Yeah I'd like to know as well. I once tried to engineer a trance, putting together all the elements that I read were necessary (apilado style, being tired, a partner I'm very comfortable with) and nothing happened.
Engineer a trance? I don't think so.
Only some of this applies to a follower as I'd guess you're a leader.
As Ricardo Vidort apparently said, if you can't put your all into the dance,
don't dance (or something similar). For apilado you have to be very much
present so being tired won't help. You have to give of yourself. Sounds very
much to me as if you were having a different sort of tango and nothing
wrong with that. Potentially trance like it probably wasn't.
You can't plan it, or even work it out - well I cannot. It happens unwittingly,
unexpectedly you find your partner is at another place at the end of the tanda.
If I could bottle it, I would. And if you are looking for a trance as a leader
the same applies. Consciously looking for it means your head is already
in the way. I'm not sure as a leader I could call it a trance, call it bliss.
Anecdote time. I ride a bike and went into London yesterday on it. You have
to be in the zone on a motorbike, especially riding quickly, totally concentrated
on everything around. The consequences of inattention are obvious.
There's a challenging roundabout on the journey, the approach and exit
angles are very strange. On this road all the entry and exit slip roads at the
junctions are peculiar too. I think the whole road was engineered by some
traffic engineering jobsworths intent on slowing people down, read make things
as difficult as possible,
So when I go across this roundabout if it's clear I take up the challenge of
traversing as quickly as possible. It means concentrating, using all the road
available, changing the approach and exit lines and apexing the actual
roundabout late.
So I'm in the zone and a mile down the road after the roundabout I could
not remember going round it. There's no doubt I was concentrating, there's
no doubt I would have worked at going round but there I was in another place
not really knowing consciously how I got there. But now I've got this whole
roundabout sorted so the conscious almost becomes the unconscious.
Tango can be like that. Sometimes.
So forget engineering, think more of providing the right circumstances.
Dance sympathetically yet with the presence to give your partner
confidence in you. Find the music together. And do act on AndaBien's
advice as well as that is part of the presence and concentration needed.
You left out the influence of the music and the dynamics of the floor.
And the influence of you on your partner and your partner on you. She must
be present, engaged, involved to the exclusion of everything else.
It's calmness you need not tiredness. Then it might happen, occasionally.
It's tango, experiment. There isn't a cookbook.
