itwillhappen
Forum Master
I think the point is that your goal of movement is to move gracefully and with the correct steps in front of your partner. While many here want to move elegantly with their partner.
Can you comment on my dancing in this video
- Thread starter flandrienne
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opendoor
Forum Master
How should you, flandrienne? You lack waist-dissociation because your leaders make heavily use of arm-dissociation. IE, they move their arms independently of their upper body. This breaks their centering. My advice: quickly change teachers ! (or have privates with a real teacher in secret)
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I'd say to get some other experience. Find some other workshops with some visiting maestros/maestras. They may, or may not, help, but at the very least gives another perspective. Finding a good teacher can be problematic, but avoid the 'one true way', whether that's alternative or traditional. Private lessons do help. At the least get some experience at other milongas. It won't all be good!
JournalInTime
Forum Master
To add to the advice:
"In front of" is important, of course! One doesn't want to drift off to either side. One wants to stay centered on one's partner's sternum while centering one's partner on one's own sternum.
However, as itwillhappen said, "with" is essential. Drift and mediocre centering can happen to the best dancers when body sizes and shapes don't cooperate, but they can be compensated for; some people even dance offset by choice. Total lack of connection – not moving with one's partner – is a total game-breaker. At that point, it's no longer a partner dance.
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Even more advice:
Watching the videos again, I believe that all of advice here would be far easier to implement if there were more fluidity: continuous enchainment of movements, each step set up by the previous step and setting up the next step by establishing the orientation of the body and pointing toward the next direction of movement. I see a lot of step-reset-step, and preplanning to execute a step "No matter what!" instead of "Aha, we ended up here! Where can we naturally go next without forcing anything?" The former works against developing good technique, while the latter favors it.
When attempting to dance fluidly (even if you cannot yet!), the things that work with little warning and even less thought are those that are adequately learned, truly grounded and controlled, and executed with suitable speed, dissociation, and connection. Everything else will stumble, fall off the music, and be halting. It's the natural tendency of many dancers to dislike that last bit and try to hide it . . . but if you're serious about learning, you embrace it because it shows you what actually needs work.
I'd counsel not thinking about steps, patterns, sequences, etc., nor about how beautiful your dance looks from the outside. Think about what's happening inside your couple. Think about staying grounded, in front of and oriented toward your partner, while flowing through movements using dissociation and smooth steps and pivots – i.e., universally applicable technique. Let steps flow naturally from your current speed and direction of movement, degree of torsion, and relative body placement. They can be invented on the spot and don't have to be things from some teacher's vocabulary list. This will look and feel more like partner dancing than "let's do ochos" or whatever.
Once you can do that, you can worry about specific bits of vocabulary that matter to you. At that point, they just become inspiration for your inventions, and you'll do them well and naturally because you're already dancing fluidly.
Agree with all your comments, but I'd just add that a 'pause' is also a 'movement'. You don't have to be making a move on every beat, or syncopation, or double time opportunity... Obviously depends on the music. And, generally but not always, the leader**.
Fluidity is a good description.
**I danced with an improving novice some nights ago who just wouldn't stop moving or trying some 'next step', which just didn't fit the music. But, a considerable improvement from when we last danced together.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
For sure – fully agreed!
Which said, it's essential that a pause follow naturally and smoothly from the step before it, orient both dancers toward future interesting movement, and establish a good launching point for said movement. That is, it shouldn't be a "halt" or "stutter," which isn't a response to mood, music, or the previous step, but an abrupt stop to reset between steps or portions of steps.
For instance, it makes perfect sense to glide through an ocho and come to a suspension – perhaps gradually on lyric music, perhaps suddenly, to create a boleo, on more staccato music. It usually makes little sense to dance an ocho as pivot-halt-step-halt, or several ochos as ocho-halt-ocho-halt. I'm not saying that staccato of that kind is never suitable, only that it should always be related to the music and/or a deliberate dynamic choice; it shouldn't be emergency measures necessary to avoid falling over, to correct for excessive speed, to mask lack of control, or whatever.
Yeah, I danced a milonga on Sunday with a dancer from another style – one with lots of drums and hip-wiggling – who didn't really understand that even though milonga is typically fast-paced, (1) you can have pauses, and (2) you can dance the melody, not just the beat or rhythm. Consequently, my dramatic pauses to mark paragraphs, change prominent instruments, express mood shifts, etc. were met with near-random wiggling and jiggling. I welcome counterproposal, but she wasn't proposing anything for us . . . she was just marking the beat like a metronome.
pianistamediano
Forum Master
Just one thing to add about fluidity: it relies on both of you sharing the same mindset about not doing step-reset-step like JiT mentioned, and having one 'step' flow into another, even if it's just staying still after, say, a cross.
So if your leader has such a mentality, dancing fluidly will be much more difficult for you, because the dynamic will feel quite different. Dancing the silence between the beats, after all, is not the same as mentally resetting after a step before doing another step.
So if your leader has such a mentality, dancing fluidly will be much more difficult for you, because the dynamic will feel quite different. Dancing the silence between the beats, after all, is not the same as mentally resetting after a step before doing another step.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
This is so true!
It's tricky to tell from videos whether we're seeing (1) a leader who keeps resetting between steps due to his level of dance (in which case the lack of fluidity is 100% on him); (2) a leader who keeps resetting between steps for didactic reasons, to teach the follower the steps or the technique they require (not a good teaching technique, as steps should be learned in the context of flow and music to train proper technique, and thus still 100% on him), or (3) a follower who has to reset between steps due to her level of dance, being accommodated by her leader (that would be 100% on her).
