoga, focusing on the breath and alignment as you move through the poses. All of the yoga that I am teaching will benefit your tango as well as your general flexibility, strength and balance. This is not a power yoga class, but rather a Hatha session that gives you time to align.

Please bring your own mat. I have knee pads and yoga blocks, cushions and some straps available for use if needed.

Please reserve a space ONLY IF YOU PLAN TO COME. I will be teaching yoga classes on a regular basis as spring gets underway. There will be vinyasa/flow, as well as hatha classes. My certification is from a program that is based in Iyengar and Ashtanga traditions.

Dancing beautiful turns in Argentine tango

Three classes on turns

For my group class, we will work on a theme every month, culminating the night before Las Naifas (the second Friday of the month), so that, each month, we can take our class information and apply it to social dancing RIGHT AWAY! Since Jose Garofalo taught my class the past two weeks, we will pick up from where he left off, playing with energy, musicality and making simple steps feel fabulous!

Balance between flow and deep technique

Solo work @ 7 PM

The deep, slow technical work that underlies good tango is hard to see, except in the beauty that it produces. Many times, students say to me, “but I didn’t see that when x (famous person) danced!” You must build the motor pathways that allow you to speed up, flow through and still have the dance work. That takes repetition and mindfulness.

This is the kind of work I taught in my Beaverton noon class. It is also what my students did all during lockdown on Zoom, and every single one of them improved faster than they had in in-person classes where we had only focused on couple technique. It’s not necessarily fun, so come and let me help you get through your tango workout!

Couple work @ 7:30 PM

This part of class looks more like the kind of class you may associate with tango. For three weeks, we will do diverse kinds of turns, entrances and exits to turns, turns in milonga, tango and vals—exploring what you can play with to make circular paths in the dance.

Practice, office hours and just dancing @ 8 PM

There will be time after class to just practice, or to dance for fun, or to ask questions—or just to hang out and talk to people in the class. I am available to give extra help, or to provide you with harder versions of what we did for homework!

Class cost: $15 drop in or sign up ahead of time. Classes are at: 6055 NE Glisan (Shabu Studios).

Mask preferences

I do prefer that you continue to mask. If you want to dance only with one partner in this transition time, I will not force you to change partners. I encourage you to change partners and to change roles throughout the evening. If you are uncomfortable dancing with unmasked dancers, you may choose to only dance with other masked dancers. I am still requiring that you have your vaccinations to attend my class.

Experiment, polish, play: Workshops with Jose Garofalo this week!

The world news is really grim right now. I feel very powerless about horrible situations all over the world. The best I can do right now is provide us with a positive, happy set of workshops with Jose Garofalo this week and next week in Portland. I hope you can come dance, be in community together, and rejoice in small things, like a great dance!

I feel that Jose’s strength lies in his ability to experiment, play and explore tango, both traditional and more modern forms. He is open to many ideas, many ways of doing things. On top of that, he is kind and playful: just what we need right now to lighten things up.

Come explore your dance. Find new bits to add, old bits to unearth, polish up, and use—or just come to play! All the information is on the flyer below. You can preregister, or pay at the door. To schedule private lessons, contact me directly: there is very little room left for privates, but plenty of room in the workshops.

The more I learn . . .

…the more I know I don’t know.

This is the space I am in today. I finished a year of yoga teacher training: 200 hours of instruction stuffed into my head. I am now qualified to teach yoga. What does that mean? I have taught tango for 26 years and if you don’t count my master’s in dance, I only had a few months of teacher training and no certification process to do that! For teaching English in Peace Corps, we had three months of training. I suppose that means I am better trained as a beginning yoga teacher than I was to teach anything else in my life! It helps that I have taught since 1986, so I know that I will eventually feel more competent.

“Nothing to prove, everything to share.”

I have been pondering the feeling of having NO IDEA how to incorporate all of this new information into my life (apart from sharing it with my tango and other dance students, which has been happening all the way along). I feel that there is so much I still have to learn! When I started teaching tango, I was very open about being a new tango dancer and my students and I learned together. That’s what’s going to happen with yoga as well. As my teacher trainer, Rachel Scott, said, “Nothing to prove, everything to share.”

In that spirit, I will soon be offering yoga classes at Shabu Studios where I teach tango on Thursday nights. I am grateful for Shannon’s confidence in my abilities. Stay tuned for days/times (probably in March or April).

Off of Mount Stupid

When I explained where I am in my learning process, one of my friends nodded and said, the Dunning Kruger Effect! Take a moment and click on this graphic. Every tango student I have shown this to laughs and points to the Valley of Despair part of the process of learning. I think that each of you knows that everyone goes through the same struggles as a learner and a tango dancer, but doesn’t it feel better that EVERY learning process works this way? It also explains that new college graduate at work :-) When you are on Mount Stupid, you DO feel that you know everything!

Slope of Enlightenment

Let’s climb up that slope together! Let me know if you are interested in yoga classes and I will add you to the list. Let me know if you are interested in tango classes and don’t already get my newsletter, and I will add you to the list.

Group classes are back!

