True learning
Information has only value
when it leads to a practical and functional outcome. Than your have true learning. All else is rowing your little boat on an endless ocean of information without any direction.
Very often we find ourselves in an endless ocean of information of different Tango schools with different methodologies, visions and tons of topics of all kinds. That brings a lot of confusion, doubt and uncertainty among students who spend an awful lot of time and effort figuring out how all of this elements are mutually related to each other. It makes the learning process very dysfunctional and we loose a lot of time and potentials knowing that it is possible to learn in a very transparent and structured way where information leads to a practical and functional outcome in your development as a dancer.
Memory vs creating
One thing is for sure! The figure or sequence you saw in your Tango class will be forgotten the moment you step out of the Tango class.
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There is no learning in that!
For those who have been in Tango long enough, will certainly recognize this pattern. You attend a Tango class and as soon as you leave the Tango school, you forgot the figure or sequence you worked on an hour ago.
That is because the majority of the Tango schools maintain a teaching on the level of the figures and sequences and not on the development of a dancer. We are desperately trying to incorporate figure after figure and are not realizing that the very tools to elaborate figures and sequences remain in the two above lying levels, the development of the body with its mechanisms of communication and dissociation and the level of the mind with the awareness. Once you put the focus on these levels, you give students the tools to communicate, dissociate and create figures. Tools are the necessary components leading immediately to insights on "how" it works. That is bring added value, not memory loss.
Individuality
"There is a significant difference
between losing yourself together
and finding each other apart".
One of the most desirable and satisfying sensations in Argentine Tango is "connection". Getting into the bubble of togetherness and sharing with our partner. But connection is not the sole element in the equation. Just as everything in life is bound by the universal law of polarity, Tango is no exception.
Where there's "connection", there's "disconnection", where there's "togetherness", there's "individuality", where there's "joining", there's "liberation". The one cannot exist without the other. On the other hand we are not only looking for connection, we are also looking for dancing. If we want to do so, we need some common ground or harmony in order to bring it to a good end.
To often we notice the focus on "connection", the close embrace, the very place where every aspect of man and woman are joined together, without really knowing what belongs to whom. It creates a lot of ignorance, tremendous mutual confusions and millions of unanswered questions.
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While if we are looking at highly advanced dancers, we see two Individuals developed according all the requirements of togetherness AND individuality, of connection and liberty, and sharing exactly what is needed for the functionality of the dance,.......but than without loosing themselves in it.
Polarity
" Men experience harmony
through liberty of movement while
women experience harmony through union".
A world of contradictions!
There is not only the polarity between two individuals facing each other on this path of harmony. There is also the polarity within each individual. Every man and every women is characterized by very masculine and feminine energy. While the masculine is mainly characterized by rational energy (dominance, giving impulse, leading, deciding, marking, determining, mechanisms, liberty,....) the feminine will be more characterized by the sensitive energy (feeling, sensing, emotion, intuition, surrendering, letting happen,.....).
None of the partners will find satisfaction in an unilateral development. Both of them are thriving for harmony. And harmony starts with oneself. It is not only technique and figures that will bring it to a woman, just as not only feel and emotion will bring it to the man. Both need to learn and integrate both energies in order to attain individual harmony which ultimately will result in common harmony.
Energy
" Every step is
like a heartbeat"
When we observe a heartbeat on a monitor, we clearly distinguish the contraction and de-contraction phase of the heart. Impulse and release of impulse. Contraction energy propels the heart-rate line on the monitor upwards and drops in the de-contraction phase by the release of energy.
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Equally in Tango we need energy for muscle contraction to propel us into the movement. Once our foot touches the floor, we no longer need this energy, so we have have to release it. Keeping it up means holding on to the contraction, muscle tension, rigidness and instability. While releasing results in an instant deepening of the contact with the floor due to the energetical termination of the movement. It leads right into the creation of "el punto cero" or neutral point and an immense growth of stability.