I will be in Buenos Aires sipping my mate on my terrace, but if you are going to be in Portland for the Mate Day, you can learn all about it at a special event. Educate Ya is sponsoring a November 30th event about mate, drinking mate and Argentine culture for $15. Check it out!
Musicality exercises to expand your dance
Many of us think of acquiring more moves as the way to become an advanced dancer. I disagree. It’s not the number of years you have danced either. For me, moves make a good intermediate dancer, but what creates an advanced dancer is being able to move with your partner to the music. The moves serve as ways to express that musicality and connection but are secondary to the actual experience of dancing. How can we move from permanent intermediate dancers to advanced dancers?
Play with “all the speeds”
Take ONE move, preferably walking, and look at all the ways you can use the music to make this one move beautiful. Start on the beat. Then work out how to pause and play with different lengths of pauses that fit the music. Then add in either slow motion or double-time (syncopation). Try out half-time, stepping one beat and then pausing for a beat. Last (or if you are a jazz musician, first) play with OFF the beat, AROUND the beat—who said you need to be a metronome? You are a human :-)
As you explore your musicality, apply this exercise to each move you know. How many ways can this specific pattern of steps work in the music? Try to make EVERY pattern you know work more than one way. Do one each time you practice. After that, play with how one pattern can fit after another pattern, and vary the musicality between the two. Rinse and repeat.
Musicality: not just for leaders anymore!
Musicality is important whether you are leading or following. I find that many people who only follow, tend to mechanically do one speed of a certain move (for example the cruzada). Then, no matter what the music or the leader suggests, the follower just performs the move automatically. Follower: practice solo and listen to what the music tells you! Vary your practice.
Start listening to tangos, valses and milongas on your own. It’s true that the leader is steering the boat when it comes to dancing, but YOU are the motor. No motor, no dance! No musicality on your part, no musicality in the dance. One of my teachers told me that I should “inspire” the leader to change their mind by giving intentions and suggestions with my dance.
It takes two to tango
For tango, how YOU hear the music counts, as a leader and as a follower. Both people are having this conversation with the music. In vals and milonga, it’s a bit more about being on the beat, so push your tango first and then let it inform your other dances.
Learn the music!
We can all carry our music collection on our phones, so include tango on your playlist. Discover what orchestras really speak to you and get to know the songs you prefer. Every few years, I find a new favorite song and/or orchestra and explore that new region of sound. One of the best compliments I ever received from an Argentine was a very happy, “You know the music! I didn’t expect that from a foreigner and a woman!”
Even now, after 28 years of tango, I still find songs I can’t remember hearing before. I have favorite orchestras and orchestras that do not excite me. I try to practice all of them, so that I can dance well even to a song that does not inspire me.
When you really know a song, it will move you to dance it well, if you have worked on your dance so that the music can flow through you and your partner.
Classes
If you are interested in exploring these ideas, please join us in class for the rest of October and November. Each class will have part of the hour dedicated to exploring the music, our partner, and our own musicality!
Contrabody for tango
Several people have asked me about contrabody recently, and since we will be working on it next week in my group class, I thought I would post a quick video about it! Yes that’s me before lockdown and growing out my hair :-)
Video describing and showing how to correctly use the body for walking forward and backwards in Argentine tango.
Getting ready for a crowded dance floor
You make me feel like dancing!
When the floor gets crowded, are you one of the people who feel that you are no longer dancing? I just spent a weekend Balkan dancing (seven tango dancers showed up in total!) to live music. The more crowded the dance floor became, the more the energy built. We got louder and happier. Shining, sweaty dancers grinned, shouted and sang. The less space we had, the more we danced in place, barely moving forward. It was awesome, and I promised myself that this year, it won’t take another entire year to repeat the experience.
How can we have this experience instead of the “stuck” experience some tango dancers describe to me when dancing in a crowded room? Learning a bunch of new moves a week before a festival will NOT help. You can review what you know, practice in small spaces, and work on better musicality/embrace/steering (which is what this week’s group classes are about), but this is not the time to pick up new material. Instead, below are a few suggestions for surviving festivals.
Survival tactics
Pretend you are having fun!
Your intention creates your experience. Make the lack of space a game instead of an impediment. Ooooh! I managed to sneak in a tiny circulo in the corner! Yes! I nailed the ending of that song exactly right! OMG! I avoided Mr. Crazy and his partner successfully! Oh Yeah! I aligned my body and it made my partner stand up! You get the idea.
