In praise of walking

“So, you are saying that, when I am an advanced dancer, I will want to work on walking??”

— Student at class

Last week for my birthday, I taught my favorite things to teach: mainly, walking and musicality. Usually, I try to mix the fundamentals with more flashy steps, to have a carrot dangling in front of noses as we slog through the needed drills and practice that make a good dancer. However, I took a week off to give the kind of class I take when in Buenos Aires.

Walk this way!

Have you ever thought about how many ways you can walk? When I ask a private student to list the ways they can walk, here is the list that I usually get:

• forward

• backwards

• parallel or crossed system

Here is the list that a student and I made yesterday:

• forward, back or side steps

• parallel or crossed systems

• on the beat, syncopated, slow motion, or with pauses.

• in a straight line or curved (circulos)

• walking normally (some people call this on the outside), in the center (some people call this regular position), or on the closed side of the embrace.

What constitutes a walking step?

In addition, there are moves that could be included as walking patterns because they have only straight lines but might not be strictly walks. I don’t know if I personally call these walks, but they might be in your book:

• vaivens: regular, crossed, and zigzag

• traveling turns (some people count these as turns, some as walks/traveling steps)

• traveling steps with traspies: traveling traspie in milonga, stutter steps,

• crosses: forward or back or lateral

• salida/regresa

• ocho cortados that are not “the” ocho cortado, which has pivoting in it.

I encourage all dancers who lead to make lists of the moves that they know, and then to group them into categories, and into sub-categories, nesting the variations in a drop-down menu style. This helps you to find them in your head while dancing and thus actually USE the moves you know more. It also asks you to dive deeper into your technique and think about WHY moves are related and how YOU categorize moves. Believe me, there is no “correct” version of this: everyone’s brain works differently.

How can you make your tango walk more interesting?

Play with the music!

If you generally walk on the beat, practice walking slow motion. Practice adding in corridas (synocopated walks). Practice pausing in your walks. If you can’t hear anything in the music except the beat, this will take some time; but all those elements exist in every tango song! Some suggest more syncopation or more slow motion, but tango music is complex, and you can tease out all sorts of shades of musicality if you know the song. Don’t listen to people who tell you that stepping on the beat is the goal. Send them to me to convince them otherwise. :-)

Play with direction!

If you usually walk only forwards, consider doing a half traveling turn or another strategy to turn 180 degrees, and walk backwards (or backwards against line of dance but that is dangerous). Practice using side steps. Think about turning a quarter turn to face in or out of the dance floor and use lateral steps DOWN the dance floor!

Play with circulos!

Circulos will feel too big for the dance floor at first, so remember you must use contrabody to BOTH SIDES to walk in a circle, just as you do when walking in a straight line down the street, and the circulo will become smaller. What’s the bonus of adding circulos? Variations:

• clockwise or counterclockwise

• leader walking forward and follower back; or follower walking forward and leader back.

• parallel or crossed system

• different speeds

Play with parallel and crossed systems!

Many dancers never play in between parallel or crossed systems. Explore and discover variations you have not tried before.

Play with position!

Many people approach position as something fundamentally right or wrong. There are ways to move that are better for the body, but no one correct “tango” position. Try dancing on the closed side of the embrace in crossed system (don’t forget your contrabody or this will be difficult). If you are a center-style dancer, work on your contrabody so that you can walk in a straight line. If you what I call a “normal” offset dancer, keep your contrabody going when you walk and touch the inside of the follower’s foot instead of the outside. Just make sure the FOLLOWER can go in a straight line: don’t make them waddle please!!

Go out and conquer!

Remember, the best compliment you can get from an old milonguero/a is: “You walk well,” not “What great boleos!” Go out there and walk!!

It's my birthday, come dance!