It is possible for one dancer to correct for another's limited fluidity. However, that's very hard – the sort of thing you expect from a veteran coach, maybe, but not from a less experienced teacher, much less a random social dancer you're dancing with for the first time at the milonga. Theoretically, then, each time I wrote "100%," I should've written "close to 100%." But if it's actually being accomplished, you don't see a lack of fluidity, so in this specific case, I'd stand behind "100%."
In most real-world tandas at the milonga, fluidity is a 50/50 responsibility. This is a "Train as you fight, fight as you train" thing: To get that at the milonga, you have to work on it in lessons and practice. This is a thing you can do at the same time as you work on vocabulary, technique, musicality, etc.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Yeah, I have a lot to say today . . . sorry.
I feel it only fair to add that I count myself very, very fortunate to have had teachers who were serious about being on the music. Their prevailing attitude was: "It doesn't matter whether the Step of the Day is perfect, because of course it'll need work – probably years of work. What matters now is that you try it in the flow of dance and set to the music. If it doesn't work, get back on the music and do something else until the music suggests that you try it again." One teacher famously said that until you could dance a thing small enough for the milonga and on the music, you couldn't really dance that thing.
My teachers also taught etiquette and floorcraft (see "small enough for the milonga," above). They taught how to recognize orquestas, specific instruments, and parts of the music (e.g., rhythm vs. melody). They put us in the close embrace after a few months. They introduced proposal-counterproposal ("complicit") dancing and inventing steps from movement fragments (pauses, displacements, pivots, etc.) in the first year.
I get the impression that there are a lot of pure Step of the Day teachers out there who ignore all of this. I've seen students of other teachers struggle with fluidity because it's all neatly packaged and named steps to them – not a continuous flow of shared improvisation to the music as floor conditions allow.
tangomaniac
Well-Known Member
The problem is the embrace.
Think of a swinging door. The door's hinge is meshed in with the hinge on the wall. The hinges stay together because a pin drops between the hinges, keeping the wall and door together. I try to keep my partner in my center but some strange reason, followers put themselves in my armpit, which is the worst location for dancing.
Think of a car. How do you stop a car? By pressing the brake pedal. But what happens when you press the pedal? The brake comes into contact with the drum creating a lot of friction. Friction causes the drum to stop turning, causing the car to stop. A follower pressing herself into the armpit is just like pressing on the brake pedal. The friction of the armpits rubbing against each other limits the rotation of the shoulders. If the shoulders don't rotate, there won't be pivots for molinetes, boleos, and ochos. Shoulders need to freely rotate. You don't drive with the parking brake on. You shouldn't dance or be led with the driving brake applied.
To compensate for the little rotation, some followers push on my left hand for leverage. I have arthritis so I let my arm go limp to not aggravate my shoulder. The follower will fall off her balance because of pushing off her axis.
There aren't any time stamps on the video but I can see he pushed you away from him on the first boleo. Look how far you opened up. If we danced chest-to-chest, I wouldn't have to push for the boleo. You would follow my rotating shoulder for the boleo and we'd remain chest-to-chest.
You didn't feel a lead. You felt pressure from being pushed. Many leaders don't understand that pushing is not leading!!
Think of a swinging door. The door's hinge is meshed in with the hinge on the wall. The hinges stay together because a pin drops between the hinges, keeping the wall and door together. I try to keep my partner in my center but some strange reason, followers put themselves in my armpit, which is the worst location for dancing.
Think of a car. How do you stop a car? By pressing the brake pedal. But what happens when you press the pedal? The brake comes into contact with the drum creating a lot of friction. Friction causes the drum to stop turning, causing the car to stop. A follower pressing herself into the armpit is just like pressing on the brake pedal. The friction of the armpits rubbing against each other limits the rotation of the shoulders. If the shoulders don't rotate, there won't be pivots for molinetes, boleos, and ochos. Shoulders need to freely rotate. You don't drive with the parking brake on. You shouldn't dance or be led with the driving brake applied.
To compensate for the little rotation, some followers push on my left hand for leverage. I have arthritis so I let my arm go limp to not aggravate my shoulder. The follower will fall off her balance because of pushing off her axis.
There aren't any time stamps on the video but I can see he pushed you away from him on the first boleo. Look how far you opened up. If we danced chest-to-chest, I wouldn't have to push for the boleo. You would follow my rotating shoulder for the boleo and we'd remain chest-to-chest.
You didn't feel a lead. You felt pressure from being pushed. Many leaders don't understand that pushing is not leading!!
flandrienne
Member
Thank you for all of your thoughtful replies. A lot of points to work on, so I’ll probably try to get some private lessons in a few months, because none of these things are ever addressed in my regular lessons.
At the moment I’m very happy at this school, I pay my lessons there by working the bar another night and it’s a nice atmosphere, but it’s not specifically a tango school. My plan is to see how far I get there and maybe go for a more serious tango school in a year or so.
At the moment I’m very happy at this school, I pay my lessons there by working the bar another night and it’s a nice atmosphere, but it’s not specifically a tango school. My plan is to see how far I get there and maybe go for a more serious tango school in a year or so.
Bad habits cost more to eliminate later once they're embrdded. I'd suggest getting other perspectives sooner, piecemeal if you like.
Be careful to keep your enthusiasm in whatever school or private lessons you take.
People can get overzealous and kill their enthusiasm
Nothing beats practicing and becoming self-awareness of the movements we make.
Teacher may help you in the class but you will need to help yourself when dancing in a practica or at a milonga.
Loisa Donnay
Active Member
First - dance to real tango music. Learn it, love it.
Second - learn the embrace.
Most leaders in Buenos Aires would not dance with someone who swings themselves around so big.
Second - learn the embrace.
Most leaders in Buenos Aires would not dance with someone who swings themselves around so big.