I like to watch people as they do what they love and especially as they learn or dance tango. And as obvious as it might be, one of the things that I have really come to appreciate is how much more people succeed in learning or dancing tango if they are in the “right” state of mind, for them.

Think about for a moment. Have you ever been at a lesson where the teacher was very “heavy” or “strict” and no one seemed to enjoy the lesson. In my experience, in those kinds of lessons, even if the students manage to do the movement that is taught, they never get to use it on the dance floor. Likewise, have you ever been to a milonga with a heavy atmosphere where people did not seem to enjoy themselves and noticed that even the better dancers well at their best a lot less of the time?

Simple as the observation I am offering you is, it goes to show how important it is that we put some effort to set ourselves up to have the right kind of experience, for us, whether it is at a lesson or at a milonga.

I am much more eloquent at controlling my state of mind now, using some of the tools that I use as a private consultant but for a long time I performed a ritual, every time, before I went out. I would put some music on that I really like and have an energizing shower before I get all proper to go out. That was enough for me to get rid of any stress that was left there from the week at work and put me into a fun, outgoing, ready-for-everything kind of mood. Over time, this ritual prepared me to have a lot of happy memories.

Now, this ritual is a little more intricate than I cared to describe here and there’s a reason for that. Even if you tried it exactly the same, it wouldn’t work the same for you.

Why?

Because first and foremost you are a different person to me and what works for me might not necessarily work for you “as-is” and secondly, I spent weeks and months (unconsciously) practicing this ritual before it gave the results that I am writing about here.

But, if you take another moment and think about this now, there is most likely a ritual that you have to get you into this kind of ready-for-everything kind of mood.

For some, this may be having a specially prepared cup of tea… or listening to a particular song… or doing your own private kind of dance in front of the mirror before you go out… or putting on your best shirt… or splashing on your favourite perfume or eau de toilette…

And if this ritual has not come up for you yet, ask yourself or get someone else to ask you:

“What are you like when you’re at your best?”

This is the very organic way of going about building your state of body and mind. To set yourself for fun, success, learning or anything else that you want to be doing.

There are other ways to do this, consciously or “manually”. These manual ways put you in the position of power as they allow you to enter this state of mind any time you like, even if you can’t perform this ritual. I will explore these more in future articles.

As you use this to have a better tango experience, we would love to hear about what your ritual is and how it manifests on the dance floor!

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Teaching is in its own right a very intricate task and a successful teacher has mastery of his or her students, their states of body and mind, and of course the material to be presented. Teaching tango is a particularly challenging subject to teach and most people who teach tango do so because they are passionate about it and not because they are in the “business of teaching”.

Granted, whether you are being taught by a professional teacher or a hobbyist, it is useful for us, as students, to know what we need to know in order to learn effectively. This way, we are able to be aware of what the teacher is providing us with and whether there is anything missing in order for us to learn.

If I asked you to stand straight at one spot on the floor and then to walk to another spot on the floor, in a straight line, you would “just do it”. It’s a simple enough task that you’ve done many times before and because it is so simple and common, there are three “invisible” components:

• You know where you need to start from: standing straight from the first spot.
• You know where to go and how: walking, in a straight line, to the second spot.
• You know when you’re there: when you’ve reached the second spot.

Simple and kind of obvious, right?

But, what happens when you’re being taught a more complex technique such as a gencho or a volcada, which in most probability you have never done before? How can the above components help us?

The three components I listed above are the active ingredients of executing any action, goal or outcome, successfully. First of all, we need to know where we are starting from and “what is true” at this position. Secondly, we need to “begin with the end in mind”: what is it that we’re trying to achieve, specifically? Once we can hold these two positions (beginning and end) in mind, we can ask the question of “how” and figure out different ways to get there. Finally, we need to know how we will know when we get there so we can stop and I will explain how this especially important for tango and complex techniques, next.

Tango is very much a game of this kind of awareness.

Typically, the leader will lead a movement and it is important for him to know whether this movement is possible from the current position, how to execute it and most importantly whether he has been successful in leading it. It is the most important part of the “lead” because it will lead the follower into a new position that the next movement will begin from. If the lead was not successful for whatever reason and this position is not the one the leader anticipated while he thinks it is, the results of the next movement can be disastrous. In other words, the leader needs to know what he wants and whether he got it or not after a lead.