It's my BIRTHDAY on Thursday, so I hope you will be able to come to tango class at 7 PM at Shabu Studios. It's teacher's choice for topic, so know there will be dancing, there will be tango, milonga and vals, and alternative music, and it should be fun! $15 drop in. And for inspiration, here's the CRAZY improv Jose Garofalo and I did at Berretin a few years ago. We had not heard the band or the song before getting on the dance floor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw8ixSAed7Y

Tango and the deep front line of fascia

I am having one of those mornings where I think, “Oh, what if?” and suddenly, answers appear! I am super excited to find out that imagery I have used for decades to explain how I position my body for tango, actually connects to how the body is structured! Woohoo!

I usually explain to students that I imagine my abdominals go up the front edge of my spine, instead of in front of my gut, to lift my core in and support it. The Deep Front Line (DFL) of fascia continues from your feet, up the front of your spine, to your jaw, and provides a strong connection through your body that is essential to your tango technique.

A picture is worth a thousand words

It is easier to see the DFL than to describe it, as it has several different branches in some parts of its journey up the body. The first minute of this video shows Tom Myers giving a super-fast description and provides several illustrations from his book Anatomy Trains (more about this book below). You need the DFL to have good posture. It:

• balances your skull.

• stabilizes your chest and helps with correct breathing.

• supports and contains your body from the hips through the abdomen.

• supports your lower back and connects through your hips to your feet.

• stabilizes your legs.

The DFL is all about support and slow twitch muscle fibers: it’s endurance, not sprinting. If this layer of the body is not working well, outer layers take over the work, which makes your movement take more effort and thus looks clunkier and less elegant.

DFL Cliff Notes for tango dancers

Foot

The DFL starts under the foot. It spreads out like fingers and hugs the bones of the metatarsals and the arch. High arches and fallen arches both denote issues with the DFL. Each time you push off to walk forwards, this supports your arch and inner ankle to stay in line and work efficiently. For those of us who roll out to our little toes, we can balance better by really focusing on this line through the inner ankle and up the back of the leg to stabilize and balance.

Up the leg

Despite being called the Deep Front Line, the DFL runs from the inner ankle up the BACK of the calf, under the back lines of fascia. It includes the back of the knee capsule. The DFL attaches onto the femur on the medial edge (towards your middle). Your adductors, the muscles that move your leg towards the middle, are part of this line. Think of a fanlike group of attachments from your inner thigh up to your sit bones and pelvic floor. If you grab a yoga block, put it between your upper thighs, squeeze it and do chair pose, you will feel all these muscles wake up. The fascia connects the whole line of muscles and bones together to make this possible.

Through the pelvis and pelvic floor

If you take my yoga classes, you know how important the pelvic floor is to tango already. If you think of a sling of muscles that attach to the inside of your lower spine, down around your pelvic floor, and up to your belly button, that gives you an idea of how much the DFL hugs your core under and around your guts to support your body. To balance the upper body on your pelvis and legs correctly, think about gently adjusting this front-back alignment of your hips and pelvic floor to find just the right position for your body.

You cannot remove core work from tango: it does not get easier. However, all the other work can be pared down so that you see elegance and ease throughout your posture, held up by your pelvic floor and deep core.

Connecting pelvis to spine

Psoas, psoas, psoas

The psoas muscle has ten neuromotor units on each side of the spine. It does A LOT of different things. The human transition from walking on all fours to bipedalism affected how this muscle works and the path of the muscle is pretty weird. However, what you need to know about the psoas and its cousins, psoas minor and iliacus, is this: these are BIG muscles that help stabilize and move, connecting your legs through your pelvis to your spine. They are deep inside the body and hard to find if you feel for them, but my chiropractor and my medical massage therapist can find them on me and I can tell those lines of muscle and fascia need release in order to stay aligned. Ow….

Tail/back

The DFL also has elements that we would think of as BACK, not front of the body. You can follow the fascia from the lumbar spine DOWN the inside of the sacrum, down the tailbone, across the pelvic floor, and then up to the belly button. As I said above, this helps with images of how to align your hips or hip tip front to back for optimal tango alignment.

