Amanda y Adrian Costa :: Solo Caminando

I think I saw one cross...

Monica Paz on "that milonguero feeling"

Aight. I'm not a great headline writer. Just watch the video.

Here's her website: http://mptango.com/SocialTangoSchool/en/special-monica-paz/

Sasha Cagen Introduces PussyWalking to the World

I think she may be on to something...not just as it might relate to tango, but in general, in a big picture "world-changing" sorta way...I'm truly curious about this...I'm not a scientist (I think I think like a scientist) but as a student of the human condition on this planet, I'm curious if it works and can make a difference not only for individual women but for the world at large...I know I know...I tend to think big...too big sometimes...I'm approaching this from the "what if more people on the planet (especially in the U.S.) meditated/practiced yoga/exercised?" mindset...

And from the metaphysical/spiritual/energetic/kundalini/divine feminine energy mindset...most importantly...

Also I think that a lot of women already do this...or have incorporated it into their walk/life/presence/demeanor...and are probably not even aware of it...

Set aside any intrinsic biases woowoo/new-agey/wholistic/the word "pussy" you might have, open your mind, and avail thyself...




Here's Sasha's entire PussyWalking "walkout"/intro on her website: https://sashacagen.com/pussywalking

Note that you can sign up to receive her PussyWalking newsletter on her website...




Here's her PussyWalking "Level 1" Video...skip to 4:34 if you've already watched her intro video...





Here's her two minute intro:





Last but certainly not least, here's her "Improve your Tango with PussyWalking" video:

Somewhere between firming up and melting :: Tango Quote

On the subject of the embrace, or tension in the embrace...here is the entire post...

"Tone without tension, melty but not flaccid, presence VS "resistance", awareness but not micromanagement, assertiveness without force, grounded while also buoyant..."

Catherine Young (on Terpsichoral Tango Addict's FB post)

Somewhere between firming up and melting :: Terpsichoral Tangoaddict Thread

Me dancing with my teacher Heather (may she rest in peace) back in Aspen...



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.
• 4 shares
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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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Vania's most excellent efficacious quintessential foundational core small space tango rudiments for tango ruminants

ef·fi·ca·cious
ˌefəˈkāSHəs
adjectiveformal
(typically of something inanimate or abstract) successful in producing a desired or intended result; effective.



I'm taking a small space workshop with Vania, here in Austin. Or small space sequences. Small space technique fundamentals. A perfect and on-purpose choice of topic leading right up to the Austin Spring Tango Festival, and on the heels of a...uh, how shall I say it?...a milonga with less-than-optimal floorcraft several weeks ago. Apparently some boleos were thrown that made contact. No bueno. Otherwise generally chaotic. However, I wasn't there - assumptions based on what I've heard.

Just to get this out of the way, I think we can all agree that "small space sequences" are key to manifesting a milonga with good floorcraft, and further, manifesting good floorcraft within a community, and finally, manifesting good floorcraft within oneself, in one's own dancing. If you ain't dancin' tango with good floorcraft, you ain't dancin' tango. Bub. Bubba. Tango Bubba. I think I've just coined some new tango terminology!

So, that said, this morning I was going to share the next event - Week 3 - in a Facebook post, and I wanted to say something about how much I like these classes, the subject matter, her teaching style and teaching knowledge. Being the man of few words that I am, what popped into the primordial soup first was "amazing". Then "stupendous". Stupid, weak words. So as I was hunting for my big, thick, dog-eared thesaurus on my bookshelves, other words like "important", "of vital importance", "fundamentals", "core" all popped into my head.

Y'all who know me know I'm not one to gush. Especially about tango teachers or tango teaching or classes and workshops. Truth be told, I haven't taken many classes for the past several years. Mostly "a la carte" stuff at the ASTF - favored topics, wanting to add a thing or two to my "tango roll-o-dex of moves". Baring my soul, I feel like my repertoire is limited. Not that there's not a lot of tango shit, "happy horseshit" as one of my oldest teachers used to say, in there, in my primordial soup, it just doesn't come out. I've forgotten the vast majority of my "learnings" from my first four or five years of pretty profoundly intensive study of tango. Lots of teachers, lots of local classes from my maestra local teacher, lots of festival classes & weekend workshops, lots of privates, and a handful of intensive intensivos, and a shitload of money and time. Almost too much information. But I figgered I would let it percolate and steep and soak into my bones. So much information that I didn't care to or dare to take a class. For a long time. Until now. Until Ms. Vania.

The more I dance, the more stuff bubbles up to the surface. The more I remember "stuff" that I forgot to remember not to forget. "Tango stuff". I'm dancing more now, and practicing at home, but for about five or six years there I was in a dry spell. A Tango Drought. When you're thirsty a little bit of tango can go a long way. I was only dancing a few times a year. For the past almost three years, Sugar G and I are dancing 3-4 times a month, if not more, now.

