Some possibly confusing tango terms

[Zoopsia59]

I know it's my mantra, but physical fitness is all.
Finding and developing core strength - pilates, yoga, yogalates if you must,
all help. Leg muscle strength, ankles, feet and toes, and core, all need
to work together. Learn too how to separate your pelvis from your upper body
and control the twisting independently.

Teachers don't seem to want to tell people, certainly adults, that there is
no easy way to all this but airy fairy ideas are not the answer.

All this cross training was not necessary back in BA during the "Golden Age of Tango" and it is still not necessary for those 80 year old milongueros who are not exactly the picture of fitness.

So this raises the question... is it just that tango has changed and styles today require a significant level of fitness?

Or is it that we (the worldwide tango community) have made tango so darn complicated that its hard to just RELAX while dancing?

I can't speak for others, but the vast majority of my problems are caused by tension. I wouldn't be nearly this tense if Tango didn't seem like some esoteric fantasy that I can never achieve in real life, and the evaluations of partners so often harsh.

Frankly, I totally disagree that there is no easy way... it SHOULD be easy... just relax and enjoy it.

What makes it NOT easy is that it's so hard to relax. I'm sure I'm not the only one having trouble finding that line between being energized and being tense in an activity that seems designed these days to make you as nervous as possible about your ability to do it!

 

[Zoopsia59]

This is such a long post from Zoopsia, much of which I agree with, I thought
I'd add a man's perspective where appropriate which I hope helps.

Not sure why your perspective would be different based just on gender...

Well you can't "drop" the pelvis, it is where it is.

Well, yeah... just like you can't be heavier or lighter. It was an expression and she was actually talking about the muscles, not the pelvic bone itself. It made sense to me and was exactly the feeling I needed to be seeking to fix my problem. As per my post right above this one, it was about relaxing and maybe even trying to push those specific muscles downward because I had so much tension in them.

you can rotate it by
effectively dropping your "tailbone" under

that would not have been the correct solution for my problem. The amount of tilt (forward or backward) in my pelvis was not the issue.

and if you draw yourself up to
your full height that seems to become its natural position.

The tailbone "tucked" is not always natural. It depends on the amount of tuck. A backwards tip to the pelvis is no more natural than a forward tip. The spine is designed to have curvature in the lower back, and the amount of it varies naturally from person to person. Because I have a tiny waist and a fair amount of flab on my rear, even with my pelvis tucked under too much, there would be an illusion of arching in my lower back.

I'd have been much happier to have heard described an "engaged" feeling.

Well, it wasn't your lesson. Since my problem was too much tension in the relevant muscles, lessening the "engagement" was vital. "Overly contracted" is pretty awkward to dance with. I'm sure if you had been taking the lesson, you would have gotten instruction from her that would have applied to your situation.

so I did a test. And yes I can feel them but don't use them consciously, they are just there doing their job which I suppose is the point.

I'm curious how you know whether you were "testing" the same muscles I was getting instruction on? Even in HER body (which is awesome BTW... the lady has isolation control of all her core which leaves me doing this: :notworth Anyway... even in HER body, when she had me place my fingers on the muscles she wanted me to "drop", it was a very tiny area. And "dropping" is EXACTLY what I felt the muscles doing when she moved them for me to feel.

natural disassociation (meaning she never had to be taught it) could rotate her pelvis independently ... I couldn't control
the necessary muscles ... wow did it wake up those back pelvic muscles.
Where they were locked up and one always slightly swollen, they were
normal after about 10 days and the sciatica was gone.

You and I don't have the same problem in the same area of the body. I don't have sciatica. I have a great deal of disassociation (the blessing of a long torso and tiny low waist). My ability to rotate my pelvis independently is not an issue. I have an above average (even for a tango dancer) amount of ability to disassociate.

My problem is tension in specific muscles from unconsciously contracting them while dancing which has worsened my problems of tendonitis in my hip joints, which in turn creates more inflammation and contraction. This tendonitis does not affect my range of disassociation from my upper torso. It affects my ability to completely relax the muscles so that at the end of my range I can actually return to neutral rather than get stuck in a twist with the muscles cramped and not responding. If anything, I disassociate too much, going past the point at which I have control.