Diaphragm connections

“Through the pelvis, the deep front line lies in intimate relation with the hip joint and relates the wave of breathing to the rhythm of walking.”

— Tom Myers, Anatomy Trains, p. 147

I always joke that “You can swear, but you have to breathe!” when working on walking in tango. It turns out that the DFL directly connects your diaphragm to your deep core to your hips/pelvic floor and all the way down to the sole of your foot (and up to your skull). No wonder you can’t walk well if you are not breathing!

Three routes from diaphragm to skull

The DFL splits at the diaphragm (take a look again at the video linked above). One line (posterior) continues up the front of your vertebrae and connect just in front atlas bone, right under your skull. The center DFL line wraps around your heart, between your lungs, and ends up connected at the base of your skull, in front of your neck vertebrae. The front line of the DFL comes up the inside of your sternum, along the front of your throat, and connects at the base of your jaw/chin. What does this mean for your tango? Again, find the right balance front to back in your ribcage. You have three fascial routes to help you adjust.

Head stabilization

Now that we have built from the floor to the skull, let’s adjust starting from the top for a quick fix to begin your body awareness and improve your tango technique. Most of us have been taught to “stand up straight” in ways that do not serve good posture. Whether you overdo the stress i.e., military upright (too flexed) or slumped (too extended), most people need to adjust their neck muscles to find a good, neutral, balanced place.

Hold your skull between your hands and tip it until your neck feels long and relaxed in the back. Most people have the front of their neck long and the back too short. You may feel as if you are looking down visually, but you are probably closer to good alignment than before. Relax your tongue and jaw as well. Take a deep breath.

Keep this feeling at the top of the DFL and see if you can align yourself better at jaw/throat, diaphragm, pelvic floor and soles of the feet—all the parallel surfaces of the body. Can you find a way to stack them up that works better for you?

Tango, fascia, and body awareness

I have been developing a set of yoga classes to help people find their fascial lines, become more aware of how they move, and then apply it to tango. When the classes are completed, I will offer them again as a series focused more on tango. Stay tuned for announcements!

Anatomy Trains

I can’t say enough about the Anatomy Trains book and the Zoom lectures and dissections I have attended that are organized by Tom Myers. For most people, the deep study of fascia is too geeky, but if you are interested at all, I recommend the book. It comes with several hours of videos, and they serve as Cliff Notes for the book if you are not a reader. Again, it’s a deep dive, designed more for massage people, structural integration practitioners and movement specialists, but if that is your jam, you might want to put this on your wish list.

Snow day! No Thursday class at Shabu this week

The temperature is not supposed to go above freezing until Friday, and Portland Public Schools has already declared a snow day tomorrow, so . . . I have decided we are also having a snow day. Stay home, stay safe, and I will see you next week!

Go dancing this weekend to prepare for Valentango!

For those of you ramping up for Valentango, grab your shoes and get some dancing in ahead of time!

Friday is Las Naifas

Join Luisa Zini Fortuna and myself for an early evening of dancing to the tunes of Steven Payne. The 5:30 lesson will focus on using space well and survival skills if beginners are present. The milonga starts at 6:30 and ends at 9:30—lots of time to grab tandas with friends and new partners! Several people have told me that they find Las Naifas the friendliest milonga in town, and we aim to keep it that way. The bar is open downstairs for a quick drink or to hang out and talk during and after the dance. Location: Norse Hall, NE 11th and Couch. The parking lot is at NE 10th and Couch. We would love to see you!

Saturday is Berretin

Alex Krebs holds a Saturday milonga at Tango Berretin, 6305 SE Foster Rd, Portland, OR 97206. There is a 7:30 lesson and dancing until midnight. Parking can be difficult, so give yourself a few minutes to find a space.

