Quick etiquette reminder #3: Practica etiquette

Why are practicas like preschool?

I just walked by the local preschool and heard several corrections to kids that I think could help us as dancers at tango practicas. So here goes!

Dilemma #1: We need to take turns!

A practica should benefit everyone. A problem arises when you have an agenda, and the other person has an agenda—and one person ignores the needs of the other person and just does THEIR agenda.

Most of us have been brought up to be polite, and we often just go along with the pushy person rather than make a scene. How can we extract ourselves efficiently from this dilemma?

My solution: be clear with each person before dancing with them. I suggest saying something like, “Here is the one thing I want to work on: …” and ask them for one thing they want to work on, then do both and then exchange partners. That way, if they are not working on your choice, you can gently remind them that you agreed to do both people’s work.

Survival solution: “Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom.” :-)

Dilemma #2: Honey, you need to share the treat with everyone!

A practica is a place where most people come to dance with a diverse group of people to improve their dance. It’s rude to hog a good dancer unless you have agreed that you want to dance only with each other. Do one tanda, or 2-3 dances together, and then change partners.

Sometimes, this dilemma is compounded by Mr./Ms. Insensitive from the dilemma above. If someone gloms onto you and does not check what you want to do AND does not check whether you would like to dance with other people, you have a real problem if you are a polite person.

How can we get out of this situation?

My solution: Agree to how many dances you plan to do before dancing unless it’s a practica that has tandas, in which case you can stop when the DJ plays a cortina (the music between sets). If that doesn’t work, I tell the person that I promised some dances to another person, and I change partners. If the other person protests that you are the only person they want to dance with at the practica, remind them that dancing with beginners is the best way to improve technique. Share the love!

Survival solution: Same as above.

Dilemma #3: Hold hands with your buddy!

We are all in this community together. We have been through COVID, inappropriate behavior allegations, closure of dance studios and other stress as a community recently. If we want to build our community back, we need more new, friendly people to join us. Bring along a coworker or your neighbor or your cousin when you go to a practica next time. It’s OK they don’t dance tango—yet.

The solution: Introduce your buddy to people. Ask some of your friends to dance with the new person as a favor to you. Remind everyone that when they started, some nice advanced dancers did the same for them! Make sure your visitor feels taken care of by you and your friends so that they want to come back (rescue them from self-appointed teachers and unpleasant people). In other words, hold their hand emotionally and bring them to tango!

Survival solution: Call some friends ahead of time and get them to commit to a few dances with the new person or go in a group. Hey, bring your entire office along!

See, preschool really does continue through life! :-)

Chacarera class at Las Naifas October 14th!

I hope all of you will join me at Las Naifas tomorrow for an Argentine folk dance class before the milonga. Tango is not the main dance in Argentina: in the countryside, folk dances have a big following, much like country music and Texas Two-Step have in middle America.

• 5:30 Chacarera class

• 6:30-9:30 Milonga with Ariel Marsh DJing (and one set of chacarera in the middle of the evening)

• Norse Hall, 111 NE 11th, Portland, Oregon

• $15 at the door

• Please bring your vaccination proof IF you are not already on the list from prior milongas

• Masking is optional

Chacarera is only one of Argentina’s folk dances, but if you are old enough to have had to dance the Virginia Reel in elementary school in the USA, that’s the place chacarera has in Argentina. You don’t trade partners like the Virginia Reel, but lines of dancers face their partners and dance called patterns facing and circling the partner.

If you still have trauma from grade school, do not worry! I will be calling the dance at the milonga, as well as teaching it at 5:30. It is not rocket science and it’s fun! Think long swishy skirts and booted cowboys showing off :-)

Hope to see you there, and I will also be teaching a fast and dirty review Thursday night after my regular class (that’s today) at 8:30 PM. It’s free if you are in the 7-8:30 PM tango class!

Quick tango etiquette reminder #2

Between social distancing during COVID and the new awareness of the Me-Too movement, as a dance teacher, I hear much more about how some dancers feel uncomfortable as we re-establish tango closeness. Here are a few things I find to be helpful.

Masking sensitivity

If someone is wearing a mask, you might want to consider masking up out of consideration for that person’s comfort level. I attended a milonga in Eugene over the weekend, and I was very cheered to notice that most people who danced with me grabbed a mask before asking me to dance (I was wearing a mask). I did not ask anyone to do so, and I felt respected and cared for by those who made the extra tiny effort.

As we move back out into the world that now includes COVID for the rest of our lives, we can adapt gracefully and get sick less often at dance events by masking.

Communicate about discomfort

I had three people come to me and express discomfort at one person’s behavior in my class. I spoke to that person, who both thanked me for my honesty and chose to quit class rather than engage with the dialogue. In the past, this happened very infrequently. I assume that this will happen more now that we have had serious issues in the community about inappropriate behavior. What can we do to create a healthier dynamic?