Look for good energy
With the right partner, you can walk, pause, and turn well to the music — and that’s it. There is no need for lots of fancy moves in every dance. If the energy feels nice, you don’t care if the moves are fancy. I always try to dance with people who make me feel good, rather than with “good” dancers. It’s not about flashy moves ever, but especially not at a crowded festival. Search out the dancers with “buena onda” (good vibes) and you will leave the floor happy.
You’re not the only socially anxious person out there
For those of us who do not deal well with new people, or lots of people, or unfamiliar places: all three of those happen at a festival. Take some time to do yoga breathing before heading out to dance. Take breaks away from the dance floor. Find someone you know to sit with and chat if that calms you. Make plans to attend with a friend, or with a dance partner who you can count on to dance a few tandas if things are looking bleak.
Let it go, move on
Festivals are a bit crazy. I always tell my students to be prepared for strange behavior from folks they know. Some dancers choose to only dance with new or out-of-town folks, as you will be available next week, and they will not. This feels like rejection, but it does make sense. Some people are so anxious in large groups that they melt down and act less gracious than usual. Some of us are too blind to see across the floor: we didn’t refuse your cabeceo, we didn’t SEE your cabeceo! Try to let weird encounters go and move on.
Pace yourself
If you are attending the entire festival, GET SOME SLEEP! This past weekend, people in my cabin flipped on the light at 2 am looking for something, and then got up early and did the same thing. The added annoyance was the same people snoring loudly! Grr! I had planned to go to bed on time and sleep my full eight hours, but it didn’t happen. I could tell I was cranky all day. The next night, I was so tired that I slept heavily, and that next day went much better. Get some sleep, take naps, go to bed when you are tired. There will be more dancing. You won’t miss anything crucial by going home early or coming a bit late. Take your vitamins, drink liquids, eat well, and take a nap!
I hope to see all of you at the Portland Tango Festival dancing!
What tangoing in socks shows us
Thanks to the folks who fixed up my house and sold it to me, I had floors that were paper thin (a bad refinishing job). I took advantage of going out of the country to empty the first floor of my house and replace the floor. Given the price tag of that endeavor, I have followed instructions to the letter to let the finish harden, so only socks have been dancing on the floor for the past week.
Dancing in socks can improve your technique
Are you using your entire foot in the dance?
It’s easy to think that you have all four corners of your foot on the floor at the end of each step when in shoes. You can’t feel the floor as easily as when you are barefoot. However, in socks you cannot hide that heel hover left over from ballet class. You can’t disguise the fact that your foot is rolling out or in and needs strengthening exercises. You feel the floor hard against your foot if you have been popping up on the ball of your foot instead of focusing on the metatarsal arch to give you balance.
In socks, practice your front, back and side steps. Explore your ochos and your giros: where is your technique failing you, or where is your foot in need of extra attention? Because pivoting has very little friction like this, you may find a better way to get around corners!
Are you on axis?
My first tango teacher told me I should practice dancing on very slick floors and very sticky floors so that, no matter what floor appeared at a milonga, I would feel comfortable dancing. Socks give that “very slick” floor feeling and can feel a little scary at first IF YOU ARE OFF AXIS.
Dancing in socks helps you to see if you are really on balance in your steps. If you have been reaching behind you or leaning off-balance in your dance, you will really feel it in socks as your feet threaten to go out from under you. Conversely, if you are well on-axis, you have more ease of pivoting and more information from the floor than in your dance shoes.
Do your adornos feel fun and sensuous?
Drawing on the floor with your feet can feel great: the sensory feedback allows you to be more stretchy or playful or . . . whatever you want to find in your dance. Are you using the floor in your adornos, or are your feet simply near the floor? In my first private lesson with an Argentine, the teacher exhorted my partner to “gancho like a woman, not a girl” and I will apply that to adornos: really get into the move, instead of timidly suggesting a movement :-)
As a lead, are you rushing the follower or yourself?
As a leader, being on axis and using your feet is just as important as when you are following. You have the additional task of ensuring that the follower feels secure. In socks, make sure you slow down enough that the follower can safely negotiate each move. Perhaps you might consider dancing at this speed all the time for the comfort of the follower!
The size of your steps also matters. If you tend to lunge around in huge steps, think about how that feels to a shorter person or someone not 100% on axis. I suggest exploring steps that travel less but stretch up and down your axis to give you an elegant tango that does not run over more prudent dancers around you. If you can’t do it in socks, maybe it’s too big for social dance.
Socks can make you slow down and smell the roses (not the socks!)