Not sure ballet comparisons are that relevant I'm afraid. Ballet by it's nature is mainly a light and lifted dance.

And yet, ballet dancers are VERY grounded. From what I can gather from why I had problems in ballet, they achieve this by lifting the upper body away from the lower body and sending the lower body downward. Maybe a more experienced ballet dancer here can explain this better. I tried to lift all the way to the floor, which gave me great ballon as I moved, but left me unstable during standing floorwork. It also meant I couldn't leap very high because I never really came "down".

Poor grounding to me usually means instability and that brings us
back to all sorts of inadequate muscle strength and/or control.

Only if instability is caused by that. My muscles are QUITE strong. Believe me, you can't go through life with them contracted without them becoming strong. Except that all that contraction creates damage which in turn weakens them because there is no "repair time". But the solution is not just to strengthen them.. it's to RELAX them so they have downtime. Strengthening exercises just hurt me if I haven't gotten them relaxed.

 

[JohnEm]

Interesting as ever - where will this go next?

All this cross training was not necessary back in BA during the "Golden Age of Tango" and it is still not necessary for those 80 year old milongueros who are not exactly the picture of fitness.

So this raises the question... is it just that tango has changed and styles today require a significant level of fitness?

To answer that we have to picture BsAs in the 40s and 50s.
Then those milongueros were young and they learned in
their relative youth and in the peak of fitness. Those skills
they learned have never left them. But do bear in mind that
many now in tango abroad are rather scathing about shuffling
milongueros. I agree that many have very compromised
posture these days but the best did not. Think Ricardo Vidort,
Tete, Miguel Balbi etc.

I am as close as I can be at present to milonguero, therefore apilado,
but shuffling isn't in my repertoire but more like some of the people
in Tango and Chaos videos. Hopefully.

Teachers must take some of the blame. To teach professionally
and earn a living from tango, first you have to have something
to teach. And it has to appeal to a wide, and often uninformed,
audience of potential paying students. The milonguero way of
passing it on - 8 to 16 lessons and of you went to practise and
dance and find your own tango (apparently), as simple or as
complicated as you decided - isn't what people expect and
won't pay for food on the professional tango teacher's table.

Now we are more prescriptive. Lessons are the be all and end all.
Not so for me however as Tango in its traditional form should be
the ultimate self-learning, self-improving dance. We should open
source it (like software!) and perpetrate it everywhere possible.

So teachers take the blame for the complications of moves and and
an assortment of styles.The argentinians of the show school tendency
(Todaro, Los Dinzels, the Nuevo Three and those teaching
the contemporary VU fad) are responsible too.

Or is it that we (the worldwide tango community) have made tango so darn complicated that its hard to just RELAX while dancing?

I can't speak for others, but the vast majority of my problems are caused by tension. I wouldn't be nearly this tense if Tango didn't seem like some esoteric fantasy that I can never achieve in real life, and the evaluations of partners so often harsh.

Yes I believe you're right. But the tension is within you and it's your
responsibility to rid yourself of esoteric fantasies (ooh I love the thought
of what you might be fantasising!).

Frankly, I totally disagree that there is no easy way... it SHOULD be easy... just relax and enjoy it.

What makes it NOT easy is that it's so hard to relax. I'm sure I'm not the only one having trouble finding that line between being energized and being tense in an activity that seems designed these days to make you as nervous as possible about it!

The only thing about no easy way is the way of getting dance fit.
It takes time, a little determination and some dedication.
Bring some fitness to the class and it becomes easier.

Unlike the young milongueros of the Golden Age, most of us come to
this at a later stage in life. What we took for granted when young -
when I was at the original tango learning age I was a competitive
cross-country runner - we cannot take for granted now. Look around
any class, or video of a class demonstration, and see the variety of
posture. It's not intentional by the people, it's the result of life, maybe
a sedentary one, maybe a stressful one, maybe physically exhausting,
but that is the situation that teachers have to deal with. No wonder
we have the watered down upright, less connected tango that is VU or
similar. I have noted too that teachers in workshops leave couples
mainly to whatever embrace they are happy with and rarely interfere.