For the follower things are slightly different. Once she is lead and given a signal, she needs to know what kind of movement will this signal have her body do, and follow it. By the same token, during learning, it is necessary for her to know what this signal is.

So far, so good.

How do we use this in a classroom?

Simple.

At every point in time during a class, you should hold those three items in your mind: the start, the end and how to get there and how to know when you got there. Some of the time it may be obvious but practice this whether it is a simple exercise or a complex movement or step: go through this mental list and tick the ones that you know. If you are missing any, ask the teacher. If what he or she says does not make sense as words, ask to practice it with them so that they can adjust your body accordingly.

Be gentle in the way you ask you might step on the protruding egos of some teachers.

Also, If you are taught a complex sequence of movements, it will be useful to break it down in terms of these three components and the neat thing about this is that the ending point of each movement will be the beginning point of the next and the two structures will link effortlessly: if you know how to know when you get there on each movement, you will also know how you need to start on the next movement.

Practicing this while you learn will prove to be, as I will discuss in later articles, even more fruitful that it may be apparent at first. Not only will you know exactly what you need to do and how to go about it in the classroom, but you will also be able to use this awareness to generalize what you’ve learnt and be able to create and improvise new movements that use the same pattern! More on that, next time.

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With tango, my learning equation has been very different: I experience a sort of plateau for a length of time and then, suddenly, something will happen and I will make a leap.

I made one of those leaps in 2006, when I took one lesson with Javier Rodriguez and his partner Andrea Misse, in Tangocamp Greece - a very unconventional lesson, by all means.

I can’t bring myself to remember how the lesson started out exactly… perhaps with a warm-up dance to get the blood flowing and give them an idea of our level or maybe with some walking exercises. I honestly don’t remember.

What I do remember however is Javier’s immediate and emotional protest at the way we walked!

He interrupted whatever was happening at once, took a serious look and spent the next hour and a half working with us on walking, by ourselves!

And I don’t say that it was unconventional because we just walked… I started learning tango with two teachers who take technique very seriously and walking was a routine exercise on every lesson.

It was unconventional, because, in more words than these, Javier told us to forget everything we had learnt about walking tango technique and “just walk”, the same way we would walk on the street. He pointed out that tango is a natural kind of dance where we “walk”… that elderly people who dance in Argentina have never learned how to walk specifically for tango… they just walk.

After the class, I was reminded of going to milongas and seeing a lot of people who have been taught walking technique walking the same funny walk that Javier protested about. Until that day, I was one of them, and I made a leap by going back to “what works”: I started walking in tango like I walked on the street with an intention to build on it and improve to accommodate for tango.

This spurred me into thought…. why is it that most people look funny when they try to walk with a particular “technique”?

I will use the language paradigm to explain.

When children learn grammar and syntax for the very first time and attempt to make up sentences using those rules, their speech is disrupted. They lose their flow, “uhm” a lot and take a few seconds just to form the sentence in their mind.

Why?

Simply because our conscious resources are very limited and we are used to doing things automatically, or unconsciously. When people open their mouth to talk, they don’t think “Ok, first I am going to put a noun, then a verb, then a…” and so on, do they?

That’s an unconscious way of going about talking.

On the other hand, applying a syntactic or grammatical rule explicitly is a conscious way of going about it and requires the use of different kinds of resources and processes that take much longer than our specialized and very efficient unconscious speaking circuits.

Is that limited to language?

Certainly not.

Let me give you another example that involves the body.

Think about people who learn to drive. Male or female, old or young, when they begin learning how to drive a manual drive car they will often make it stall or move in a jerky way… I have yet to meet someone who didn’t do this at least once on their first lesson. Some do it more than others (and we might say that those who do it less, have a “talent for driving”) but nevertheless, everybody does it.

Driving requires a set of synchronized movements that is not part of our every day life and an accomplished driver has mastered this set of movement and performs them unconsciously.

Initially however, the same driver had to consciously control his or her body and slowly, using repetition, form a habit or an unconscious circuit that will then take care of that for the rest of their lives.

In learning walking technique for tango, not only do we have to learn how to walk consciously again but the movements that are required are significantly smaller than the movements that the average person has conscious access to, like walking or running.

