Tango in 30 Days
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30 Days to Tango
Day 1: Balance/Disbalance
Daniel learns to give me permission to put my weight on him. He does this by extending his elbow joints (to give permission for a colgada), or flexing them (to give permission for a volcada. He’s also careful to stabilize his shoulder joints before taking on my weight.
I’m free to play with my free leg and I like to do something other than the convention…
Day 2: Moving Together and Alone
Today Daniel learned how to move together, to guide me to move alone, or to move alone himself. When he wants us to move together, he stabilizes his shoulder joints. When he wants to move alone, or to move me alone, he destabilizes his shoulder joints.
Day 3: What about the feet?
Today Daniel learned that he never has to be afraid of being on the “wrong” foot. In tango we walk using both the pace and trot gaits of 4-legged animals.
Day 4: Lateral steps
When moving laterally, Daniel is free to change his feet, but I have to always move with the free leg, which means pivoting when necessary. This pivoted lateral step is called an “ocho”.
Day 5: Intention
Today Daniel learns the “secret” of tango: Every movement begins with a subtle communication of intention for the next direction. I respond to this intention not by moving my body, but only by extending my free leg in that direction. This gives Daniel control over the timing of the transfer of weight, and also the opportunity to create more complicated movements…
Day 6: Playing with the Free Leg
Yesterday Daniel learned how to show his intention, which results in my projection, enabling him to control the timing of my transfer of weight. Today he learned that this same technique of intention can be used to play with my free leg, to paint shapes in the air. Daniel calls this “marionette”.
Day 7: Gancho
Today Daniel combines two skills: moving alone to get close to me, and controlling my free leg in the air. He uses these two skills to wrap my leg around his body for a gancho.
Day 8: Displacement
Today Daniel learned another use for intention/projection, to give me one direction while he prepares to move in another direction. This enables him to do a sacada, a displacement, in which he takes my place. To do this, he gives me a lateral projection and then he steps between my legs, as close as possible to my base leg. The force of his step causes me to transfer to my projected leg at the very same moment, creating the sensation and image of a displacement.
Day 9: She displaces him
Yesterday, Daniel displaced Vio for sacadas. Today, He guides me to displace him. To do this he always gives an intention toward him, then he steps alone to his left or right, using an open step or a front or back step, as he likes.
Day 10: Entering sacadas backwards
The dancer who is displacing their partner by entering their step can enter with a back step. Daniel finds this “difficult”. (I don’t tell him it’s very advanced, because the whole point of teaching back sacada in lesson 10 is that he will never fear it as most dancers do. What I tell him is that it’s unfamiliar and indeed you can see over the course of the minutes we spend making the video, that the movement already becomes more comfortable.)
Of course as the Mark, Daniel is always free to chose the foot and orientation of his sacada. We didn’t not yet learn the distinction between asking me to enter forward or backward. We just focused on the sensations of the “4th sacada” where we must briefly release the embrace in order to complete the step and what could be called the “3rd sacada”, the back sacada in which we can maintain the embrace.
Day 11: voleos
By stepping on the perimeter of a circle around me, Daniel keeps me on my current base leg, while delivering power to my free leg, causing a voleo.
Day 12: contra voleos
Daniel again realizes the power of shoulder de/stabilization. If he stabilizes his shoulders as he moves around me for the voleo, as he did yesterday, it’s a pro voleo. My free leg follows the circular movement of his body. If he destablizes his shoulder joints, my free leg may move against him on the circle, creating a whiplash effect. This is a contra voleo.
Day 13: sacada to voleo
Today Daniel contrasted the perpendicular geometry of sacada with the circular geometry of voleo to improvise with these movements. Eventually, the exit projection from the sacada affects the direction of the voleo.
Day 14: sacada to voleo to gancho
Today we extend the drill to three movements: sacada, then voleo, then gancho. The three geometries are: PERPENDICULAR for the sacada (Daniel only uses Revel’s/Follower’s sacadas and front sacadas, but he could use Mark’s/Leader’s sacadas and back sacadas too), CIRCULAR for the voleo, and CLOSE to me for the gancho.
Day 15: improvisation drill
Today we did a drill in which I mix the things that Daniel has learned to tell him the next thing to do. Of course he still improvised the variation of each movement and experienced the result. This is a wonderful drill for beginners and experienced dancers alike, to avoid sequence-habits.
- To make the commands easier for Daniel I use the geometry and operational instructions of tje movements instead of the Castellano terms:
“disbalance vers toi” = disbalance toward you = volcada - “disbalance loin de toi” = disbalance away from you = colgada
- “circular” = move on a circular geometry = voleo
- “pres de moi” = come near to me (and then give intention toward your body) = gancho
- “tu prends ma place” = you take my place = leader/Mark’s sacada
- “je prends ta place” = I take your place = follower/Revel’s sacada
(yesterday I used the term ‘perpendicular’ to describe the sacada’s geometry, but I realized Daniel only did Revel’s sacadas in response to that, so I asked him to tell me the terminology that better described the two types of sacadas and he preferred taking the place.) - “a droit” = to your right
- “a gauche” = to your left
*** Sorry we forgot our microphones today… ***
Day 16: more circles
Today Daniel learned the 3 giros. Since the names are always complicated, I showed them to him and let him give his own names to them:
“both walk” = double giro
“walk alone” = Mark’s single giro
“the moon” (la lune) = calesita (Revel’s single giro)
Day 17: FOUR circles
Today Daniel improvises with the FOUR movements that use circular geometry: voleo, double gancho, single giro, and calesita.
Day 18: Elasticity
Daniel learns how to make any step elastic with co-contraction of the quadriceps and hamstring muscles of either leg. It’s also necessary that he allows his shoulders to flex and extend. This allows me to move consequentially (later), bringing more pleasure to the movement, which is called ‘rebote’.
Day 19: Linear Voleos
Just like circular voleos, linear voleos can be marked Pro or Contra, but there are three directions, my leg can move backward, forward, or sideward.
Day 22: Octopus Ganchos
Today we studied Maestro El Pulpo’s methods for playing with ganchos, transforming one gancho to another.
Day 23: Impro Voleo and Gancho
Today we continued improvising with gancho and pulpeades, as well as all the voleos, to give Daniel a chance to explore the possibilities and become more familiar and fluid.
Day 24: Impro + Commands
Today Daniel improvises with walking, voleos, and ganchos, and I also give him some commands, to integrate his sacadas, and giros.
Day 25: Walk
We finally turn our attention to the tango walk, in open and close embrace, pace and trot systems.
Day 26: Walk with Voleos
Daniel makes walking less boring by improvising with circular and linear, pro and contra voleos.
Day 27: Control the Feet
After asking me many times how to control which foot I’m on, today Daniel finally got the answer: a tiny bit of lateral intention, made by contracting the obliques in the preferred direction, and ensuring that there is no tension in the arms which would amplify that into a projection.
Day 28: Three options at the end of every step
After learning to control my feet at a standstill, today Daniel learns that every step can be ended in three positions. He controls this ending with the same 15 degree rotation with the obliques that he learned yesterday, but he must do it mid-way through the transfer of weight.
Day 29: Favorites
Today I put on my favorite skirt to teach Daniel my two very favorite movements, a butterfly gancho and castigada. To transition from the first to the second gancho, Daniel uses his obliques to turn himself and me, making space for our hips and legs. To make the castigada he marks a front projection into the air and then steps into my leg with elasticity. It’s important he allows my torso to move. We used a back step, but you can use side and front steps as well.
We still need to improve the fluidity and elasticity, but the geometry and rotation is ready.