Sunday is the benefit milonga for Portland Tango Association

You can read the details on Facebook here, but if you are not on Facebook, it’s at Dance With Joy, 8051 SE 16th Ave, Portland, OR 97202, from 7:30-11:30 PM according to the Facebook event. Jerry Wallach is the DJ. Suggested donation is $10/person. Again, parking may be an issue, so plan ahead.

What do we do on a tango tour other than dancing?

Rather than repeat myself A LOT, I encourage you to go back on my blog and look at:

• all the blog entries from December 2019 and January 2020, including by members of the tour. Here’s a link to one day!

• all the blog entries from January 2017: here is one about all the milongas the group attended.

• all the blog entries from December 2015 when I went to Buenos Aires by myself. Here’s Recoleta Cemetary, somewhere I go every time I get to Buenos Aires.

• Go ahead and explore my blog and see what interests you for the upcoming tour, and let’s start planning!

Buenos Aires tour 2023 is happening!

Mark your calendars

Come join me in warm, sunny Buenos Aires! Ten days to explore the city, dance tango, eat great food and have fun! November 28-December 7, 2023 is the plan. Several people are already planning to extend their trip to other parts of Argentina after the tango tour; use the tour as a springboard for your Argentina adventure!

What’s the plan?

Tango

For the tango-crazed, it is possible to go to two milongas per day, one in the afternoon and one at night, and I will steer you towards places where you can be more sure of a warm welcome and partners. There are very inexpensive group classes all over town. I also have a wide selection of tango teachers I know who are excellent and available to teach you privately.

Summer and sun

Remember that our winter is the Argentine summer! For the outdoors enthusiast, I plan to go on at least one bike tour of the city, and perhaps more. There are walking tours of the city. There are wide park spaces, a natural reserve and the entire rest of the country to explore! I picked this time of year because the days are long, the weather is usually good, and you can be outside a lot.

Culture!

Buenos Aires isn’t just about tango. There are art museums EVERYWHERE (you could probably just do ten days of that). There are street art/mural tours. The history of Argentina is right there for you to see and absorb. Teatro Colon tours and opera? Yup. Jazz clubs? Check. Tango shows? Check. Theater? Yes of course. Going to Buenos Aires is like going to New York or London when it comes to cultural opportunities.

Shopping

If you like to shop, you can do that too. I will be available to take you shoe and outfit shopping, and then I will turn you loose on the nearby outlet stores, the wholesale district, the posh shops, the artesanal fairs—bring your holiday shopping list along!

Outside of Buenos Aires

Each tour, I plan one (optional) outing to explore the places I did not visit when I first came to dance tango in Buenos Aires back in the 90s and 2000s. I was too obsessed with tango to notice anything else. Now, I try to catch up on what I have missed. This year, I am going to Colonia in Uruguay for a day; you are welcome to come along and explore with me! Also, at least two people are already planning their extended trip around Argentina, starting after the tango tour. I can help you with that too!

Suggestions

• Buy the best airplane seat you can afford: it’s a really long trip! Consider taking an extra day somewhere on the way to stretch your legs and enjoy another city, or just get it over with and recover in Buenos Aires.

• Bring dollars for exchange ($100 bills). You can easily use your debit/credit card, but some things require cash, like entrance to milongas and taxi rides. It is easier to exchange money there, than to bring pesos with you.

• Set up your one-on-one initial meeting with me to allow me to plan for your best tour possible.

• Reserve a hotel room or BnB in the neighborhood I have chosen as our base (I will help you with this) ASAP in order to get a decent place.

• Bring your friends along! It’s more fun when you go on an adventure together!

Sign up!

Let me know you are interested and I will send you a more detailed plan, along with price. After you pay the non-refundable deposit, I will meet with you to help you get lodging, make travel plans, and get your input about what you would like to do while in Buenos Aires. There will be some pre-travel opportunities to dance and get to know the other participants before the tour begins.