Now, let’s compare the two:

In driving, to change gear for example, we have to press down with our leg on the clutch and simultaneously set the gear with our hand. These are really big movements that are part of our conscious movement repertoire. In other words, we are used to doing similar movements and we only to set our intention; our body then knows how to engage all of our muscles in order to execute the required action.

In tango walking technique, the movements are so broken up and isolated that are outside the average person’s movement repertoire. We simply are not used to braking up each step into several smaller movements and even though are body is able of achieving this controllably, we do not hold a conscious circuit of execution.

And so, it is in this way natural for most people to look “funny” as they attempt to break a step up and change it in some way than the way they already walk, just like it is natural to stall the car or make it move in a jerky manner when you begin learning how to drive.

The point to all this is that things are much easier when you begin from “what works” and this is what Javier did for us in that hour and a half.

He started out from what is already working: we all knew how to walk on the street and by doing this, he didn’t have to do things consciously… he accessed the unconscious circuit that all of us already had and which organizes our body in order for us to walk.

The result? We all walked smoothly and in balance. I mean, how many times have you seen people walk in a jerky way or lose their balance while the walk (without tripping on something that is)?

Is that enough to be able to dance tango as elegantly and controllably as some of the best dancers out there?

Certainly not; by the same token, movements like voleos are not in our every day movement repertoire.

However, it’s the most solid foundation to build on.

By starting from what is already working you are able to access all your existing resources and building up on them or making them work even better will be a smooth and natural process.

If you are a teacher: begin from what already works for your students. Think of those situations in life that they use the same sort of movement and have them do it. I have had greater success applying this concept with complete beginners over 4-5 lessons than other more experienced teachers have had with beginners in months.

If you are a student: use this to your own advantage! If you are learning a movement that is new to you in tango, mentally go through your life and find a situation that you would need to do this movement and simulate it! Make up the scenario as a fun exercise that you and your partner can do, and do it. Then, build up on it, in small steps, until you can apply it in tango.

If you start from “what works”, it’s guaranteed that your progress will be faster by several orders of magnitude.

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More than 5 years ago, I was visiting Barcelona with a good friend and one of the most interesting parts of the city was Las Ramblas… one of the best known landmarks in Barcelona. It is a large street with comparatively little traffic and a huge pedestrian walk that goes on for at least a mile. Naturally, it is a host for a lot of shops, cafe and restaurants.

Las Ramblas is also sparsely inhabited by a variety of artists from painters, mimes, clowns, those amazing people who can stand still for long periods of time (ask me to stand still and a minute is a long period of time) and… tango!

Yes, one of those days, we were walking down Las Ramblas and there was an appropriately-dressed couple with a small sound system and a bucket to collect the tips from the people passing by, dancing tango!

I remember being completely astounded as I watched them dance.

It was the first time I saw anyone dance tango before and the music was alien to me but what I saw transcended anything I had ever seen before that involved a man and a woman.

To this day, I have no idea who they were and if they were famous but what I can tell you without doubt is the passion that was instilled in them on every step and every note of the music. They were completely enveloped in one another and even though there was about 50 people with their eyes pinned on them, they seemed to have no care in the world… no awareness of anything but themselves and the music and…

… in those few moments I lit up and felt like I felt that morning in November of 2006. I was standing more upright than ever before and if it wasn’t for that intense heat in my chest, I would be certain I had left my own body and entered his, as he was dancing with her.

That, was ‘it’.

I knew I had to learn how to dance like this… how to connect with another human being like this… and I knew it not with my mind but with my body.

And I say that because it wasn’t something that necessarily made sense in a logical kind of way.

It was something that others, including my friend, could or would accept but never really understand this. It was an inspiration that was springing from deep inside of me that felt like freedom, purpose and passion all blended into one.

What is interesting is that after I returned home and told all my friends about this, all of them without exception, had had a similar experience to tell me about. Something totally out of the blue that came up as I was telling them about this young couple dancing tango in Barcelona. Even more interesting was that it could be something as “small” like seeing a child help an elderly person or as “big” as seeing someone who they really respected and wanted to be like talk about their life story.

