TANGO; MASSAGE FOR THE SOUL
Notes from opening session with Ney Melo and Jennifer Bratt
tango interlude #5: review of workshop by Ney Melo and Jennifer Bratt. Hosted by Casa Tango Edmonton, October 24 to 27, 2013. By Aydan Dunnigan.
My measure of the master tango teacher is someone who can identify the foundational elements of dance and communicate them in a way that is simultaneously profound and simple. And if you can work a sense of humour into the mix, you have what it takes for a transformational tango class. Ney and Jennifer have it.
Foundational element # 1. Tango is hugging - technically speaking: embracing. Get this right and you are on your way.
The difference, according to Ney and Jennifer, between a lover’s hug and an embrace, is what you do with your arm. If you extend it out to the side, you have a tango embrace. If it starts slipping down the back to never-never land (another technical term), then you have a lover’s hug.
Excercise #1. Man (lead) stands with hands by his sides. Woman (follow) saddles up and drapes a warm embrace over his shoulders. Ney is cheerleading in the background, "I want to see love! Make me believe!"
I haven't had this much fun since my hippy love-in days. I like this. Alot. Massage therapy for the soul.
Foundational element # 2. Apparently, it is the follow’s responsibility to complete the embrace, adapting to body shape and size, comfort level and dance style. The lead has to be clear, straight, solid well positioned, grounded, maintaining balance at all times and from this tower of stability the follow then has the freedom to embellish, dance, spin and basically play.
According to Ney, this a no-brainer in other parts of the world. But in North America, apparently, we are more about consensus, shared responsibility, mutuality, meet in the middle. North Americans do a50-50; the follow makes the approach and then the lead accommodates by adjusting posture and completing the embrace. (Is this more about being non-committal or gender-confusion?).
Raised in the generation of the sensitive New-Age male, I personally am a little reticent to buy into the clear delineation of male-female roles. But there are two things to keep in mind. One, the lead and follow are not necessarily male-female (although typically so and true for me). Secondly, whether or not this translates well into relationships, it does make for better dancing. Tango doesn’t work without role differentiation, a clear delineation between lead and follow.
Excercise #2. For the rest of the lesson we continue with different exercises designed to reinforce this learning, e.g., walking around the room with the follow pulling down on the lead’s neck, forcing him to focus and expend some energy in maintaining a correct posture. More fun.
For me this is a sandbox for life-play, a practica for relationships. This is much more interesting than learning more steps. Simple but profound with a little humour worked in. I like it. Congratulations master tango teachers, Ney and Jennifer.
For more tango interludes, go to www.traumatotango.com/blog.html
Skating at the Montreal International Tango Festival. 9/14/2013
I wish I had a river that I could skate away on. I wish I had a river so long that I could teach my feet to fly.Joni MitchellWe are an ice people, a people whose consciousness and psyche have been crystallized with the cyclical freezing of our rivers and lakes and liberated by the feeling of gliding effortlessly and endlessly across a pond or along a river, as light as a snowflake driven by the wind. As a child growing up on the shore of Lake Superior, I lived or dreamed this euphoric, expansive experience twelve months of the year.
This sensation came back to me this summer during my brief foray into the Montreal International Tango Festival while watching the endless, rhythmic flow of dancers over the large outdoor patio with the majestic Saint Lawrence River as a backdrop. As they floated effortlessly, weaving in and out of the line of dance, each with their own style, rhythm, and tempo, they evoked for me those formative childhood experiences of weightlessness and freedom, skating over a crystal channel, mirroring the flow of the river beneath.
This, apparently, is not the vision of Argentine tango that my devoted teachers try to instill into this weathered, frost-bitten brain. I remember vividly - and fondly - Alicia Pons' passionate plea to her Edmontonian students this spring to never ever under any circumstances pass someone on the dance floor. She made a very reasoned and impassioned defense of tango as a social construct that we create in community by adhering to these constraints. Every dance couple, every move, every pause by the person in front and press by the person behind is an integral part of the fabric of the dance. If one steps out of line and passes the couple in front instead of waiting patiently, then one has ripped the social fabric of the dance asunder.
Out of respect to Alicia's experience and leadership in the international tango community, I determined to follow her directive. The next milonga in Edmonton that I attended was held in a hall with a dance floor as wide as a prairie river. This certainly was not the tight physical constraints that one finds at an Argentine milonga, where people are squeezed in so tightly that dancing in series is an absolute prerequisite to preventing severe injury or a mob riot. As I watched people flow in and out at their own speed doing whatever felt right, dancing in their own little bubble without much thought and attention to others around them, my resolve to wait for the dolt in front taking way too much time trying to impress his partner, dissolved. Instinctively, I broke out from the line of dance, skating away just as if I was back in Northwestern Ontario. Inspired by the spirit of freedom and expansiveness and buoyed by the music and the embrace of my partner, I took off for open ice, resolving never to return until we tumbled into the snowbank at the river's edge and I kissed her on her frostbitten cheek.
Certainly there are perversions to this skating/ dance metaphor like the speed skater who zips around the dance floor like it was a time-triaI or the tangero-hockey player who seems to invite collissions, throwing a hip-check whenever someone gets close. These are to be discouraged.
But I wonder how many Canadians who like me learned to skate before they learned to read and write, retain within that instinctual motion of push and glide, spinning, cutting, faster, further, without constraints and limits. And whether this can ever be distilled out of us. Or if it should be. I for one, carry this awareness deep within wherever I go, even to tango. And in some ways, especially to tango. Tango Interludes - blog #4, Aydan Dunnigan, 06.09.2013