2023: Starting afresh with intention

Sometimes I make New Year’s resolutions and sometimes I don’t. This year, I have more of a theme than a list for myself.

Tango resolutions

Go out dancing more!

At the end of a week teaching dance, sometimes 30 hours in five days, I rarely have much energy to go out dancing. This is especially true after several years of lockdown, when most of the dance opportunities available did not feel safe to me. Now that more careful venues have opened again, my goal is to get out and dance more.

Take a tour to Buenos Aires again!

My last tour went to Buenos Aires in December 2019. We all felt energized and ready to bring that energy back to Portland and Bend and eastern Washington . . . and then COVID happened. The momentum evaporated and one dear friend who had been on the tour caught COVID and died, making those ten days in Buenos Aires extra special but bittersweet.

Now I have new students who have not yet been to Buenos Aires and who want to go together, plus other students who want to return there and dance again, eat lots of great food, see a lovely city, and maybe even get out of the city on an adventure or two. Stay tuned, but the plan is YES, Buenos Aires December 2023!

Yoga resolutions

Keep practicing for myself with my partner

I really love teaching my private and group yoga classes. During the past month, I began avoiding doing my own yoga practice. “I’m too tired!” I would tell my husband, and he would practice without me. Since we began lockdown doing yoga together daily, one of my resolutions for 2023 is to again do daily yoga together. It’s only been two days, but so far, so good! We pick a time, and just DO it.

Keep studying yoga and the body

I take private lessons in yoga that help me teach better and deepen my own practice. I treasure these times and they always bring me joy, even if my legs are shaking after a class! On top of that, I am taking more anatomy classes and learning about the fascia in the body (connective tissue). My training involved more work about the bones and muscles, but I need to learn more about fascia to understand hyperflexibility, the aging body and injury prevention. I learn about something, and then I design a yoga class on that topic to share the information. More of that will happen in 2023.

Work/life balance resolutions

This is the main place I am focusing this year. I feel very blessed to have a lot of work, more than I have ever had before. However, as a self-employed person, I have always worked as much as possible because one never knows what will happen in the future. There is no paid vacation, no matching funds from an employer, and no guarantee of work next week. And I love my work, so it is difficult to say “no” when asked to teach! I have a dream job.

I have now found my limit of how much I can teach per week without completely draining myself so that there is no balance of energy and time for myself or my family. This year, I aim to learn how to better balance my work so that I feel better about my life as a whole. And I am working on saying, “No thanks” and not scheduling more than I can do.

I want more time with my family as my son gets ready to graduate from high school and fly the coop. I try to have special times with him (usually feeding him!) so that we have a chance to check in and chat. Being a mom has been the most important part of my life and I dread that empty nest, so the intention this year is to enjoy the time we have together.

My husband and I are planning to start traveling more, and that will include more dancing in as many places as we can get to in the near future. It’s exciting to look ahead, make plans, and hope some will happen this year.

Do you have any New Year’s resolutions? Tell me!

Yoga breathing to survive the holidays

We all love our families, extra social events, over-eating and all the other things that make up the end of the year. However, those same items can create more stress than in normal weeks. If you are planning to dance during the end of the year, consider doing a little breathing exercise before you begin to ground you and get you more relaxed so that you dance well.

Alternate nostril breathing

Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) helps to relieve stress and anxiety, so it’s a great complement both holiday survival and to preparation for dancing tango! It also balances the right and left sides of the body energetically, so it should also improve your balance. It sounds weird, but it works: try it!

Nadi Shodhana technique

Preparation:

• Sit in a comfortable place, either on the floor or in a chair if the floor is not comfortable.

• Lengthen your spine up out of your pelvis so you have plenty of space for your breath in your body

• Rest your left hand in your lap, palm up.

• Take your right hand and connect your thumb and ring finger (fourth finger) together to create a pincer effect. You can rest your index and middle finger on your forehead between your eyes if you wish.

Take one normal full breath in and out.

