Do what feels natural. Yes, BUT…
Have you ever been in a class asking a question and having the teacher answering to you:
‘Do what feels natural.’
Then they might have taken you through a movement in two different ways.
The first was supposed to feel unnatural.
Then they tweak something.
You do the movement now.
The second variation is supposed to feel natural.
And then they look at you with eyes sparkling, happy they brought you to that realisation:
‘Oh, I just need to do what feels natural to me.’
You nod that you understood.
Only they didn’t, it doesn’t, and you didn’t.
Lot’s of teachers don’t understand one thing.
And I didn’t understand it either.
Instead, every time I couldn’t feel the ‘right way’ to feel as the ‘natural way’ I thought that there was something wrong with my body awareness.
‘I just don’t understand my body well enough.’
Then, I had an online class with Alejandra Mantiñan.
‘If you have conditioned yourself for years, what feels natural might simply not be,’ she said.
What does that mean?
If you have been dancing for a few years in a certain way, you have conditioned yourself through repetition to a ‘new normal’.
As an example: for years, I practised standing straight when dancing. Then, I had a class where I learned that I was transmitting information unequally from the two sides.
To fix that, among other adjustments, I had to lean a bit more forward than my ‘natural’ position.
I thought I was hunching.
I looked at the mirror.
I wasn’t.
What felt unnatural, was just my deviation from what I conditioned myself to do.
Why am I saying all that?
When something that your teacher says is supposed to feel natural doesn’t feel natural:
- Your teacher might be wrong. It happens more often than you think, especially if their knowledge of biomechanics is insufficient. Like those times they tell you to engage your abs for stability and breathe naturally. Na-ah, abs and diaphragm are a classic agonist-antagonist pair, you can’t do both at the same time. HELLLOOO!!!
- Look into your past. You might have conditioned yourself. You might have received different instructions for years. You might have been sitting wrong on your chair all this time. Maybe your past dance partner was too heavy or too light or too unbalanced or too stable. Look into your conditioning in dance and in life.
If you are a leader and want to learn more ways to improve your dance, don’t miss the next Curious Tanguero newsletter.