If you are getting stressed, stop being deconstructed or learning some
new and fancy move, don't do classes for a while if that's what you
are doing. To me, it seems you have a crisis of confidence.

 

[JohnEm]

Not sure why your perspective would be different based just on gender...

Because in my experience men don't think of these things?
And the role of the man is different to a lady - isn't it?

Well, it wasn't your lesson. Since my problem was too much tension in the relevant muscles, lessening the "engagement" was vital. "Overly contracted" is pretty awkward to dance with. I'm sure if you had been taking the lesson, you would have gotten instruction from her that would have applied to your situation.

Cutting your post to the chase . . . . point taken of course.

I'm curious how you know whether you were "testing" the same muscles I was getting instruction on? Even in HER body (which is awesome BTW... the lady has isolation control of all her core which leaves me doing this: :notworth Anyway... even in HER body, when she had me place my fingers on the muscles she wanted me to "drop", it was a very tiny area. And "dropping" is EXACTLY what I felt the muscles doing when she moved them for me to feel.

Seems I wasn't testing those particular muscles but I can feel muscles there,
never identified before, nor in my years of being somewhat overweight
and unfit would I have been able to find them.

Your post does seem to indicate a great deal of analysis, maybe excessively,
for what should be a relatively simple dance as we both agree.

Your other problems are certainly not mine - it goes to show
just how different we all are and how differently the stresses
and strains of life impact our bodies.

 

[dchester]

All this cross training was not necessary back in BA during the "Golden Age of Tango" and it is still not necessary for those 80 year old milongueros who are not exactly the picture of fitness.

So this raises the question... is it just that tango has changed and styles today require a significant level of fitness?

Me, I'm going for the Chicho picture of fitness.

 

[Madahlia]

Me, I'm going for the Chicho picture of fitness.

Very wise, he certainly looks pretty "relaxed". I would guess his lady partner has seen the inside of a gym a few times, however. When are we going to see a bulgy bear female role model? *Sigh*

 

[tangotime]

.

And how meaningless the term "World Class" teacher or coach is.
We each have to form our own opinion.


We aren't talking well trained dancers here, just ordinary people of
very mixed abilities who may or may not have experience or be
competent in some other dances. So let's not be elitist



.

I hardly believe that anyone who has any experience( given time ) would not accept that there are certain prof. who have graced many a dance floor, that are indeed just that . They are not only " dancers ", but theorists .

And why would my statement be " elitist " ?.. I couched it in those terms, to make a point that people who have trained in some more abstract theories DO understand concepts that they may apply to other genres . And I do mean Students .

This discussion has taken on the same theoretical argument that Salsa has about " Sabor ".. everyone kinda knows what it is, but is often ill defined .

My conclusion is ,that one needs to be present and immersed in the subject matter that hopefully will bring clarity .

And by the way, Im not remotely an expert on T/Arg... my skills are from other genres .

 

[JohnEm]

I hardly believe that anyone who has any experience( given time ) would not accept that there are certain prof. who have graced many a dance floor, that are indeed just that . They are not only " dancers ", but theorists .

I'm not sure what and why you are arguing that, though I'm sure you're right.
Being theorists, being good professional dancers doesn't necessarily make them
good teachers though that might be enough qualification in many people's eyes
to undergo their teaching.

And why would my statement be " elitist " ?.. I couched it in those terms, to make a point that people who have trained in some more abstract theories DO understand concepts that they may apply to other genres . And I do mean Students .

You qualified the statement by saying "well-trained" dancers.
That's a moot point indeed.
Most adult dancers who haven't danced all their lives,
even those who have experience of other dances,
cannot by any stretch of imagination be called well-trained.

