We all need somebody to lean on (or do we?)

A lot of folks have commented on the fact that I dance close embrace in a very upright position.  Yes, I am not an extreme leaner type.  At the same time, I am not against leaning in tango. When done correctly, it can be fun AND good for the body. However, part of my job as a teacher is to facilitate tango that allows the dancer to keep dancing until they keel over at an advanced age, not until they end up in a wheelchair. I teach very upright tango because I feel it is important to learn about one's own balance, axis and movement before asking someone else to be responsible for one's back/feet/weight.

After you can hold your own body up and know where your axis is--and where your feet are--THEN you can contemplate finding a way to lean and achieve the same balance and control when off-axis. When you can do that, you have the tools to lean as far as you like without injuring your back or feeling like a Mack truck to the leader.

And then there is the element of surrendering to the dance: practice more upright, working on your technique, but in the moment, who cares? When you are dancing, all that melts into the background as you connect with another person and the music and just DANCE. When I dance, I hope to get "in the groove" and forget about standing up or breathing or releasing my legs because it just happens.

In Tango II, we are working on close embrace to get ready for the crowded dancing situation at Tangofest (http://www.claysdancestudio.com/portland_tangofest/index.shtml).This class is both fun and challenging to teach, as I have students who have danced for three months and others who have danced for 4-5 years in the same class. I run it like a one-room schoolhouse, sometimes dividing people into learning level groups, sometimes having the advanced students dance with the intermediate students to get everyone on the same page. But I digress as usual:-)

Drills & games for the week:

• Axis drill: standing with knees straight but unlocked, big toes touching, eyes closed, breath evenly. Imagine that you can pull air up through the bottoms of your feet, up inside your bones, all the way to your lungs. Then, when you exhale, imagine pushing the air back down through your legs & feet, going six inches through the floor (not just to your soles). Gradually include breathing out the top of your head AND through the floor at the same time. Think of a shower curtain rod: it has springs on both sides, bracing between two walls. Your body is doing the same thing, but sending energy out your feet to ground and out your head to align your axis.
• Force field (2 people): Stand facing each other in the same stance as for the axis drill. Breathe as for the axis drill, but on the exhale, direct all the energy of the breath towards and through your partner, starting at the toes and gradually building a rectangular force field all the way up your/their body. I picture little electrical waves going through my partner, but other folks have said they imagine light/a laser beam/a color/fire/water/bubbles--whatever image works for you.

More after this week's classes--I'm trying desperately to keep on top of reviewing for all of my classes, but it's hard to type when a toddler is "helping"!

Whips and chains (Boleos and crossed system grapevine combos)

We worked on circular boleos (whips) for Week II of Tango III, and then combined them with sacadas.

Con boleos are led by the leader rotating in the same direction as the follower's hips are turning. This is true for both front and back boleos. For me, these boleos have a kind of SSSwoosh feeling, very smooth.

Contra boleos are led by the leader moving around the follower in the opposite direction that the follower's hips are rotating, to create a more ssWOOSH! feeling, with a harder snap to the boleo at the end, but with a tiny bit longer buildup before the snap.

Boleo tips for followers:

• Be on your axis: with few exceptions, boleos work best on axis.
• 80% of the work is for your support leg and body: find a way to stabilize without tensing.
• The free leg MUST be relaxed in order to get a real boleo. You can fake them following a boleo lead, but the feeling for the leader--and for you--is not the same.  The leg is release in the hip socket, not in the lower back.
• Don't clench knees, hips, toes, in order to maintain your balance: use the floor/grounding.
• Stand tall and think of your rib cage lifting ALL AROUND so that your legs can fit under you easily.
• There is no one shape of boleo that is correct. The leader can shape your move, after you have learned to release your leg and stay connected/solid in your center.  The path of the leader's rotation determines the path of your leg.
• Your embrace needs to be strong at the moment of the boleo to help stabilize your body (except the loose leg), but don't clutch your partner! Think of two waves hitting and subsiding, rather than a death grip.