• Close off the right side of your nostril with your thumb and inhale fully.

• Close off both sides of your nose for a moment, then use your ring finger to close off your left nostril as you exhale through the right.

• On the next inhale, keep the left side closed, breathing in on the right side.

• Again, close off both sides for a moment, then release the left side of your nose and exhale on the left side.

That is one set of breathing (in on left, out on right; in on right, out on left). Do at least five sets of breathing. If at any time this makes you feel MORE stressed, stop relax, and try again, or try the no-nose-pinching version below. If this feels comfortable, try to balance the speed of your breathing, so that the inhale and exhale match, and gradually build up the “hold” between inhale and exhale. If you are new to this, don’t worry too much about the holds between inhale and exhale: you can extend them as you get used to the breathing technique.

And if you have a cold, try this

Alternate nostril breathing does not have to involve plugging your nose! I found this out when I took an online yoga teacher training class and was too stuffy to breathe well while only using half my nose. The teacher suggested this modification and I was surprised that it worked as well for stress/relaxation as actually blocking my nostrils!

Try sitting comfortably, focusing on the pattern of alternate nostril breathing (above), but instead of plugging one side of your nose, rest your hands palm up on your legs, and connect your thumb and fourth finger of your right hand, and inhale thinking about the left nostril. Pinch both sets of fingers together, then release the right side and exhale thinking about the right side of your nose. Continue, “pinching off” one side and then the other with your hands resting in your lap.

Using energy in tango to make a good connection

I just taught two hours of tango where my students are ready to add another layer to their dance. One can suddenly dance much more musically than the previous lesson. The other dancer is starting to connect with energy in the dance. This can happen at any time in the dance, but these two layers are (to me) the epitome of a good, advanced follower. I know I go on about “it’s not about the moves” but it is true. If you have a follower who gives you energy and musicality and takes part in the dance as an equal member of the conversation/team, that dance feels wonderful!

Show the leader what works for you

When I follow, I use the first few moves of the dance to show my leader what size steps feel the best for ME. My goal: to make what feels good for me feel so nice to the leader that they will adjust their dance to accommodate my needs. Of course, that is my definition of a good leader :-) If I can make what I need feel the best, of course the leader will want to incorporate my needs into the dance. I need to really articulate through my feet so that the leader can feel what I am feeling.

Inspire the leader musically

As the follower, I don’t make all the decisions, but I can influence them. If I know the music well, I can suggest speeding up, slowing down or pausing without wrestling the leader for control. Again, if I feel the follower dancing their heart out to a song, as a sensitive leader, I WANT to include the follower’s musicality in my dance. As a team, we are stronger. My entire body is dancing musically, but again I need to articulate through my feet for the leader to really understand what I am offering.

Stay on your axis but send your energy through the leader

Graciela Gonzalez told a class, “Pretend you are embracing your partner, but your favorite movie star is up in the balcony behind him. Embrace that person too!” You don’t need to put your back in jeopardy and lean on the leader. The point of connecting to find how your energy connects, not act like a lead weight around the leader’s neck. Think of sending energy through the leader, not at the leader.

If leaders keep pulling you in and pinning you to their chest, you have two options. First, try to connect with energy like this. For most people, that will fix the problem because they really wanted to find that connection energetically, even if they thought it was only physical. For the people who are sure you don’t know how to dance unless you do a leaning close embrace, you need to look for more open-minded dancers to work on your connection and then come back to the pushy dancers when you can protect your body.

Give good energy even if the dance is not good

This may be the most crucial time to keep connected energetically. A difficult tanda can be hellish if a dancer gives up and tunes out. It feels awful to the partner. Saturday night, I had the class play “Blah Blah” where you dance nicely, and then tune out alternately. Everyone in the class could feel the difference. So…don’t do that on the dance floor! It’s better to end the tanda after three dances than tune out and torture the partner who is torturing you. Try to improve the dance with better energy and technique. At least give that poor dancer the gift of your presence!

