We are always urged, in Argentine Tango, to connect to our partner and to connect to the music; to ‘Find the Tango feeling’.

How do we do that?

Firstly, we need to be aware of ourself, aware of our partner, aware of the music, and aware of our surroundings. Being aware of ourself and our partner we recognise that we are human beings, living animals, and we have a lot going on in our bodies all the time. Every person in their body has a rich mixture of many rhythms going on at the same time : Heart/ pulse, Breathing, Muscle movements including pendula of our limbs, and torsion especially of our spine.

• Heartbeat. This can vary from person to person. Depending on their age and or physical fitness levels. It also varies a lot depending on how much activity we are doing. Are we working our muscles at all, or just a little, or occasionally, or partially, or a lot? Are we moving slowly, or walking, or running. Are we free to move easily, or do we have to work hard to move, such as going up-hill, or carrying a heavy load, or moving through thick mud or obstacles.
• Muscle movement. At rest when we are just breathing comfortably, we only need to move our chest muscles to expand and contract our chest, so we can breathe air in and out. But we also have to pump blood around our body, so our heart muscles are working all the time. There are also muscles in our gut, and in our blood vessels. Our diaphragm and chest muscles enable us to breathe; even our eyeballs need to be moved. They may not all do a lot of hard work, but they are usually doing something.
• Major physical movement takes more energy, and is more ‘work’. So, standing up, walking, walking up hill, running, dancing, and doing physical work, all require energy. This is not just the leg or arm muscles doing the work, but also the chest muscles that allow one to breathe, and the heart muscles which pump the oxygenated blood around the body.
• We, human animals, are a complex system of muscles and organs, that are constantly ‘ticking over’. We have many rhythms inherent in our bodies, and they can change depending on how hard we are ‘working’. The main actions within our bodies that have variable rhythms are:
  • Heartbeat pumping blood.
  • Lungs breathing air.
  • Skeletal muscles may be made to work gently or vigorously
• Legs are jointed pendulums. Simply stated, a pendulum has a ‘natural’ speed of swinging, which depends on its length. Our legs, have two main parts; the upper leg or thigh bone, and the lower leg or ‘tibia-fibula’ bones. There is of course the foot with even more bones. A leg can swing as one long pendulum, or as two separate but connected pendula. 
• Arms are similar, but shorter than legs. The upper arm or humerus bone, and the lower arm (forearm) with the ‘radius and ulna’ bones. With of course the wrist, and hand to give even more possibilities of action and movement.

Of course, we have many more articulations and possibilities of movements through our bodies, skeletons and muscles; hips, backbone, jaw etc.

     – But let’s just think of the legs as pendula. The natural speed of swinging  of a simple pendulum depends on its length. So to vary the speed of its swing requires a bit of control or work or effort. However our legs are not simple pendula, but complex in two big bits, plus a foot at the end. 

    – We, as humans, learn from an early age how to walk on two legs, and we generally learn to walk at a similar speed as others. This walking pace is one of the key ‘beats’ of Argentine Tango music. This is why when we start to learn to dance Tango, we spend time ‘walking to the steady beat of a Golden Age tango’.

So, hopefully, if we can become aware of our own bodies, our own complexities of our movements, our actions and reactions, we can start to appreciate the actions occuring in our partners. This does not need to be extraordinarily complicated, but we should soon learn to know not only where our own weight and axis is, but where our partner is. Is our partner’s weight on their right or left foot ? We soon learn to do this, to be able to ‘Walk together, either in Parallel or Cross system’.

We must be capable of ‘Listening to the music’. 

Can we appreciate the nature of Tango music. It is not a driving rhythm of a ‘Waltz’ or a ‘Cha-cha-cha’. But there is still a logic to it; a special type of structure and rhythm that makes it ‘Tango’. If we are able to ‘feel’ the Tango music, and if we have a good understanding of where our own body and our own potential rhythms can fit into that; and we appreciate our partner and can feel that we can bring our partner with us to ‘travel’ together on this musical adventure, then we are in a good place to “dance tango together in the space available”.

Culture

To truly feel the tango you need to understand and know about its cultural heritage as well. To know tango was first danced on the street on the packed dirt not in dance venues with smooth floors. Or later in the bordellos. Therefore tango has rough edges and is an improvised dance of the people, like you and me; everyday people.

Feeling

To tango is to feel. First of all dance is an expressive art form. To just dance steps and technique is not art, it is exercise just like aerobics. To allow your spirit your whole being to be expressed to allow your feelings to be shown, to dance with one’s soul is to really dance as an art form. You dance to express yourself. Not to dance the step technically perfect. In tango you dance to connect with your partner and yourself and have a true honest and authentic conversation with your dance partner in that moment of time similar to meditation and mindfulness. It is to savour the music, your connection with your partner. It is to savour this opportunity to dance, play and be creative and to express yourselves as a couple. Every dance even with the same partner to the same music should be a different dance, a different experience with a different conversation.

To paraphrase Michael Lavocah: To dance tango is to let the music in through your ears, from your ears to your heart and your heart translates it into movement into your feet, where the ‘music’ comes out.

“Listen with your bodies, listen with your feet, listen with your heart. Listen with every cell of your body. Listen with your spirit.” ~Tango Stories: Musical Secrets ~ book written by Micheal Lavocah