Boleo tips for leaders:

• This is a subtle lead. I know, it doesn't look like a subtle move, but the lead energy gets magnified as it travels down the follower's body to the free leg.  If you haul your partner into boleos, they can't release their leg without falling over.
• Find the rotation in your center, and keep it parallel to the ground unless you want to make strange, weird boleo shapes.
• Don't use your arms to twist the follower: use them to stabilize, not to pull!
• Plant your feet strongly. Many times, I find that both of my feet need to be solidly on the ground BEFORE I initiate the boleo lead. Yes, there are some boleos where you can't do that, but work on them after more simple ones work.
• For contra boleos, remember that you can travel with a side step (usually the easiest), a front cross, or a back cross.  Experiment!
• Lead the boleo as one move, not a twist and then an untwist: allow the follower's momentum to contribute to the unwinding.

Using boleo combinations on the dance floor

What's the point of knowing all these cool moves if you can't use them? We focused on leading con and contra boleos with a preparation set up along the LOD direction, and exiting LOD. The leader can face out of the circle or into the circle to do these.

Building on what we did last week, we played with adding steps to the boleos as they unwound, resolved into steps LOD.  You can use circular or linear sacadas after the boleos, but some moves remain in one place and cannot be done in a crowded space.

One last note: Don't lead high boleos (or backlead high boleos) in a crowded space! Although many boleo shapes curve around the follower's axis, thus making them compact enough for most dance spaces, if you are dancing with someone whose style you cannot predict, don't boleo.

I think that's it, unless you remember something I forgot to write down!  Good work, everyone!

Tango 3: Weird, original moves

At the beginning of all of my classes (except my beginner class), I ask my students what they would like to get out of the class.  I then use that information to plan the class. C. asked for "weird, original moves" and "new ideas from normal places" to keep his followers from anticipating upcoming moves.  R. asked to work on gaining precision "on everything." M. wanted "body placement and loose legs."  G. wanted to do follower and leader sacadas--ah!  something easy!!!  As the rest of the class had not yet chosen goals, we started with the idea of sacadas, and quickly ended up at weird and original.

Basic Patterns
1. Leading the follower to do a front sacada through the leader's front cross.
2. Leading the follower to do a side step sacada through the leader's front cross.
3. Leading the follower to do a front sacada through the leader's back cross.

Focus: using these steps on the dance floor
Using Chicho's great cross-system grapevine exercises for moving around the room, we adapted it to the sacadas. This way, each sacada that happens moves the leader from the inside or outside track, to the other track around the room (think concentric circles). All three sacadas can be led with the leader starting with his/her back facing the center of the room, or facing out of the room, but ALWAYS continuing line of dance (LOD).

Weird and original: the variations
Once the basic patterns were working to some degree, we started messing around with my favorite question: what movements flow from this movement? what makes organic sense from this point?

1. (G's idea): adding a linear boleo immediately after the sacada is strange but fun. We worked on the quick timing needed for the leader to ground before the follower's leg goes past vertical, in order for a really nice, snappy linear boleo to happen. 
Note: If you do this variation, the rebound wants to go reverse line of dance (RLOD), which can be dangerous. In order to stay with the feeling of progressing around the room, the rebound needs to be shaped into an overturned back cross and sent LOD.
1a. C. and G. liked the possibility of recurring front sacadas for the lead after this.

2. (C's idea): adding a volcada.  This is much harder than 1., a bit weirder, but fun.  The important factors are: you must use the sacada to get closer together, lift the follower slightly to make them stay on the same foot & not travel, and then guide them in the volcada & reground them.  The only tricky part is convincing the follower to remain on the same foot!

Following tips:
It seems to me that many tango classes ignore the followers and focus on what the leader needs to do, and we didn't talk a lot about following in this session, BUT these crazy moves are a great place to work on your axis and using breath to balance/ground.  Because you don't know what is going to happen next, you must be ready for anything, and that requires pinpoint accuracy in technique.  M. found that, if she breathed and focused on staying on balance, all the moves became easier than when she tried to figure out what was happening ;-) More on following next week.

For those of you who didn't make it to class this week, don't worry: we're on to other, weird stuff!