walk this way

Some of us really don’t care what we look like when we dance. It doesn’t really bother at all. And still for others, they care, but its not a primary focus. Still for a great many, unless you point it out to them, its just not on their radar screens. I had a student a while back that came to me because he liked the way I looked when I was dancing and wanted to look like me. While that was flattering to me on some level, I actually didn’t like the way I was looking at the time.

In my travels, and watching a lot of dancers, have noticed that there is a sharpness to certain dancers, a clarity in how they move, an economical behavior to their structure in body placement, in choices, in frequency. I would offer that this is ‘cleanliness’. Its not just a matter of keeping ones feet or knees together. Nope. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the rest of it, which is as I stated above, which boils down to ‘economy of movement’.

Let’s take a slice of this economy of movement thing apart. What I see is this: 1.) Tension is your enemy, because it doesn’t allow for a converstaion to occur. You’re too focused on the tension to allow a dialogue to happen, and you miss a whole lot of the conversation and the subtle undertones of what’s being said and why. I liken that to coming into conversation that’s already happening between your friends over dinner, with an anger and attitude of a bad day at the office. You’re vision of the conversation is clouded with the anger of the day you’ve just had. Tension in tango is just like that. Usually I’ve attributed tension to being fear based. However there’s another kind of tension, that is fully intentional and rather helpful. So in this case of Cleanliness, tension refers to the fear reaction that we have when we do something wrong, or miss something in the dance. Its a natural human instinct that has to be worked on constantly. 2.) Effortlessness. The old adage applies, “If you have to ask how much it is, you probably can’t afford it!”. The same thing is true in tango. If you have to apply force, then you’re doing something wrong. 3.) Ease. Think about walking to the bank, or to the store. You don’t think about this process of walking to the store. You just do it. You don’t examine it, you don’t consider it, you don’t even rationalize why you do it, you just know that its happening and that you’re getting from point A to point B. How you get from point a to point b is seemingly a lack of mental energy, and maybe not physical motion but definitely a lack in your mental perception of it. 4.) Smallness. Tiny. With all things the devil is in the details and usually those details, especially in tango, is in the small unseen things. Unseen yes, but definitely FELT. 5.) Lastly, Simplicity. The simple things are always the hardest. They require that you ‘grok’ in the fullness of time the studied item. For example. How perfect is a circle ? Even in the many variations of it, a stone circle? a hand drawn circle ? a bitmapped macdraw/macpaint circle ? a circle computed by bits and bytes ? A laser printed circle ? Pi computed out to 6 million digits ? The same is true in tango. Walking.

I think to redefine cleanliness we have to re-think what that actually is, and for me, I believe that’s an economy of movement. That’s the beginning of being ‘clean’. That ‘clean’ perception is just the beginning of clarity. The more clean you are, the more clear you become.

I once had a dance with my first tango teacher, after I’d been away from him for about a year, and he was leading me in milonga. I have never since had a milonga so quite clearly directed or danced in my life. I knew exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it. It was probably the single most satisfying dance I had had to that point in time. I remember it so vividly as to when I’m teaching milonga that is what I have in mind. Trying to convey to my students that sense of order, cleanliness, but more over…CLARITY of what was being asked of me. He wasn’t pushy, pokey, proding me. He just directed me WITHOUT force. Think back to when you were a child and your parents were taking you by the hand, and walking with you. You always felt that when you strayed from the intended path, they continuously guided you back to where you should be. Same thing. Only without the arm pulling, screaming, and crying associated with those experiences.

Clarity of purpose he used to say to me. “Miles, see her feet in your mind. I know where your feet are at all times. And because of that, I know where your body is going to be and how to move you so that you end up in the right place, at the right time.” Wiser words were never spoken, well in tango that is.

I think from my perspective these many years later, that his economy of movement created a clarity in his lead that was ‘effortless’.