Where is the training to just dance?
Where is movement taught (especially to men).
The only comment I ever got when I learned jive
was that I had a good sense of movement.
That must have been from the dance training
I did get when very young, long forgotten I'd thought.

Never seen movement taught as a specific thing,
only very incidentally. In tango often as a result of steps,
rather than steps being the result of movement.
In ballroom almost exclusively as a result of steps -
ballroom taught to men and women facing each other
in lines, like two separate mirroring line dances,
and then you come together. Hmmmm - Yuk!

So I'm not talking about elite dancers but
about normal people taking up dancing
(almost of any kind), maybe for the first time.

This discussion has taken on the same theoretical argument that Salsa has about " Sabor ".. everyone kinda knows what it is, but is often ill defined .

Err, no idea what "Sabor" is!
Can't see much theory in my posts,
personal experience more like.

My conclusion is ,that one needs to be present and immersed in the subject matter that hopefully will bring clarity .

Very true, no argument with that at all.

And by the way, Im not remotely an expert on T/Arg... my skills are from other genres .

Yes that's appreciated - and I know that broadly
we actually seem to agree quite a lot.

 

[ant]

This too:

I know it's my mantra, but physical fitness is all.
Finding and developing core strength - pilates, yoga, yogalates if you must,
all help. Leg muscle strength, ankles, feet and toes, and core, all need
to work together. Learn too how to separate your pelvis from your upper body
and control the twisting independently.

Back pain returned as did sciatica.
So more exercises were needed but the sciatica still recurred.
I hadn't actually found a way to exercise the muscles on the back of
the pelvis that appeared to be the cause of the problem. But a tango
partner who had natural disassociation (meaning she never had to be
taught it) could rotate her pelvis independently, something most
professional tango teachers can probably do without thinking but I couldn't.
Not because I hadn't the physical ability but because I couldn't control
the necessary muscles. It didn't take long to rectify that - a couple of days
and I was fluent - but wow did it wake up those back pelvic muscles.
Where they were locked up and one always slightly swollen, they were
normal after about 10 days and the sciatica was gone.

It seems to me that your mantra and what I feeel should be learned from your back experience are a contradiction.

It appears to me that the reason you had a back problem was because of the application of incorrect technique and not the lack of physical fitness and it was the correction of this incorrect technique that resolved the problem.

As far as I can see working on physical fitness is more a lifestyle choice rather than having real relevance in dance. I would agree that for show tango and more energetic neuvo it has relevance but for the standard Salon style of dancing at a Milonga, dancing to the music is by far the most relevant skill.

 

[JohnEm]

It seems to me that your mantra and what I feeel should be learned from your back experience are a contradiction.

It appears to me that the reason you had a back problem was because of the application of incorrect technique and not the lack of physical fitness and it was the correction of this incorrect technique that resolved the problem.

As far as I can see working on physical fitness is more a lifestyle choice rather than having real relevance in dance. I would agree that for show tango and more energetic neuvo it has relevance but for the standard Salon style of dancing at a Milonga, dancing to the music is by far the most relevant skill.

That's just so . . . . complacent. Sorry, can't think of any other word.

Apilado/milonguero, whatever you want to call it is much more
physically demanding than Nuevo in ways you don't first appreciate.
I was already a dancer of different genres without pain.

Fitness maybe a lifestyle choice for some, for me it was necessity
so you're wrong. Wrong too about incorrect technique except that
I couldn't apply the correct technique. Being able to apply the
correct technique needed an improvement in muscle strength in the
right places, posture etc. And it still needs working on.

You miss the point too that I, like many others, carry back strain
injury from overwork, over lifting, overstress etc. Managing my
back is the only practicable answer.

Tango didn't cause the back problem but it did highlight that
there was more work to do.

And of course, dancing to the music is a very important skill
but it isn't the only criterion and not the only required skill.

 

[tangotime]

, .
Being theorists, being good professional dancers doesn't necessarily make them
good teachers .