Assume that some people never knew what made you feel uncomfortable and let them know. If you don’t feel you can do that, have the teacher or organizer help you communicate with them. There is nothing wrong with turning down a dance because that person invades your space, hurts your body, or just feels unpleasant to you. However, letting them know why could eventually change their behavior. That’s a win for the community and for you.

Consider that COVID has removed close personal contact for two and a half years. Some people are desperate to touch other humans and may overstep boundaries. Some people are afraid to touch and may react more strongly than before to any feeling of boundary invasion. Put on your adult brain and see if there is a way through the situation to a better solution. Even just saying “Ack! Not used to this!” may lead to problem-solving instead of avoidance.

We are all in this together, so let’s rebuild our community with more communication and resilience.

Problem-solving to dance with other styles

When I learned tango, we were taught that a good dancer learns to adjust to myriad styles and partners. What I have been hearing from distraught students, is that other dancers are correcting them at milongas, explaining how they are dancing “wrong” because their style does not match the other person’s style.

Do not give feedback at milongas

Giving feedback at milongas is not appropriate! When people are dancing at a milonga, you adapt as best you can to the other person’s idiosyncrasies, and you dance your best. I make sure I teach all my students to respect other people’s dances and styles, but unfortunately, this is not a widespread practice.

Think a moment before you decide to preach the gospel of your style on the dance floor! The other people there are dancing to have fun. When you critique them, you are destroying their confidence and their mood. As one of my students put it when they told me they would look for a different city to dance in instead of returning to dance in Portland: “I don’t need anyone to harsh on my joy of dancing.” I find it sad that someone criticized a beginner enough that they plan to avoid the entire tango scene.

How would you feel if I said, “Can I give you some advice?” while we are dancing? Just because you have danced for five or ten or twenty years does not give you the permission to preach on the dance floor. Hold your tongue until a class or practica and then offer your pearls of wisdom.

Try to adjust and make the best of the tanda

Dancing at a milonga is not the time to convert a dancer to “the correct style” you dance. No one is willing to just jettison their training and join your tango church on the fly :-) Why should they? What we really need is more tolerance for letting dancers do their thing. Look at it as a challenge to adapt successfully, SILENTLY, and protect your body at the same time.

For example, how I teach is based on how the body moves and what you need to do to use your body efficiently and optimally. It’s not a "tango style” as much as an opportunity to know how your body moves best. I did love it when I asked Gustavo Naveira what the style I was doing was called, and he said, “Normal?”

Not everyone comes from the build-it-on-your-body school of tango. There are dozens of styles. Do you want to add a lean? Sure! It is a recognized style. It’s much harder on your body, but if you want to put more wear and tear on your body, that’s up to you. However, I don’t want to hurt myself, so I try to find a way to dance with you that makes you feel good and lets me dance in an anatomically safe position.

The main point is to have fun!!

How do you problem-solve for unique styles?

Each week in my class, we play silly games where we impersonate various kinds of dancers and try to fix the situation in a way that protects our bodies AND ALSO does not come across as criticism of the other person. The goal is to make both people feel more comfortable and for the dance to work better.

How do you “level up” a person who leans to one side? How you lead a person who is floppy? What can you do to relieve an arm-wrestling embrace? As a follower, how can you protect your body while still appearing to lean on leader who keeps pulling you off your axis? We try one solution per week and build our repertoire of useful “hacks” to expand the number of people we can dance with successfully.

What do I love about the problem-solving part of class? Dancers are having fun! Everyone is giggling, being silly, and dancing better because the pressure is off to dance ideally. Making mistakes on purpose is fun, and most dancers take it to hilarious extremes that make normal problem solving feel easy.

Dance with everyone

When I go to a milonga, I accept dances and ask people to dance regardless of level or style. Is that person smiling? Do they look like it’s been a few tandas since they got to dance? Do I see the obsessive tango gleam in their eyes? I don’t dance to look good. I don’t dance to show off. I dance to have fun.

Do you dance a different style than I do? I see that as a fun challenge.

Quick etiquette reminder #1

In this COVID tango world, many of us have appreciated an aspect of masking because it allows us to eat whatever we want before dancing. Unfortunately, some of us have forgotten that, when the mask comes off for both people, there might be repercussions if we don’t tune back into our old ways.

“How was the milonga?” usually elicits descriptions of how good someone danced or questions about how to approach dancing with someone where that first tanda together did not go well. Unfortunately, what I heard after Las Naifas were complaints about dancers and bad breath! “His dance was not great, but the worst part of it was his breath!” Hmm.