Many of us dash about in tango, trying to ocho on every beat, punching steps to speed them up, and ignoring the more leisurely, sensuous moments of the music. Dancing in socks encourages us to slow down, to take time to savor pauses and slow motion. It gives us the gift of hearing more in each song and each partner. It allows us time to breathe.
We have a few more days with no shoes on my floor, so I will continue to revel in sock tango. Try it yourself!
Teaching from the body to the dance
How folk tradition is passed down
In a folk tradition, moves are handed down from person to person. Each person has their own style, whether it’s from their town, neighborhood, or personal choice. When you attempt to teach that in a dance studio environment, everyone wants you to give a black and white answer to a question. What is the “exact right way” to do this move?
If you honor the folk (rural or urban) tradition, you need to show the nuances of unique styles and discuss how they align or disagree with each other. Most teachers from the folk tradition just show stuff and expect you to figure it out. That’s how THEY did it! People didn’t go to dance classes to learn movement: they learned it from friends, family, or by watching good dancers. New dancers did not learn how their bodies work, but rather tried to visually imitate what they saw.
I love learning historical and folk dance forms. I spend my tango money taking lessons to study how the old milongueros danced, both their moves and their styling. I enjoy how different each dancer’s style was from his friends. My second M.A. is in cultural anthropology, and I feel it is especially important to understand the cultural background of tango (or any other movement form) and to teach that information along with dance steps.
From tradition to the dance
My teacher, Jose, is a walking repository of this tradition, able to dance in many styles and gifted in his ability to FEEL like some of the old milongueros I remember dancing with 25 years ago in Buenos Aires. This is why I bring him to Portland each year. He is a dancing archive!
However, he is also extremely flexible. He has amazing natural turnout at his hips. The way his body is built, he can easily create shapes that tax other people’s bodies. Here is where we diverge. I only realized this after teaching him yoga. We gaped at how he could easily move in an asana where everyone else struggled. I finally had my answer as to why he advocated huge amounts of hip turnout to create moves!
However, I found myself in a difficult position: trying to explain to my teacher why I was teaching a move differently than he does. I agree with his description of the moves. I agree with his historical tracing from someone’s styling to present-day tango. Despite all of that, I could not in good faith teach my students to do what he was demonstrating. Why?
From the body to the dance
As someone who holds an M.A. in dance research and pedagogy as well as certification in yoga teaching, I teach from the body to the step. For me, learning proprioception and learning to protect your body from injury in daily life is paramount. That means that, no matter how tango has been taught, we need to find ways to dance it that are based on our own body structure.
I apply body knowledge to tango and build the moves from there. If a famous milonguero always stood in a T formation, with one foot at an angle and behind the other one; and not with heels together (V), we look at the goal achieved by that movement choice. Instead of just telling people WHAT to do, I try to explain WHY something works best for most people. For example, I ask dancers to explore how much turnout THEY have in each hip joint. If the knee is being pulled off a stable hinge joint position, that amount of turnout is too much for your body. If you want to dance and walk with ease throughout your life, you cannot afford to do a move just because “it’s always been done like that.”
When you take a class from a teacher, make sure that you understand the WHY of a movement. If something feels uncomfortable on your body, look at your setup and pay attention to how it feels. A good teacher can explain why and problem-solve for your body. If it’s just a question of “I haven’t tried the move that way before” and the sticking point is in your head, then use the opportunity as an anti-Alzheimer’s moment; if the sticking point is your hip joint, you should modify the move!
Jose Garofalo workshops in Portland start on Friday June 9th!
Get ready for fun!
Jose Garofalo will be in Portland until June 18th, so come explore the many styles of tango with him in group workshops! I have spread the workshops out since it’s summer and many folks will be out of town one or the other weekend he is here. You can sign up or just show up! Please note that workshops are at: Norse Hall, Shabu Studios and Dance with Joy. I have tried to make them accessible in various parts of town.
Never a dull moment
When I perform with Jose, we don’t practice. Once, we performed to live music and did not even know what song the band planned to play. Other times, Jose chooses songs on the way to the performance. Jose thrives on improvisation and can dance either extreme Nuevo tango or very traditional tango or anything in the middle: he’s a creative force of nature! I suffer from stage fright, and Jose is one of the only dancers who can get me out on the dance floor and experience a performance as fun. It’s a follower’s dream to be taken care of to such an extent and leading him is also a joy because he has so much fun that I feel empowered to try crazy things I would not normally do in heels!
Schedule private lessons
If you would like to schedule private lessons, please contact Elizabeth for Jose’s availability. If you feel that studying with a visiting teacher means you can’t review the material, think again! You can video parts of your lesson and use that to go over material. Better yet: find a partner to share your lesson with and then practice together!