Tango classes start again next week, February 17, 2022. The level is adventuresome beginners up to advanced intermediate. If you want class but feel that’s below your level, remember that you can always learn “the other” role, and that deep learning requires repetition of the fundamentals :-)

Here is the plan:

  • 7 PM Warmup and solo technique for balance, flexibility and strength

  • 7:30-8:30 working with partners to apply the technique to moves, musicality and different dancers (we start with easier and move into harder moves throughout class)

  • 8:30-9 PM Time to dance, chat, ask questions, etc.

  • $15/class or $140/10-class punchcard, masks and proof of vaccination required

I hope to see you in class when YOU feel comfortable dancing in public. I understand that some people never stopped and some are being more cautious. You may bring a partner and keep them if that makes you feel more secure, and I encourage hand sanitizer between different partners. Let me know what I can do to make class as safe as possible for you!

Gratitude

Not about tango or yoga

What are you grateful for? Right now, my son is refusing to go to school, and wants to know why school is not designed for kids who are gifted and also learning disabled. Why can’t he learn in an environment that works for him? Good question.

I just got off the phone with a teacher who worked with my son four years ago as a home instruction tutor one of the other times that school wasn’t working. He is the the only person who really GOT my son, who can be challenging. I knew the first initial of the teacher’s last name and no first name, as all of the arrangements had been through school, so it has taken a few months for me to find him.

This teacher is taking an hour to drive to my house, talk to my son, and see if he can brainstorm any ideas to help ameliorate the situation, despite having a full caseload and working four days a week after school already. And he offered time in the next 24 hours to come meet on the porch, masked, with my teen.

I am so grateful that I am crying. In this trying time, kids have been hit even harder than the adults trying to deal with a COVID world that is falling apart and failing. We need to remember that even as we struggle with our own burnout and daily battle to keep going.

I would like you to think of someone who has helped you in the past at a low point in your life. Reach out to them and thank them.

Back to dance and yoga topics next time, I promise.

Group classes cancelled until February

The authorities predict that the end of January will see the crest of the Omicron wave, so I am going to cancel group classes until the beginning of February. I HOPE that we will be able to restart at that time. In the mean time, private and Zoom classes will continue. I may go back to group Zoom classes if we cannot restart in February. Stay well!

January is my month to complete my yoga teacher training, fingers crossed. I hope to start yoga classes at Shabu when we can return safely to meeting in groups. Wish me luck!

What are your tango plans for 2022?

Despite Omicron closing things down again, I am feeling optimistic about 2022 and tango. We have survived almost two years with limited dancing with our friends and favorite partners, and we are still here. My friends and students have shared their post-COVID plans with me. They are heading for Spain, Italy, France, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Buenos Aires. Everyone is wildly excited about putting into action plans made years ago that were postponed due to COVID and life.

Some of these plans involve tango! Every day I hear plans about “when I go to my next milonga” or “when the practicas open again” from someone. Unlike a few months ago, most of these plans sound hopeful and enthusiastic. I can’t count the number of people who have asked me when my next tango tour to Buenos Aires will happen. That is not set yet, but it will happen, I promise!

My tango plans involve yoga

I know that sounds crazy but it’s true. If all goes well, I will be certified to teach yoga by the end of January. I have spent my lockdown doing yoga daily and studying to be a yoga teacher. The strength and flexibility I have gained through my yoga training have helped me maintain my tango technique. My balance is better than before lockdown as well.

As is my habit, whenever I learn information that helps for tango and wellness, I have shared it along the way. I taught tango while learning tango, and I have taught yoga while learning about yoga. Thank you for my yoga guinea pigs who patiently allowed me to video their “lessons” with me so that my teachers could critique my teaching!

Going forward, I will be offering yoga classes at Shabu as well as private yoga classes (and I will continue to do mini yoga classes as part of tango private lessons). If all of us could do yoga along with tango, we would have fewer injuries in the tango community—and we could dance longer, with better balance, strength, and flexibility. Sound good? It’s possible!

Las Naifas is back, but not for January

Luisa Zini Fortuna and I are back hosting our matinee milonga, although JANUARY’S MILONGA IS CANCELLED. We hope that COVID numbers go back down so that we can return in February. Fingers crossed! Our regular time will be 2nd Fridays at Norse Hall, 111 NE 11th in Portland. The lesson will be at 5:30, with dancing 6:30 to 9/9:30ish.

Group classes at Shabu will be back soon

I am watching the COVID numbers, and my classes will restart (again, sigh) Thursdays from 7-9 PM at Shabu, 6055 NE Glisan in Portland, as soon as it’s safer. The few classes I managed to hold between Delta and Omicron closures were really fun and I enjoyed seeing some new faces and returning dancers!

What plans do YOU have for tango in 2022?

I would love to know what you plan to do for improving your dance for the future. What dance plans do you have? Are you going to Buenos Aires? Attending dance festivals? Starting gyrotonic or yoga or Pilates or ??? Are you studying Spanish, or delving into tango music? Have you decided to DJ or host a new milonga or practica in Portland? Let’s put our energy to work and rebuild our dance community, bigger and better and more friendly!

Las Naifas milonga cancelled for January 14

Luisa and I have decided to cancel January’s Las Naifas to be cautious: the Omicron variant is definitely here and we don’t yet know what the effect will be. Hopefully, the numbers will be heading downwards by February and we will be able to have that milonga. Stay tuned!