This is your tango mom reminding you to brush your teeth and check your breath before heading out sans mask to dance. Did you eat garlic, onions, and hot peppers before you danced? Grab that mask :-)

Small group yoga class now open

The small group yoga class is now open! The first four people to pay for the week are registered for 12:30 Wednesday class at my house. If you do not manage to register, you can contact me and I will add you to the waitlist. I want to keep the class small so that I can do hands-on teaching and focus on optimal alignment and use of your body, so that your yoga strengthens you, rather than injuring you!

A new listing will go up each Wednesday, after the current week’s class has finished. If the waitlist extends to several people, I will schedule an additional session when possible.

Circling back

I have been rereading Make It Stick by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel. Most of you have joined me in the time since I blogged about this book in 2015, so I thought I would draw your attention to the summaries I wrote about how the brain learns. The book itself is a summary of thirty years of educational research and I encourage you to read it: it’s the book that got me interested in neuroscience and learning. It also changed how I teach, which is why my classes may not feel like the kind of class you expected before you walked in the door!

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

This book is almost ten years old now, and a lot of new research has been done that I will start to put up on my blog. Learning is so much fun! I hope you enjoy reading these and applying them to your own dance!

Ganchos 101: review from class

I only teach ganchos once a year or so, but it’s been almost three because of COVID. A gancho looks like a much bigger move than it is, and I often see people doing versions that can injure the body. It’s good to understand how to lead and follow ganchos and then decide if/how you want to use them. Here is a quick summary of what we covered in class last week.

The free leg starts at the hip joint and pelvic floor

The gancho, or “hook” in tango, is a whole-leg movement for the follower. Even though it looks like you do a hamstring curl around the leader’s leg, this is about having a leg that is free at the hip joint. If the hip is tight or constricted, the gancho will look awkward.

Your core and pelvic floor need to be engaged to have room to allow the hip to open so that the leader can move the follower’s leg. Your best preparation for doing a good gancho: practice back steps with your pelvic floor lifted. If you are doing your best back step, the leader can produce your best gancho!

Practice for a free leg

It’s hard to practice ganchos solo, but you can practice having a free leg. Stand on a step or a book or anything that lets you truly dangle your leg from the hip joint. Lift your pelvic floor, and you should be able to feel that free hip joint even more in comparison. This also prevents your lower back from taking part in the gancho instead of your hip joint.

After you locate the hip joint this way, stand tall on the floor with your pelvic floor lifted, and feel your leg still dangle, but now touch the floor. Hold onto something and use your other hand to push your relaxed, free leg. Notice how long it takes to start your leg moving! The gancho is not an instantaneous move. You see the moment where the leg is moving the fastest (at the end of the move) and the brain is tricked into thinking that the entire move is fast. Take your time to move that 30-40 lbs. of leg with a FREE hip joint!

The gancho is ALWAYS an invitation

Students often ask how to “make” a follower do a gancho. The gancho is always an invitation. For a gancho to work, I need to be able to stand on my axis as the leader sets up the gancho request. If the leader has put me in a position where I might be in danger of falling, I will refuse a gancho even when I know the leader wants one. I might also refuse a gancho if I feel uncomfortable with having that leader that close to my legs. I know some dancers who grew up in conservative countries or who are shy who cannot bring themselves to gancho. Leaders: respect the follower’s decision!

Make a gancho the follower can’t resist!

As a follower, I can’t produce a good gancho if I am afraid of falling over. The leader needs to offer a gancho that does not knock the follower off axis. If someone sets up a good gancho, I will accept that invitation.

Stay close to the follower rather than lunging through their legs: a tall, skinny window of space is best for a gancho. If the leader squats and goes low for the gancho, the follower will not feel or look elegant! In teacher training, Chicho Frumboli always told us to “bring the follower to you instead of going to the follower” and he meant that the steps BEFORE the gancho should create a situation where the axis of the leader and the axis of the follower were as close as possible and on balance.

A good place to start is from the stepover (pasada) as the follower steps forward over your foot from a front parada. Most dancers can stay close for this step. You can also do a gancho from an overturned ocho or in the back step of the turn (giro), but many followers struggle to do good turns and may not be on balance enough to stay close in this move.

If you struggle to stay close, consider using the “other” leg for the gancho, leaders! Flip around 180 degrees and offer a gancho to the back of your leg! If this does not make sense, come to class Thursday!

Don’t autogancho!

Followers have spiked me twice in the past two weeks by someone who thought I was offering a gancho because they felt my ankle against their ankle. I am surprisingly good at jumping out of the way if someone winds up for an autogancho, but I still got kicked. Ouch.

For a gancho, the invitation needs to connect with the instep, foot or ankle (depending on style) AND be against the leg, preferably as high as possible, at the hip joint of the follower or near that. If you don’t feel a back-of-the-leg connection followers, DO NOT create a gancho yourself because you will hurt the leader!

There’s a lot more to ganchos, and many variations, but these are the main points I would want every dancer to know. Come to class and we will do the rest together!

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.