Workshop schedule
Tango and broccoli bands: elastic movement
Tango walking should have a fluid, elastic quality. When you use your body the way it is designed, your dance will look almost effortless. How can you nudge your dance towards this goal?
The elastic quality of fascia
The connective tissue in your body has many qualities. The important one here is elasticity. Take a moment and fling your arm as vigorously as you can away from your body. Do you feel it snap back towards you? If you do a quick movement (no holding it out there like a beautiful ballet arm, admiring it!), the body’s fascia works like an elastic band, returning you to your regular shape. The good news: it’s all attached!
I want you to use your feet and ankles in a more elastic fashion. Most of us do not use our full range of motion in our feet and ankles. Explore: how far can you roll through your toes? How far can your ankles flex? If this feels strange to you, you have not been dancing to your full potential! Using the feet and ankles as a stretchy band both helps you maintain balance throughout each step and gets you to your next step with more ease.
Front steps
When you walk forward, feel how each bone and muscle in your foot works together to roll or articulate until you run out toe connection to the floor. Like a cat sneaking up on a mouse, use your entire foot as your support leg/foot leave the floor. Feel how your foot releases and snaps back under you!
Side steps
The side steps remind me of swimming in fins. As you articulate through your foot (I hesitate to use the phrase “push off”), can you feel how the last little bit of your big toe and inner arch give one last little lick to the floor, like a fish tail flicking to move the fish faster? Now, feel what happens to your foot once it 100% finishes this move: it snaps back into its regular shape, and the elastic connection all the way up your inner thigh to your pelvic floor brings your leg in under you. Collecting is not a step of landing; it is what your body does naturally if you use your support leg fully in your (ack!) push off.
Back step
Here is where we cheat the most. Almost no one uses the full flexion of the ankle. I see people push off their toes and pick their foot up. I see small ankle flexion followed by locked knees or by hips slumping towards the support leg. It’s much easier if you keep your knees relaxed, your hips aligned, and FULLY articulate through your ankle. You will feel a lot more work in your calf muscles and running all the way up your leg (fascia connect all the way up to your skull, remember!). Then, feel how that band of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissue recoils and brings your leg under your new position!
Broccoli bands as inspiration
One audiovisual aid that has helped many of my students, has been the thick elastic bands that come with broccoli. Stick both of your thumbs into a broccoli band and stretch it! Feel how much that band wants to return to its original shape! Let go with one thumb, and SNAP! The broccoli band is back in place.
If you imagine the lines of fascia that run from your feet up your body as broccoli bands, you can see how working your foot and ankle affect your thigh and hip. You can also envision how, if you articulate fully through your feet and ankles, that your entire leg will arrive under your new position in a step without “collecting” or “pulling in” or making any other effort. Your fascia WILL return to the original shape because of its elastic quality! Just keep your pelvic floor and core engaged, and the errant leg will SNAP! back under your axis!
OK, go out there and be elastic! Come to class and get some help with building your elasticity and the beauty of your dance! See you on the dance floor.
Jose Garofalo in Portland 8-18 June 2023!!
Photo credit: Carlos Vizzotto
Jose Garofalo has taught tango for 30 years in Buenos Aires and was one of my first teachers. He is part of a group working to document the styles of the old milongueros, as well as an integral part of Nuevo Tango in the 1990s. He is a wonderful, warm, fun teacher! Come play with Jose!
I recommend signing up for lessons. I will be studying with him myself. In Jose, you have decades of dancing in one person, here in Portland. If you want to do Nuevo Tango, or performance tango, traditional styles of close embrace (lean, no lean, canyengue), or if you want to craft your own style, he is a master of improvisation and encourages you to find your own personal tango. If you just want to dance with a master for an hour, he can do that. He is a fabulous follower, by the way, as well as a leader, and taught me tons about leading by being my follower.
Workshop classes:
1. Improvising your own dance along the line of dance
Friday, 6/9 5:30-6:30 @ Norse Hall, 111 NE 11th Ave.
$20 (not in the milonga admission price)
2. Understanding the emergence and differences in tango styles
Saturday, 6/10 4-5:30 PM @ Shabu Studios, 6055 NE Glisan St.
$30
3. Tradition meets improvisation
Sunday, 6/11: 1-2:30 PM @ Shabu Studios, 6055 NE Glisan St.
$30
4. Applying the tango secrets of the old milongueros
Thursday, 6/15: 7-9 PM @ Shabu Studios, 6055 NE Glisan St.
