I’ve frequently observed that the never-ending process of learning to dance tango can often appear circular in nature, though the reality is a (mostly!) upward spiral. That is, we constantly revisit the same principles over and over again, with a deeper appreciation each time.

But there’s another issue at play when you’re an analytical person who insists on understanding exactly what’s going on: sometimes that can actually hold me back rather than propel me forward …

Let me give a couple of examples on the perils of an analytical mind in tango: the cross, and fast double-time stuff.

The cross

One time in BsAs I had lunch with a teacher friend and he related a story he’d heard that rang completely true to both of us.

At one point, we were talking about the cross. I was expressing my view that actually leading one requires rather advanced technique, and that the way the classic cross steps are taught to beginners by rote is counter-productive: leaders and followers alike learn a fixed pattern, and neither one knows whether they can actually lead or follow it.

Luis said he’d heard the same story from two of those involved, so he was confident it was true. A group of five of the world’s most famous teachers decided, a long time ago, to create a more systematic approach to teaching tango, and they got together for a weekend to develop a pedagogy for the basic movements.

They started working through the basic-8, and got as far as the cross. All five of them had a different understanding of what lead was required. Not in the details, but on the fundamental question of: What exactly is it that leads a follower to cross?

They literally couldn’t find enough common ground to proceed, and that was the end of the weekend!

Five famous maestros couldn’t agree on cross technique, and yet I’ve somehow felt I needed to fully understand the mechanics. It’s a topic I’ve revisited numerous times in privates with different teachers over the years, each with their own take on it.

My usual approach to technique issues is to try to break down a movement into the smallest possible components, so I became rather obsessed with leading a one-step cross. I applied each of the various teacher’s models to it.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But there’s of course a rather significant complication here: the fact that so many followers, like leaders, have learned the classic cross pattern by rote. If my one-step cross didn’t result in a cross, that might be due to my lead or the fact that it was an unfamiliar concept to the follower.

Double-time

It’s been a similar story with double-time. Rather early on, when it all seemed rather scary, Diego Bado said there were two keys to it. First, halve the size of my steps. Second, trust my followers.

He was absolutely right. If I focused only on those two things, then my body could successfully lead double-time steps. But … my head kept getting involved. It wanted to understand how followers could possibly be picking up on such subtle signals so quickly. Over the years since then, I’ve revisited the topic in privates with a number of different teachers.

There’s been some consistency between them: the idea of an upward sensation to signal an acceleration and a downward sensation to signal a deceleration. But when it comes to just how and where in the body that sensation is created … my head kept demanding answers, and different teachers had different models for that.

Taking baby steps in learning to follow has … helped and not helped! That is, there are dual-role dancers out there who can lead me in double-time, but while my body figured it out, my head still couldn’t grasp quite what was driving the switch, even when I was the one being driven.

Sometimes I’ve experienced an ‘aha’ moment that has left my head feeling more comfortable. But other times I’ve ended up feeling ‘woah, now I feel I don’t understand it at all!’ (Yeah, don’t be an analytical person. It can be a lot of fun, but not always in tango …)

An miraculous private with Mabel Rivero

I’ve said before that a Feast booking involves a rapid sequence: await confirmation, book train, book private with Mabel. That was again the case in March. I generally have no idea at the time of booking what I’ll want to work on, and have different approaches depending on where I’m at.

Sometimes I’ll be working on a very specific type of movement, and seeking to better understand and refine that movement. Other times I’ll say “Let’s just dance a couple of songs then you tell me what I should work on.” And then there are times like this …

In principle, this was going to be another spin around the spiral, but particularly challenging one! My brief to Mabel was that I wanted to work on switching between single- and double-time in fast, rhythmic songs – including vals and milonga – and of course one of the go-to movement options for switching time systems in fast, rhythmic dancing is the cross. So deepening my understanding of those two elements while working at speed had considerable potential for sending my brain into meltdown.

Yet, somehow, it didn’t. Something clicked. Something was different this time. The five famous maestros couldn’t agree on the lead for the cross, but Mabel and I could, and it made sense in a whole new way. It was as if I had x-ray vision now and could see both my own spine and muscles and those of Mabel. It helps that she knows which muscles, and can have me feel the movement in her muscles and in my own.

It was the same with double-time – I wanted to really explore this ‘up for deceleration, down for deceleration’ idea again, and try to get equally specific about that.

Mabel has previously used the metaphor of the upper body being a bandoneon, and that the up/down movement doesn’t come from the knees but from the core, opening and closing the rib-cage. It had made sense on one level before, but now it again felt like I understood which muscles were involved and how they were activated.

Integrating mind and body

There’s another element at play here. In privates, I get super-analytical. In milongas, I try to tell my head to shut up and let my body dance.

I never dance sequences (beyond an ocho-cortado, anyway, and even then the variations mean I don’t actually think of it as a sequence), and I never plan ahead. I dance this step, this pivot. For me, true moment-by-moment improvisation to the music and with my partner is part of the essence of tango.

So my test of a private is two-fold. First, we dance a song or two at the end of the lesson, and I see how well my body can make use of the new things my mind just learned when dancing with the teacher. Second, I observe what happens when I return to the milonga after the lesson. Do I return to doing exactly what I was doing before, or do I incorporate new forms of movement, new textures, into my dance? And does it feel as natural with other followers as it did with the teacher?

Sometimes the change can be rather subtle, but not this time. It genuinely felt to me that my body had a whole new level of ease with movements that had previously included some sense of tension. I noticed that I was frequently switching between single- and double-time, and leading fast crosses without even being aware I was about to do so.

And that one-step cross? I was now leading it in a way that worked every time. I realised that the way I was leading it now, follower familiarity was irrelevant: crossing was the only possible resolution.

There was also an indirect but telling clue: I was leaping out of my seat for Biagi every bit as quickly as for Di Sarli and Pugliese. Granted I’d been listening to rather a lot of the chap of late, with solo dancing in the living room, but it wasn’t just greater familiarity – it was that I was enjoying dancing to staccato music as much as to legato.

It’s taken me almost two months to write this post, and that’s been a mix of figuring out just how Mabel pulled off that miracle – and getting enough dance miles under my feet since then to feel confident that the change is permanent. Tango Wagner House and the Sheffield Tango Festival provided that confirmation. I genuinely feel like a whole new dancer now.

‘Look to the outside’

One time when I was in need of some tango therapy, a teacher told me that I should look outside my head at the external evidence.

Are my cabeceos readily accepted? Can I feel my follower smiling? Am I in sync with the ronda? Do I get a hug at the end of the tanda? Do her friends want to dance with me afterwards? Forget my internal dialogue and doubt: look out, not in.

It’s a principle that has remained with me ever since – and the evidence here was undeniable. I know being deliberately vague is annoying, but I’m a Brit, so genetically incapable of anything that might be perceived to be self-aggrandising; I shall simply say that it became very clear to me that I’m far from alone in feeling like my dance has been transformed.

Of course, this is tango: there’s always a next step. I’ve worked a great deal on developing a snuggly embrace, and that has worked very well for smooth dancing to lyrical music. Dancing staccato music at faster speeds and with more dynamic changes will, I think, require me to take another spin or two around the embrace spiral. There are also some other technique elements that require adaption in this new world. But I’m a learning junkie, so that’s all to the good.

I also need to revisit my tango schedule, and perhaps lean rather more toward encuentros – but that’s a topic for another post …