I copied and pasted this (the words/stuff below) into a Word document some time ago...looks like it's from Facebook...
On the subject of "the embrace" and the feeling of the embrace and mutual pressure resistance tension force meeting force and all that khynna stuff...
Personally, I like Catherine Young's comment....Tone without tension, melty but not flaccid, presence VS "resistance", awareness but not micromanagement, assertiveness without force, grounded while also buoyant...
I generally don't go back to followers who are "noodle-ey" and just not there, not "present"...I like to feel a slight bit of athleticism...
Rigoberto back in Aspen...we used "she's like a Ferrarri" to describe particular followers a few times...now, I've never driven a Ferrarri...but now I know what it feels like...(grin)
Terpsichoral Tangoaddict
April 22 at 10:22am · Edited ·
I was musing yesterday on a very simple, in fact rather commonsensical, but often forgotten aspect of tango teaching. (At least, I often forget it.) What you emphasize in your teaching or even your own dancing and practice reflects what you feel most dancers are lacking and therefore what is most important to correct.
My personal impression is that most less experienced/less skilled dancers feel too stiff and tense, that the leaders are too forceful, and the followers offer too much resistance -- and that most people don't feel sensual enough in the embrace. So I focus on encouraging people (and myself) to relax more, find the way of least resistance, the minimum effort necessary, do less (especially leaders), not micromanage the muscles and soften everything up.
But The Semite feels that most beginners are too unstructured, floppy and collapsed and will disintegrate into a heap of wet spaghetti if you blow on them. So he is always emphasizing maintaining a frame, keeping things toned, using a *small* amount of resistance, being clear and not under assertive, pushing off.
His language is all about firming up. Mine is more likely to emphasize melting. He stresses discipline; I talk about sensual enjoyment. These aren't contradictions, of course. The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. He just feels the steaks are so rare they are almost raw. And I'm more concerned that they might burn to a crisp. And often this is what is happening when teachers give you contradictory advice: they are trying to pull you away from the extremes, to keep you far from one pole or the other (and you need to stay away from both, both are equally distorting -- and, yes, you can be both collapsed and tense, in different ways and at different moments). The teacher's job is to try to guide you to where the lovely subtlety of the movement lies: that sweet spot in the middle.
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• You, Dierdre Nepa Black, Tina Marie Eaton, Mary Li and 84 others like this.
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• Faith Lasts Yes, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle but I tend to drift more towards your approach...(I am not a teacher yet )
April 22 at 10:25am · Like · 1
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• Terpsichoral Tangoaddict Faith Lasts Actually, my partner doesn't often teach either. But, yes, this is partly a question of personal preference and you will take an approach with your own dancing even if you're not a teacher (you are always your own teacher).
April 22 at 10:26am · Like · 1
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• Anna Larsen Comparing to steaks is a new word in tango teaching:)
April 22 at 10:32am · Like · 1
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• Catherine Young Tone without tension, melty but not flaccid, presence VS "resistance", awareness but not micromanagement, assertiveness without force, grounded while also buoyant...
April 22 at 10:37am · Unlike · 15
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• Terpsichoral Tangoaddict Anna Larsen But appropriate here in Baires, right?
April 22 at 10:39am · Like · 2
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• Anna Larsen Totally:)
April 22 at 10:40am · Like · 1
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• Bruce Chadwick I think that what beginners do is just extremely varied. People who come from a ballroom background are usually too stiff, because the ballroom embrace is what in linguistic circles might be called a "faux ami" (false friend). On the other hand there are definitely some that flop around like loose spaghetti.
I think what happens on the beginner follower end is that there is so much stress about "did I do what I'm supposed to," that it results in a bunch of compensating behaviors. For some, it's to tense up in preparation for hearing that something went wrong, for others, it's to give up their poise and let the leader push them around and mold their steps as if they were a lump of clay being patted into shape. For others (a lot, in my experience) it's to try to memorize a figure that's being worked on, or - if that isn't possible - try to guess what the leader is going to do after a step or two.
Having followed a bit (albeit badly), I know that it's a very challenging nut to crack, since I was guilty of many of the same things, even though I supposedly know better.
(As an aside: I particularly feel for followers who get told "don't anticipate" constantly, because it's often hard to know that you are anticipating until something goes wrong. I pretty much never say "don't anticipate" to anyone, because what they need to hear is what *to* do, not what not to do (also, I might be doing something wrong too). Often times you are not consciously anticipating - it's just muscle memory coming into action. Leaders can usually get away with that, because muscle memory kicks in and then they can say "yes, that's what I was leading," but followers don't get as much slack for that, so there's no doubt that following is a high level skill, even for followers that aren't doing tons of embellishments or anything particularly showy.)
Of course the challenge with beginner followers is that most have to learn by dancing with beginner leaders, and that usually doesn't help much. Though a beginner follower with a more experienced leader will sometimes get floppy and let the leader push them around, figuring "this seems to work ok," not realizing how much extra work the leader has to do in that case. (You can argue that the leader should refuse to do that extra work, but often the path of least resistance is to put up with it and hope that a new partner comes soon).
