Hi everyone, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Today’s Tip addresses something that can ruin a dance even before it starts. It can happen to you whether you’re a leader or a follower. It can take place in a lesson, a practica, a milonga … anywhere at all. When you’ve got it, it’s hard to get rid of. And it makes dancing almost impossible.

It’s called T-E-N-S-I-O-N!

People who are new to dancing –even experienced dancers, who are in the process of learning new things – tend to get tense. Backs stiffen. Shoulders rise. Arms become granite-like. Little beads of sweat form all over the body. It happens to all of us at one time or another. Usually, it’s a defense mechanism we incorporate in order to avoid making a mistake. We think that if we tense up, it’s less likely that we’ll goof during a new dance figure, or when dancing with an unfamiliar partner.

The problem is that tension actually causes the opposite to take place. When we’re tense, it’s far more likely that we’ll make a mistake, because our whole body has become brittle and unyielding. We’ve actually given up our ability to be flexible enough to handle the little compromises, which invariably become necessary to interact with another person during a dance.

When we’re tense, we can’t feel what going on with our dance partner. If we’re leading, we can’t notice whether she’s responding in the way we want, whether she’s balanced between steps, whether she’s ready for her next lead. If we’re following, we can’t feel the leads, because we’re too wrapped up in trying to hold ourselves together – always expecting the worst. When a lead does come, we’re unprepared for it, and lurch into the invited movements, probably losing our balance in the process.

Dancing is supposed to be fun. Making “mistakes” when dancing is not something that we should dread. Let’s talk about how to lessen or even eliminate tension. Start with the attitude that it’s okay to make mistakes. That’s just part of the learning process. Check yourself out, when taking a lesson, when dance with a new partner, even when practicing by yourself. “Am I relaxed? Am I ready to accept the fact that I might goof here and there, and it will be okay?” Thoughts like this can help you take it easy on yourself and actually make the whole process of learning and dancing much more enjoyable.

If you continue to feel tense, talk to Pat or me about it. Maybe we can help get you to a place where you’ll start having fun dancing, and leave tension behind.

Hi everyone, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Our subject during the past couple of weeks has been giro or molinete. This is one of the most difficult sequences in Tango for women to execute, because it calls for a combination of excellent balance, just the right amount of energy, superb timing, and a strict adherence to form. Because of these unusual demands, when a leader insists that his follower move too quickly, it becomes virtually impossible for her to effectively execute the necessary movements involved in the sequence. For this reason, today’s Tango Tip is: SLOW DOWN!!!!!

Every movement we make in Tango – whether it’s molinete, ocho, or simple linear steps (forward, backward, or to the side) – has a beginning, a middle, and an end. One of the biggest problems leaders have is that they try to induce followers to complete movements as rapidly as possible as they themselves are rushing around the dance floor. This doesn’t allow either person to experience the totality of each movement. In Argentina, among fine dancers, each individual step within the dance is showcased as if it’s the most important thing in the world. One doesn’t see good dancers hurling themselves and their followers around the floor, trying to get everything done at lightning speed.

So what can you as a leader do to slow things down? An excellent practice mechanism you can adopt is to try dancing in slow motion.

See if you can take a simple series of steps with your follower as if you’re imitating a movie playing back in slo-mo. Move as slowly as you possibly can. At first, it will feel strange, but over time, you’ll get used to it. Once you can do this effectively with forward, backward and side movements, try it with forward and backward ochos. When you can get that to work without you or your partner losing balance, try it with molinete. To produce the giro, turn you body as slowly as possible, allowing your follower to move as slowly as she can through the turn. Finally, try doing an entire dance, using this idea.

Initially, you and your follower will find this to be very difficult. You’ll find that balance is quite challenging, and that creating impetus when you’re not speeding through your sequences is a whole different ballgame. But you’ll also begin to experience the subtleties of the dance maybe for the first time. You’ll begin to realize how beautiful and satisfying simple movements can be between two people. And your dancing will improve immeasurably over a short time.