And this made me think of tango again…

Have you ever seen someone dance that truly inspired you and gave you a sense of being free? Would you be able to find this moment in a snap or would you need to take a moment now and think about it?

And even if you can’t find a moment like this within your tango experience, where within your rich life experience would you find it?

Before I go on, you may find you want to take a moment and explore this and:

- Wonder : what was important to you about this experience? If it was tango, was it the way their bodies moved in isolation or was it the way they connected? Was it passionate, fun, serious, mysterious or romantic? Was it the music and its qualities or how it made you feel?

Bring yourself back to that day and see through your own eyes what you saw then now… Hear what you heard and feel how inspired you felt:

- Notice: the first location that you become aware of this feeling now… What are its qualities? Is it cool or warm? Is it static or flowing in some direction? If someone had to made an exact replica of this feeling and needed the recipe, how would you describe it?

Remember this feeling and allow yourself to become aware of it every time it’s present in your body and make a mental note…

Soon, you will find that a pattern is emerged and you will be aware of all those people and experiences that help you to be more like this… and you may feel inclined to pursue them more often.

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By the time we’re 3 or 4 years old, we can speak eloquently.

Innate or not… it made me begin to think about tango and how we learn…

On second thought, I came to realize that we learn tango in a very similar way to how we learn to speak:

When we were toddlers, we started out with language when mom and dad repetitively spoke those words to us until we could go “ma-ma” and “da-da”. Then, “cat”, “dog” and other simple words followed…

Then, we ventured out to learn words more complex, like “woman”, “future” and “automobile”, at the same time as making simple sentences like “I want water” and “daddy tell me a story”.

Before you took your first English (or whatever you native language is) class, you were able to form complex sentences and speak fluently.

And you only had to learn the alphabet when you began to learn how to write.

This is important! But, why?

Because it means you were never really taught how to speak, but you learnt how using two mechanisms that are very specialized in us: mimicking and integrating experience.

That is, you mimicked how your mom and dad used their mouth to produce sounds that we call “words” and then linked those words to an object or a concept. Then, using the rich, collective experience of hearing other people speak, you were able to form intuitions about what forms of words and sentences make sense and what forms do not. For example, if I said “You that look understand idea can” you would have had a very different intuition than if I said “Look, you can understand that idea”, even though the words are the same.

More than that, eventually, you were able to use those intuitions to form completely new and novel sentences that you had never heard anyone else say before. In other words, you unconsciously integrated the structure of speech and were able to use it to construct new sentences.

For a long time that is how we went about our language affairs and then a bunch of clever people noticed that even though all this happens without any conscious human intervention, language is governed by rules and so they set out to find what those rules were.

To do that, they studied how people speak and they invented “grammar”.

In fact, there are tens of grammars because they’re still trying to figure out a grammar that has rules (not exceptions) for every piece of interesting language we can come up with.

So then, we began to go to school and we were taught grammar and practiced it relentlessly. Remember that?

Well, the only difference between tango and language is that the grammars we have available for tango are very primitive.

Let me explain.

The following will vary somewhat, depending on where you live or who taught you but most of you, when you started out learning tango, you were taught perhaps how to walk in an embrace, about the embrace itself but more often than not: a simple step or sequence of steps. You already knew how to walk so you skipped “ma-ma” and “da-da” and went straight for “cat” and “dog”, or even maybe “woman”, “future” and “I want water”.

You did the same thing over and over until you went up a level and you started learning more complex sequences of steps (probably giros, saccadas and ganchos). You started making simple sentences that assumed some unconscious knowledge of the basics: verbs, nouns and so on. And I’m saying unconscious, because at the time, you had no idea that someone had named them “verbs” or “nouns”. In tango, that would be the concepts of axis, embrace, and so on.

Around that time, or when you went up a level, you went back to learning the alphabet although you could already speak: you hopefully learnt about technique of walking, shifting weight etc.

After the alphabet came the rules of the grammar, this time consciously and explicitly: technique of giros, technique of saccadas, technique of volcadas, etc. and it served to reinforce your already natural alas limited ability to form new tango sentences.

Why is this useful? I was hoping you would ask.

Because it informs us about how “tango grammar” can help us learn tango on a conscious level and raw experience, on an unconscious level.