So I've focused on my few things. The old standbys. My embrace. My walk. My ocho cortado. Some cross-footed happy horseshit. My molinete and some fairly extensive variations. My cross footed anti-clockwise rotating rock step. An occasional 1/2 back ocho. An occasional 1/2 front ocho. My never ever sandwichito. An enganche/leg wrap thingy. Really only one of those that I can think of. No real sacadas, except for a tiny one in this milonguero double clockwise giro that I do. A standard issue volcada. Sometimes a double volcada. Obviously la cruzada, which surprisingly I tend to forget about, or not think about - I guess because it just happens "absent conscious thought". Which is a good thing I suppose. I think I'm pretty good with my musicality. I walk when the music tells me to walk, and I do stuff when the music tells me to do stuff. (I'm being humble and modest.) (In my humility after Sugar G and I finished a vals at practica yesterday I said "well I pretty much nailed the shit out of that one". She laughed. Cuz she knows me. Truly madly deeply.) And pretty good with tying it all together into a cohesive mass. One song at a time, one tanda at a time. (Sidenote: it frustrates the hell out of me that no one else (or rarely) hears it when the music says "WALK, FUCKING WALK. NOW. DUDE.")

So. I have my YouTube playlist "Tango Stuff to Work On" that I've been tucking videos into cubby holes for future reference. Future study/practice/work. I have my G&G videos from their four day intensivo in Atlanta way back when. I'm delving into all that (and more) a little more. A lot more I suppose. I'm missing a milonguero dip. Haven't been able to learn that one, although I haven't really tried. I feel myself wanting to add a thing or two or three. My happy horseshit type stuff. More "fun" stuff? I can't believe I'm even saying that. Sometimes, I get bored with my own lead. I beat myself up that I'm being repetitive, and that surely the followers much feel it, and that they too must be bored. I know I'm wrong about this, at least that's what I tell myself. I can't shake the self-downing stuff though. Maybe it's normal nature of the beast type shit. Or maybe it's just me. Who knows.

So. Festival coming up. Gotta work on smaller more interesting stuff, more variety in small sequences. Maybe I won't get so pissed about all the bad floorcraft if I have more to focus on in my own little space. Bad floorcraft pisses me off. Probably too much. I need to be more tolerant and compassionate. Sometimes to the point that I just leave. The milonga. I suppose I'm known for my disappearing act. Less now with Sugar G. Less disappearing. (Stay tuned for another post on floorcraft, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The elephant in the room no one wants to talk about.)

Not just for the festival, but for everywhere all the time. Small Is Beautiful. I have the book on my bookshelves. Not about tango, but you get my drift. Smaller more interesting stuff and a few happy horseshit items.

That would make me a happy dancer. Not that I'm an unhappy dancer. I don't think.

So. Lo and behold, Vania decides to make this the topic of her current four week workshop. Sweet. The tango stars align.

Back to the gushing part. And the Thesaurus part. Searching for words to adequately describe what I'm thinking and feeling after two of Ms. Vania's most excellent classes. So amazing and stupendous are out. 4th grade words. I look up "fundamental". Noun. essence 5.2 foundation 216.6 important point 676.6

essence 5.2: intrinsically quintessence elixir core heart soul spirit - those all pretty much nail it.

foundation 216.6: base basis groundwork fundamental principle rudiment terra firma - yes to all those, too. Grounded. Grounding. Ground. Earth.

important point (importance) 672.6: essential, fundamental, gist, heart, meat, core, crux

And then this one popped out somewhere - I saw it, but then I couldn't find it again...efficacious. A word I know but rarely/never use.

efficacious (adj): capable of having the desired result or effect; effective as a means, measure, remedy, etc.:

intrinsic stands out: 1480-90; < Medieval Latin intrinsecus inward (adj.), Latin (adv.), equivalent to intrin- (int(e)r-, as in interior + -im adv. suffix) + secus beside, derivative of sequī to follow

synonyms: 1. native, innate, natural, true, real. See essential.

Vania's most excellent efficacious quintessential foundational core small space tango rudiments for tango ruminants

Vania's Tango Elixir

Vania's Quintessential Tango Elixir

Okay, now I fear I'm sound like some obsessive compulsive sick fuck type stalker.

Let's just say her classes are "really good", and she's a "really good" tango teacher.

I always love it when my posts ramble around over hill and dale and always come back to the core. The crux.

It's hard to describe how and why her classes are "really good".

Good foundational core crux posture suspension type stuff. I'm falling short here.

Nuances of stuff related to where your thoracic vertebrae stop and where your lumbar vertebrae start and the kinesthesiology of how to properly engage that in the dynamic embrace. Subtleties of where/how/why the leader needs to have his (or her) weight on his forefoot and stand on his leg and originate the pivot in the torso/frame and not with the trailing leg.

Without being all scientific or medical or didactic, but all flowy and natural-like.

Concise and clear.

She's a really good teacher.

World class.

Right here in Austin.

And at the upcoming Tucson Tango Festival.

If you get a chance to study with her, do.

Your tango will be the better for it.

And your tango will thank you.

Your tango partners will thank you.

Avail thyself.

And she also covered nuances and subtleties of cabeceo - as a side-topic.

And she spent a good amount of the class on #goodfloorcraft.

"She's a really good teacher."

File under #floorcraft #deeptangothought #deeptangotechnique #deeptangoteaching

(Stay tuned for another post on floorcraft, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The elephant in the room no one wants to talk about.)