You qualified the statement by saying "well-trained" dancers.
That's a moot point indeed.
Where is the training to just dance?
Where is movement taught (especially to men).
Never seen movement taught as a specific thing,
only very incidentally.

In tango often as a result of steps,
rather than steps being the result of movement.
In ballroom almost exclusively as a result of steps -
ballroom taught to men and women facing each other
in lines, like two separate mirroring line dances,
and then you come together. Hmmmm - Yuk!


Err, no idea what "Sabor" is!
Can't see much theory in my posts,
personal experience more like.


- and I know that broadly
we actually seem to agree quite a lot.

Para 1,, I never meant to imply that it did.. it was meant to underscore that with the correct training, many of the indicated problems can/may be resolved .


Para. 2.. WHERE can " dancers " learn " movement "?. hopefully thru a highly qualif dance Pro. ( Ive been teaching it for yrs !.. and im NOT unique ). I dont even understand HOW any "teacher?" is able to develop a partnership in dance without devoloping Lead and Follow .And where to go ?.. seek where the best dancers get their training .

And, your comment on B/room classes is probably true.. but thats only the thin end of the wedge of teaching . Developing dance skills to the higher levels, is a time, effort, and financial commitment that the majority never achieve ( thats by choice ).. so, in a beginners class one has to "spoon" feed the info and devolping the finer points given the above requirements, and it still really depends on the quality of the teaching .

Your last statement about theory is an interesting one. Everything you do in dance was once ( and still is ) a theory. The practical application of dance, is based upon tried and true theoretical premises, that have evolved and continue to do so .

Agreement on much.. yes, but not all .

 

[UKDancer]

Where is movement taught (especially to men).
The only comment I ever got when I learned jive
was that I had a good sense of movement.
That must have been from the dance training
I did get when very young, long forgotten I'd thought.

Never seen movement taught as a specific thing,
only very incidentally. In tango often as a result of steps,
rather than steps being the result of movement.
In ballroom almost exclusively as a result of steps -
ballroom taught to men and women facing each other
in lines, like two separate mirroring line dances,
and then you come together. Hmmmm - Yuk!

It is the bedrock of my teaching that two people move their bodies together, when we dance, and that even as beginners, we only move our feet because we would fall over if we didn't.

Admittedly, a step-led approach is more common (and you do have to give beginners something that they can DO, straight away, or they won't be back for another class), but I want to create dancers, not dance robots. Like most teachers, I largely fail, but that isn't for want of trying!

 

[JohnEm]

It is the bedrock of my teaching that two people move their bodies together, when we dance, and that even as beginners, we only move our feet because we would fall over if we didn't.

Admittedly, a step-led approach is more common (and you do have to give beginners something that they can DO, straight away, or they won't be back for another class), but I want to create dancers, not dance robots. Like most teachers, I largely fail, but that isn't for want of trying!

Good on you!!!
Just don't give up.

 

[JohnEm]

Your last statement about theory is an interesting one. Everything you do in dance was once ( and still is ) a theory. The practical application of dance, is based upon tried and true theoretical premises, that have evolved and continue to do so .

Oh crikey, which is theory and which is practice.
But I'm going to continue to subscribe to practice
rather theoretical. After all it isn't a theory if you can do it!
Perhaps it just sems to be the wrong word though I guess
from your usage it's common in some dance circles.
More jargon then.

Agreement on much.. yes, but not all .

If we agreed on everything there'd be nothing to talk about.

 

[tangotime]

After all it isn't a theory if you can do it!

If we agreed on everything there'd be nothing to talk about.

Its not WHAT you do.. its all about the way that you do it ..and, at one point in time it was a movement that was theorised and refined .

There are numerous theories in the dance world ,that are equally accepted and rejected . And then there are those that have become foundational .


Thats why dance sites like this create understanding( hopefully ) !.

As an afterthought, your critique of what was taught in a B/ Room class begs this Q.. what other method do you think will bring better results ? .

The reason i ask is this; its been used for decades in the B/room genre and has produced ( eventually ) some of the greatest dancers ever to step onto a dance floor. Im always open to new ideas.