This combination can be very effective and I will spend time in later posts explaining “how”.

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And even though it was less than a year since I had started to go to tango classes regularly, I had crossed the very first threshold in my journey and dancing tango had become an intense joy.

Charles and I were sat on two chairs that faced each other, with an angle, when I readily announced tango as one of those activities I like to do:

- “So what do you like doing?”
- “Oh, I recently started doing some gymnastics and I also like to dance tango.”

It felt like a casual conversation where we were getting to know each other. To this day, I am not sure why Charles chose to talk about tango but he continued:

- “Tango?”
- “Yes, Argentinean tango” I said, as I raised my arms in front of my chest to form the embrace. He smiled and asked
- “What’s that like?”
- “I’ve only been dancing for a few months but I really enjoy it already!”

After demonstrating the embrace, my body was about to shift a second time, outside of my awareness…

- “So you enjoy it?”. As I nodded, he continued: “and what’s it like when you’re having the perfect tango dance… when it’s just flowing and you can’t put a foot wrong?”
- “Oh it’s just amazing!”

There was an unfamiliar sense of awareness and intention in Charles’ precise questions. I suddenly became aware that he was leading me with positive intention and it was thus very comfortable for me to follow him into exploring the structure of the experience I have when I dance tango like this…

He seemed to be very intensely present, in the moment, with me, and his full attention was outwards in the world and “at” me. His state was in fact so contagious I was becoming more and more aware of my body and the way I described having the perfect tango dance.

I remember noticing that I sat up straight, with my chest open, held my arms out again to form an embrace, with an incredible lightness and my shoulders moved a little bit.

- “He’s dancing… can you see?”, Charles said to those who were observing. “There is a somatic configuration… a specific way in which he organizes his body and mind when he is like this; observe”.

He then brought his focus back to me and said:

- “So it’s amazing?! Tell me more…”
- “Yes, it’s like I’m really light and we flow to the music … almost like we’re floating together around the room… ”
- “So you’re flowing… and your attention is where?”
- “Oh, most of the time it feels like there is no one else in the room but us… sometimes I notice them because I have to navigate but they don’t seem to matter! All I care about is the music in the moment and my partner.”
- “And when you are together like this, what do you notice about the way you dance?”
- “Well, I know it sounds cliché but it’s like you said early… it’s like I can’t put a foot wrong… I mean, I will make the odd “mistake” but I’m not thinking of steps… in fact I’m not thinking at all… I’m just listening to the music and… dancing… and I feel so ecstatic when I’m like this because tango is an improvised dance and it’s very important to be able to be free like this…”

With this novel self-awareness came the realization that my eyes kept shifting back to a specific position every time Charles asked me a question that I had to think about to answer…

He brought my awareness fully to my own body this time:

- “And when you’re like this, how do you know?”

For one more time, my body shifted forwards as if I was leading my partner forwards, my left shoulder turned slightly inwards and my eyes shifted up and right.

- “Because I feel it in my chest.”
- “You feel it in your chest? Where does this feeling begin exactly on your chest? Show me. ”
- “It’s over here” I said, as I gestured in front of the left side of my chest.
- “And what is the feeling like? What are some of its qualities?”
- “It goes from warm to really hot when it’s really perfect and has a liquid quality to it… ”
- “Excellent, and does it move in some way?”
- “Yes, it seems to penetrate through my chest and go through to my back.”

By this time, whatever my body was automatically doing to access this state, I was doing it several times before I answered each question!

- “And what do you notice about the way you organize yourself when you’re like this?”
- “Well, my chest seems to be more open… and I am more upright than I normally am… (a few seconds of pause)… and my eyes seem to go back to that position every time you ask me to describe something about it…”
- “Yes…”

As I made this motion once more to find more things that I was doing to get into it, Charles asked:

- “And have you noticed how you move your left shoulder forwards and what you do with your feet?”

I answered non-verbally by moving my left shoulder, he nodded and showed me how my ankles were raising each time.

Charles had uncovered all the pieces to the puzzle and taught me how to be this way… any time I want!

Before I left my seat for the break, I wondered to myself… what would it be like to dance like this from start to finish?

Even better, what would it be like to dance like this through… life?

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Stay tuned and find out how to explore and apply this way of being.

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