My latest obsession is fascia

You know I love to learn. I ADORE learning new things, and I always bring my newly acquired information to my students. When it comes to understanding the fascia in your body, this is pertinent to everyone.

What is fascia?

The fascia in your body is the connective tissue that holds everything together. Your muscles are attached to your bones and to other muscles in chains of movement. You have very heavy fascia, like the sole of your foot (plantar fasciitis sound familiar?) and the connections across the back of your pelvis, holding the bones together. You have thinner-than-paper connective tissue in other parts of your body.

How does it affect me for movement?

Your flexibility or lack of flexibility can be due to how your fascia works. For some people with very tight fascia, it’s hard to do “normal” stretching. For people who are hyperflexible like me, my fascia have extra stretch that can make it easy to turn my ankles and sprain my wrists. There are extremes both ways, but most of us fit in the middle where our fascia mostly do what we need: hold us together.

Chains of fascia instead of muscles

I have always thought of the body as discrete muscles, attached to my bones, moving my joint. However, there is an argument for thinking of chains of muscles and how they work in teams. You can dissect long connected groups of muscles with the connective tissue that shows how lines of movement throughout the entire body can work in a way that makes more sense than just looking at one muscle at a time.

I have begun to look at alignment as these chains of movement throughout the body. If the spiral line of fascia is unbalanced, you might roll out at the ankle or roll in at the arch of your foot, unbalancing the entire line up through your hip to your skull! However, if you look at these long lines in the body and subtly adjust somewhere along that line, you can often realign the entire body to work better.

Tango and fascia

One property of fascia is elasticity: it snaps back into place like a rubber band when stretched quickly. Think of a fabulous boleo: the entire leg is free and relaxed, and the timing of the leader can create a real THWACK! as the leg runs into the other thigh and then returns to its original alignment. What about a good traspie, with the entire arch of the foot, up through the leg to the core, rebounding with a stretchy feeling? That’s lines of fascia holding everything together!

As I teach using the ideas I am learning about fascia, I find more people can move easily using the knowledge. It removes the need to pay attention to each muscle or body part at the same time as four or five others, and instead allows you to monitor one band of fascia, feeling the stretchiness and connection throughout the body. The mindfulness pays off on an entirely new dimension of ability for many people.

If you want to explore fascia for yourself, I can recommend the Anatomy Trains book by Tom Myers. Its pricey, BUT you can access a few hours of videos with the book that you could watch and get the most pertinent information without reading every single word. I have been taking online workshops through Tom Myers, and my head is stuffed with useful information. I can feel it all the way to my toes :-)

Snow days? Remember you can Zoom your lessons!

Choose in-person or Zoom as you need for private lessons

As we have our first snow of the year here in Portland, I wanted to remind you of one of the benefits of COVID lockdown: I have video equipment! If the weather is unsafe for driving, or if you just can’t bring yourself to leave the house, you can choose to have a Zoom lesson instead of driving to your in-person lesson.

Please communicate your plans

I need to know ahead of time so that I can set up the equipment, as I finally started putting it away and returning to a more open feeling in my home studio. As I often teach several hours in a row, if you know you aren’t coming in person, PLEASE give me a few hours of notice so that I am ready for you.

Sometimes Zoom is just right

An added benefit to Zoom lessons: I can send you a video! Did you want that drill for cruzadas we just did to practice at home? Ask me to turn recording on. I can email you the recording later for home review.

If you didn’t take Zoom tango lessons during lockdown, there’s a TON of things we can do one-on-one to practice technique. I can also teach you a yoga class online. It’s up to you.

Group class MAY be on Zoom

If I can’t get to Shabu for the group class, I may choose to do a group tango class on Zoom, but I may cancel. For my small group yoga lesson, if it’s too snowy for all of you to get here, I may do Zoom instead as well; stay tuned!

Let it snow!

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!