One of the things that keeps tango so engaging is that you never run out of opportunities to develop the fundamentals. When Gavito was asked what he was working on toward the end of his life, he replied ‘the walk.’

I haven’t spent quite as long on that as he did, but anyone who has ever danced with me will know that it remains my first love, and I’ve put a lot of work into it over the years. The other most fundamental element is of course the pivot, and that’s what I wanted to work on with Emma …

A combination of factors meant I hadn’t been dancing much of late, and it had been months since my last private, so the lesson was part tune-up – intended to identify and resolve any bad habits I’d picked up – and part development. Especially as I’d be dancing in Cheltenham the following day.

My previous private had been with Mabel, where miracles had been achieved in my rhythmic dance. Afterwards I reflected on the spiralling nature of technique lessons, and had this to say about what I suspected would be my 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.

That was indeed the case. My faster dance was working, but I wanted to feel confident that I wasn’t compromising the comfort of my embrace to achieve it. In particular, I wanted to ensure I was allowing sufficient elasticity to provide room for followers to pivot comfortably – while still feeling like we were dancing in sustained close embrace.

Mental models

I’ve said before that sometimes different teachers will say exactly the same thing in different words, and suddenly something will click. I’ve also said that it’s amazing how much difference a mental model – even a metaphor – can make to the quality of a physical movement. Leading a pivot is the perfect example.

I know that the follower’s goal is to remain in front of my chest, so one classic model is to ‘lead from the chest.’ In other words, to focus on my own chest when leading either a step or a pivot. Another is to think about rotating my spine, on the basis that my chest will then naturally end up where it needs to be.

Logically, physically, those have to be the same thing. The only way we can rotate our chest is by rotating our spine. But thinking about my spine rather than my chest makes a notable difference to how a pivot feels to me, and – based on teacher and follower feedback – how it feels to my partner too. My brain doesn’t quite understand how and why, but I’ve reached a truce where it agrees to humour me on this point.

The shoulder blade model

It was the same here with opening space for a follower’s pivot without creating a gap in the embrace. Previously, I’d thought about pulling my shoulder back, and here Emma suggested that I instead think about pulling my shoulder blade in.

Again, logically, physically, those seem to me to be the same thing. When I pay attention to how I move my shoulder back, it’s by pulling my shoulder blade inwards. How could it not be so?

And yet, by focusing my attention on my shoulder-blade specifically, it felt to me like a completely different quality of movement – and Emma could instantly tell the two apart. She could feel more space within the embrace for her pivot, even though I could swear I wasn’t dissociating any more, nor did it feel like I was opening the embrace.

It was the same with the cross. Suddenly a snappy or accelerating ocho-cortado felt like a far more relaxed movement.

Double-time steps

I also wanted to make sure my body hadn’t forgotten Mabel’s guidance on how to lead the acceleration and deceleration for double-time steps, so took my usual approach of telling Emma I was just going to dance a song without saying what I was working on, and then seek feedback. She guessed what it was from the sheer number of double-time steps I was taking, but had no notes on my technique, saying it was both comfortable and clear.

The clockwise giro

I’d arranged with Emma to extend a 60-minute lesson into a 90-minute one if I still had a functioning brain after the first hour, and somehow I did. That brought us to the clockwise giro, which requires a bit of context …

My brain takes the view that it doesn’t fully understand the mechanics of this, and when I thought back to privates I’d had with both Irina and Mabel on this, I was convinced the relevant blog posts would go into great detail on the topic. Instead the sum total of what I found was:

Irina assured me it didn’t need anything like as much work as I thought it did, and proceeded to prove this by having me test it on an unsuspecting follower after I’d incorporated her input.

and

My goal was to work on a particular pivot technique. Mabel instantly diagnosed my issue, and we were only 20 minutes in by the time we both felt like it had been completely resolved!

Not helpful, past self – not helpful.

To be fair, I was able to pull up the video recaps from the lessons to get more, but my experience since then has revealed the movement to be one of those things in tango that so annoy my analytical brain: it works just fine when I don’t think about it, and falls apart when I do.

A more sensible person than I would reach the obvious conclusion, but I am, you know … me. My brain insisted it had to understand, so I dived back into this with Emma.

Surprise, surprise, her technique input was exactly the same as Irina and Mabel, and once more it worked when I Just Did It and not when I tried to understand what was happening in real time. I did a deal with my brain that we’ll do a bunch of them in practice embrace sometime, using video to analyse the mechanics, and in the meantime it will mind its own business. It mostly stuck to the deal over the weekend.

The payoff at Cheltenham

Anyone who’s been at the same festivals as me will know that I have an … enthusiastic approach to them. With one minor exception, I was at every milonga from start to finish, dancing the majority of tango and vals tandas, so had a chance or two to find out what difference it made to my dance.

I’m always slightly nervous when making any significant change to my technique, as there can be a feeling of starting from scratch. For me, it’s especially scary when it could affect either the comfort of my embrace or the smoothness of my dance – two things I value highly and know followers do too.

But it felt like I was able to dance significantly more dynamically in terms of accelerations, decelerations, and switches between single and double time without sacrificing smoothness or closeness of the embrace. I will confess to asking a few follower friends I can trust to be honest for reassurance on these points early in the weekend, and fortunately they shared my impressions.

Having the confidence to mix up the speed way more than I typically do, both in the walk and when pivoting, really felt like a whole new level of freedom in my dance. There were also some reliable external indicators that followers were feeling it too.

As for my next step … without trying to, I ended up doing rather more following than usual at Cheltenham. My approximations of a cross did, I think, get a little less approximate, and I’m now quite tempted to put some work into those. I’m still taking a very leisurely approach to my following journey, but I’m having a lot of fun with it, so perhaps a wafer-thin private as a follower comes next.

Many thanks to all my dance partners – followers and leaders – for an absolutely wonderful weekend, and to Emma for her significant contribution to my developing dance.