What if your hands, your breath, and your awareness were the missing links in your tango connection?
– by Bruna Estellita & Julián Sanchez, world tango champions 2023.
Podcast and transcription.
Let’s reveal the subtle, often overlooked elements that make a tango truly come alive.
Listen to the podcast here or in your favourite podcast app.
Hi, this is Dimitris Bronowski, author of The Curious Tanguero newsletter and tango books like Tangofulness, Tango Tips by the Maestros, and the tango novel When the Embrace Whispers.
Today, I’ll read a few excerpts from Tango Tips by the Maestros, hoping you’ll find them useful—and maybe even check out the book on Amazon. It’s available in English, Spanish, and Italian, with more languages coming soon. You can also find it on audible as Audiobook.
Let’s get started.
This excerpt is from the chapter written by Bruna Estellita & Julián Sanchez, world tango champions 2023.
Creativity in a couple: what’s the underlying principle?
In Tango, we understand that each individual has his/her own unique personality and bodily musical interpretation. For that reason, understanding each dancer’s personal development path in tango can help us maintain our own interpretation and connection with our partner, without demanding or restricting his/her own interpretation. This way, we unite and create a joint interpretation, which is the result of this mutual exchange.
We believe that dancing in a couple first starts inside each individual, and later on, that individual learns how to improvise and exchange proposals with their partner during the dance.
So, our first piece of advice is to start by investing time to comprehend and develop proper awareness of the responsibilities of the Leader and the Follower, in order to be able to perceive the dance as a conversation with proposals, questions, answers and indications, where both dancers participate actively to create a dynamic improvisation together. Take a moment to ask yourself if you feel you know exactly, with clarity, the responsibilities of the Leader and the Follower. If you don’t feel 100% confident, ask your teacher in the class, and if the answer doesn’t feel satisfying, look for a teacher that has a clearer understanding to help you answer that question.
In search of connection: the different types and an overlooked element
The first, very important point is to understand that when we talk about connection in Tango, in reality, we refer to a set of connections that happen between oneself, between the couple, between the music, and between the physical space, among others. It is challenging to achieve and maintain all these connections constantly, so our main objective as teachers is not to avoid disconnections, but to help the student identify them as quickly as possible to quickly work on recovering the connection. To promptly identify these disconnections, we must work on being attentive to our bodies and their reactions.
For example, in relation to the connection inside the couple, a very important and often overlooked element is our fingers and hands. Just as the power cables need to be plugged into the source to maintain the flow of energy, so are our limbs when it comes to utterly connecting with our dance partner. If these “plugs” are not completely connected, we will be more likely to misunderstand our partner’s interpretation and lose the focus of the unity between us. Use your hands and your connection with the hug as an active set. Try to focus on that next time you practice with someone, pay attention to what your hands are doing, and understand when they tend to lose connection.
Using breathing as a tool for balance
The definition that physics gives for balance is: “The condition of a system where the forces acting on it, compensate, annulling each other.” To apply this in our dance, it helps to understand that our body has two very important and large motion motors, the upper body and the lower body, which are connected through the center of our body.
The region between the diaphragm and the umbilicus is responsible for maintaining the balance and allowing the dancer to perceive external stimuli, such as marks and music, to generate a balanced movement, without interfering with his/her partner and the dynamics of a fluid dance as a couple.
A good tool to remove tension and imbalances in the couple is breathing as an exercise of constant body relaxation. When we are involved in situations of risk or discomfort, our muscles stress looking for stability and control, and we put ourselves in a “fight or flight” mode. Our recommended exercise to solve this is to experiment and look for the correct breath and its synchronization between you and your partner. Try sending air to your muscles to release tension and achieve balance in the moments of active waiting during the dance. Use your breath to connect to your partner, to focus. Use it when you change direction, dynamics, timing, and proposals. Notice the feeling that this creates.
How to practice musicality to develop your improvisation skills
Many dancers find it difficult to combine their own musical performance with the musical proposal of the piece that is playing. Understanding the participation and importance of each instrument and its highlights will help you have a clearer idea of the musical ensemble. This way, you will be able to anticipate the movements and choose the correct dynamic and interpretative proposal to share, thus avoiding monotonous choices.
To work on your musicality, we propose the following:
Practice your ear and the different possibilities of movement according to what the creator of the musical piece suggested that you interpret with your body (Pugliese is not danced like d’Arienzo, for example). A good exercise is to practice using only one song. Dance to it focusing only on the rhythmic basis or musical pulsation. Gradually add dynamic changes based on the other instruments and their highlights during the song, one instrument at a time. This creates the possibility of advanced improvisation in your dance based on the music.
Feel free to login to the Reader’s Online Environment, and watch a couple of videos that we feel show how Pugliese can be interpreted.
If you enjoyed what you learned in this episode, visit tangotipsbythemaestros.com to explore all available languages, or simply search Tango Tips by the Maestros on Amazon.
Also, if you found this episode helpful, don’t keep it to yourself—share it with your friends!
For a curated list of free and paid resources to help you improve and enjoy your tango, go to thecurioustanguero.com/argentinetango. I’ve put together a list just for you.
I’ll say it again: thecurioustanguero.com/argentinetango.
And remember to smile—you’ve discovered tango. Most people haven’t.
What a gift.