Beginner leaders are also stressed about "did I do that right," along with "did I step on her" and (in some places) "is my melty embrace inappropriate for someone I just met, so maybe I'll stiffen it up so that it's more 'businesslike'". I think the compensating behavior for the leader does tend to be "let me try to micromanage everything." That's partly because leaders are very concerned about whether they forgot to do something, so they will tend to overdo things as they go down their mental checklist of what's supposed to happen. Ironically, this doesn't stop us from forgetting things, it merely encourages us to overdo the things we do remember.
As with followers, the challenge for the beginning leader is that he usually has to learn by dancing with beginner followers. Only when more experienced followers dance with a leader is it possible to realize that "she's perfectly capable of dancing her part without micromanagement, and in fact it tends to be better if you just let her do that." But then he goes back and dances with a beginner follower again and perhaps the grand epiphany no longer seems to work.
It sometimes amazes me that any of us (leader or follower) survive long enough to develop much skill. A testament to the human spirit, indeed.
April 22 at 1:08pm · Edited · Like · 20
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• Hans Peter Meyer A complaint I (sometimes) have is with follows who melt so much they flow through my arms. So I'm often encouraging "presence." But last night my best tanda was with a follow who felt as if she might melt through my arms, yet was entirely present - and delicious. No simple answers. Just complex learning, simple pleasures.
April 22 at 10:44am · Edited · Like · 9
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• Eva Vonesse I'm not a teacher, but eternal student and I agree, the sweet spot is in the middle.
April 22 at 10:52am · Edited · Like · 2
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• Bruce Chadwick I think a pasta metaphor is better. You want an embrace that's "Al Dente". You don't want an embrace that's floppy/watery, and you don't want an embrace that's crunchy. You want Al Dente.
You don't want an Al Dente embrace when you're with a squid, but that's a different story.
April 22 at 12:47pm · Edited · Like · 20
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• Dennis Loffredo Yes, this is why you should be careful who's hands you put your tango fate in! Don't take a few classes from every person who comes to town, or because someone has a big name, or won the mundial. Watch everyone, see what speaks to and inspires you, and then let them guide you, and trust their advice, build a long-term working partnership with that teacher whom you respect. It doesn't mean they have to be the most graceful, some older teachers can't move as well any more but have incredible information to share. But CHOOSE your teacher.
April 22 at 10:54am · Like · 12
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• David Phillips Both Bruce Chadwick and Terpsichoral Tangoaddict describe matters in a way that resonates with my experience (coming from a ballroom background) as leader and follower, and my thinking. I differ only in a matter of degree, in that it seems we too often see things as either/or, when really it's about applying the just right level of firmness/meltiness at the right times.
I've become a fan of quite small, highly targeted functional movement experiences/experiments/games (somewhat akin to Feldenkrais but more specific to tango) as a means for dancers to self-discover the range of possibilities, equipping them with understanding of the need to always be adapting - to the partner and to the movement requirements - in either role.
April 22 at 11:00am · Like · 4
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• Eva Vonesse I think learning both roles, leading and fallowing CAN be helpful.
April 22 at 11:05am · Like · 6
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• Christina Choong Hear hear Eva!
April 22 at 12:07pm · Like
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• Terpsichoral Tangoaddict Bruce Chadwick Almost no one here has come from a ballroom background, but, yes, I know what you mean! And I think the ""is my melty embrace inappropriate for someone I just met, so maybe I'll stiffen it up so that it's more 'businesslike'" is a very American concern. Puritanism is not dead.
April 22 at 12:43pm · Like · 6
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• Bruce Chadwick Yes, I'm speaking from a US context, where it's more common to have beginner dancers who have done ballroom dance previously, and where the standards of what constitutes appropriate touching are often exceedingly unclear.
April 22 at 12:46pm · Edited · Like · 3
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• Suzanne Doyle Tango dancers of many years training are still trying to find the "sweet spot" of this dance of contradictions. It becomes a lifetime pursuit.
April 22 at 12:51pm · Like · 7
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• Andrew Gauld Beginners tend to have firmness and looseness in the wrong places so they can be both too firm and too loose at the same time. And most of the things I've heard teachers say, in attempts to fix these problems, have made them worse. I wish I could claim, like Fermat, to have a truly elegant solution to this (which would, of course, be too large to fit in the margin of this book), but I don't.
April 22 at 5:17pm · Like · 3
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• Terpsichoral Tangoaddict Jonathan Descheneau and Daniel Helfrich: Sorry, guys, but you know the house rules. Discuss it in a PM, please. Abrazos!
April 22 at 9:20pm · Like
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• Barbara Kottmayr
Yesterday at 3:08am · Like · 1
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• Joanne Zhou Let them(us) find their body before start correcting.
Yesterday at 7:50am · Like · 1
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