$30
5. Building your own style of tango!
Saturday, 6/17: 1-2:30 PM @ Dance with Joy, 8051 SE 16th Ave.
$30
Package deal: all 5 workshop classes, $120 (Register here, or pay at door with cash, check, Venmo or Paypal)
Private lessons
Studying with Jose is fun. I will be studying with him myself. I know that $150/hr or 5/$600 sounds steep. I have found that combining at least one private lesson with group classes will speed up your learning. Private classes are a must in learning to dance tango well. If pricing feels steep, consider sharing a lesson with someone so that you have a partner to practice what you learned in the class.
The private lessons will be at my home studio, 4315 NE Garfield Ave. To schedule, contact me at ewartluf@gmail.com or use my contact form. Please make a commitment to keep your lesson or pay for it—it’s not fair to visiting teachers to cancel at the last minute when they cannot fill that slot.
What I learned from Nito and Elba
Nito Garcia and Elba Sottile were some of my first Argentine tango teachers. I was six months into tango and went to my first Stanford Tango Week. What I loved about Nito and Elba’s classes was how clean their dancing looked and how connected they were as a couple. They insisted on good technique and solid, useful moves instead of the flashy stuff some other couples taught. Everything they taught us fit on the social dance floor. When I went to Buenos Aires, I continued to take classes with them at Gricel, along with my Argentine friends.
For the next few weeks, I will be teaching their classic turns and combinations I learned from them, at my Thursday class at Shabu Studios. We might not be able to spin as well as Nito, but we can use their work to make our social dancing more balanced, musical, and beautiful!
If you can’t do it in a 1960s Chanel skirt . . .
“If you can’t do the adorno in a 1960s Chanel skirt, DON’T do it!” advised Elba at one class at Gricel. She was showing us adornos to do in calesitas and leaning calesitas. “Keep your feet on the floor!” She wanted no window between the thighs for any move. Big fancy adornos are fun, but for the social dance floor, who needs bruises from someone else’s partner kicking you?
I can do that blindfolded!
I watched Nito and Elba perform with Nito blindfolded. Because of his precision, he could do the sacadas, lapices, paradas—all his regular moves just as cleanly without looking. That was a lesson in not looking at what we are doing. On the video, notice how nice his posture is: is he looking at his feet? No! Do you need to look at your feet? No!
Learn to follow to learn to lead!
One night at a tango festival, the organizers announced a mystery couple for a performance. Intrigued, we wondered why one of the teachers was dancing with a new, white-haired partner that none of us could identify. Had we missed classes with one of the Argentine women? She looked a little dumpy in the dress she wore, but boy could she dance! And spin! and power turns! At the end of the dance, a grinning Nito Garcia took a bow in his dress. I was so impressed by his turn technique. Imagine most tango guys you know PERFORMING as a follower, managing to dance in a dress and heels with great technique, and blowing away the audience!
I can tell you that the next day, I paid even more attention in class!
Classy dancing does not mean flashy dancing!
Nito and Elba have never gone for the flash of performance. Their dance has soul instead: musicality, connection, teamwork that I hope to have someday in my dance. After all these years, they are still an inspiration to me.
Let them inspire you too! You can watch them dance at Club Gricel! It’s an old video, and it’s a little grainy, but you can see his cat-like tread and her calm elegance! I need to dig out my old VCR tapes from class reviews!
See you Thursday for "the" ocho cortado and variations
Why do folks refer to “the” ocho cortado as a singular move? When I studied in Buenos Aires, I learned four separate ocho cortados, several variations of each ocho cortado, and different styles from different areas of town. You can do an entire dance almost solely with ocho cortado variants!
Come to class Thursday and explore a family of moves built from a basic “recipe” of traspies and steps. They work for tango, milonga and vals. They can be syncopated or danced on the beat or even (gasp!) slow motion. You can dance them with teeny steps to fit on the dance floor in Buenos Aires, or huge to include them in a tango performance.
Join us at Shabu Studios, 6055 NE Glisan, at 7 PM April 20th!
Pelvic floor awareness for tango and yoga
One of my yoga teacher trainers has just released a short, clear video about the pelvic floor. Obviously, she focuses on its importance for yoga, but those of you who have been working on your deep core and pelvic floor lift for tango, Rachel Scott has twelve minutes of wisdom for you!
Yoga students, see you Wednesday and/or Friday, and tango group class, see you Thursday. Practice until then :-)
In praise of walking
“So, you are saying that, when I am an advanced dancer, I will want to work on walking??”
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.”
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!