ALL you have to do is SLOW DOWN.

Try this, and see for yourself. See you next week.

Hello everyone, Pat here! Last week, Fran began a series of Tango Tips on one of the fundamental movements in Argentine Tango—molinete. More than almost anything else in this dance molinete serves as the underpinning of so much that separates Argentine Tango from all other types of dance.

Molinete requires specific techniques that the follower must learn and practice relentlessly -- forever! I’m not exaggerating. To be done well, molinete involves body alignment, size of steps, pivoting technique, and balance!

Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. This is the second in a series of Tango Tips on what is called giro or molinete. (You can read last week’s introduction in our archives at Firehousetango.com.)

Today I want to address the leader’s role in producing this complex figure. As I said last week, in order to initiate the molinete, the leader invites the first ocho, then continues the lead simply by turning his body in the direction he wants the action to progress.

Molinete always starts with an ocho. It can be a forward ocho (ocho adelante) or a backward ocho (ocho atras), and it can move to the leader’s left or right. Once the follower has been led to begin molinete with either of these movements, she will continue according to a learned formula (which we’ll discuss next week). Right now, our focus is on how the leader produces the first ocho, and how he indicates that he wants the molinete to continue.

To initiate an ocho by the follower the leader has to invite her to pivot or rotate on her standing leg in one or the other direction, depending upon which of the two possible ochos he wants to produce.

For example: If his follower is standing on her right leg, (located opposite his left leg) and the leader wants to invite a forward ocho (which will move around to his left), he has to ask her to begin the ocho by pivoting clockwise. If he wants a backward ocho, he has to invite her to begin by pivoting counter-clockwise.

The leader invites one of these pivoting actions by rotating his own torso in the same direction that he wants his follower to go. (No, he doesn’t push or pull her with his arms!) The rotation is very slight. But with a skilled follower it is direct enough that this small rotation invites her to produce a significant pivot – large enough that her lower body is aligned to move around the leader, while her upper body continues to face him.

Once the leader has produced the pivot in this follower, he now begins to turn his body in the direction in which he wants her to travel while executing her molinete. Using whatever footwork he has selected, the leader maintains a relationship with his follower of facing approximately forty-five degrees to her left or right during his turn. His gives the follower a target center with which she tries to align herself. As long as the leader continues to turn, she continues to move around him – using the formula for molinete. When he stops turning (and she therefore catches up with his center), she finishes the step she is currently taking, and stops as well.

This all sounds quite a bit more complicated than it actually is in practice. Once you get the hang of it (after lots of practice, of course!) you’ll find that it’s really quite simple.

Next week, we’ll start to focus on the follower’s part. In the meantime, If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to ask Pat or me. We’ll be more than happy to help out.

Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Starting today, Pat and I are going to offer what I hope will be a comprehensive series of Tips on what is known as giro or molinete. This week, I’ll discuss some of the general characteristics of this complex series of movements, and then we’ll expand from there in future Tango Tips.

Let me describe in a fundamental way what happens in a giro:

Basically, a follower moves around a leader who is turning in place on the dance floor. The follower makes a small circle around him, using a formulaic – i.e., learned or memorized -- series of movements. This formula is sometimes called a “grapevine” in American social dancing. A simple way to define it would be to say that she executes a forward ocho, then steps to the side, executes a back ocho, and finally steps again to the side. (She might also be led to start this series of movements with a back step in which case the formula would be back, side, forward, side.)

In order to invite these movements, the leader invites the first ocho, then continues the lead by simply by turning his body in the direction he wants the action to progress.

Attempting to keep herself in front of the leader, the follower moves around him, stepping on what becomes the circumference of a circle. When the leader stops turning, the follower finishes whatever movement she is executing at that moment, and brings herself to a stop, having finally arrived in front of the leader.

This is essential what happens in the giro. The two questions that arise here are:

1. Exactly how does the leader invite this complex series of actions?
2. Exactly what does the follower do in taking up the invitation?

Answering these questions will be the focus of our next several Tango Tips. Many of you are already dancing molinetes, Our hope is that these Tips will give you some insight on how to make them better.

Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Let’s talk about one of my favorite topics – inertia. I’ll start by paraphrasing the law of inertia: A body in motion tends to remain in motion; a body at rest tends to remain at rest.

 Remember having to memorize this, when you took high school Physics? Little did you know then that one of the most important differences between American/European social dancing and Argentine Tango actually centers around this idea.

 First, let’s talk about our own Ballroom Dancing. If we’re dancing Foxtrot, for example, once we start we don’t stop moving until the dance is over. The same thing occurs with Waltz, Quickstep, Peabody, Viennese Waltz, or American Tango. All these dances have what we might call a sense of flow. We glide along, moving gracefully (we hope) from one step to the next. When we move, we tend to continue moving. When we aren’t moving, it means that the dance is over.

Argentine tango, however, is completely different. In Tango, every individual step has a definite beginning, middle and end. Of particular importance is the end of every step. What do we do? We come to a stop. That’s right – we come to a stop. Can we continue moving? Of course we can, but first we have to acknowledge the end of each individual movement by stopping -- even if it is very briefly – before continuing into the next movement. This way of moving is quite different from the flow of American/European social dancing. It is staccato rather than legato. It has a definite sense of pulse.

Some (non-Argentine) people think of the movements in Tango as “jerky” or ungraceful. Stage performers often complicate matters (since they are the people with the highest profiles in the Tango community) by portraying Tango on stage as ballet-like, smooth, and continuously moving. Trained American dancers try to anglicize Tango by giving it the same kind of flowing grace they’re used to in our social dances.

But if we watch social dancers in the milongas of Buenos Aires, we see that Tango is quite different from the way it is all too often performed on stage, or the way Americans dance it. In Tango we attempt to overcome the law of inertia with every step we take. We start, we move, we stop. Start, move, stop. Having stopped, we may choose to remain at rest for as long as we like. Then we start again.

Try to incorporate this principle of inertia in your dance. Make it different from Foxtrot or American Slow Waltz. If you need clarification or assistance with this idea, ask Pat or me. We’ll be happy to help.

 Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Last week, I defined what I consider to be the “basics” of dancing Argentine Tango:

• The Tango “walk”
• Leading and following
• Rhythmic movement
• Floor craft

(If you’d like to review the details about what I said last week, you can read last week’s Tango Tip in our Firehouse archives on our Web site, Firehousetango.com.)

The leader brings these four elements to bear in improvising his dance. The follower receives information step by step and executes movements individually, always waiting for the next lead before taking any action.

Putting all of this together takes months, sometimes years, to accomplish. Unfortunately, we live in a time when most of us want it now. We’re in a hurry. Why should we have to go through all that basic stuff? At the end of last week’s discussion I posed the following question:

Do you know of anything that will simplify the process of getting past the basics without putting in the hours, taking group and (especially) private lessons, practicing, and spending as much time as possible on the dance floor? Can you think of any way to “get good” faster?

Have you thought about it? Let me give you the short answer – you can’t “get good” faster.

There just aren’t any shortcuts. Sorry, but it’s true. However, most of us (me included, when I first started to learn Tango) think that there are.

The biggest shortcut (we think) is to learn figures.

We really believe in our hearts that if our teacher would only show us four or five (or twenty or a hundred) fancy steps, we’d have it made. We’d be able to look like we know what we’re doing. We’d be able to cut through all the red tape. Right?

Instant gratification!

To borrow a phrase that has achieved some notoriety lately, this is like putting lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. And we still can’t dance. There’s nothing more painful to me as a dance teacher than to see students staggering through figures they’ve just learned from some high-priced stage performer, thinking they’ve got the real deal now, believing that they’re cruising in the fast lane to success.

Ladies and gentlemen, it just doesn’t work that way. If you want the pot of gold, you have no choice but to travel the road to get there. In the case of Tango, that road consists of private and group lessons, dancing a lot, and practice, practice, practice.

Do you still want to learn Tango? Okay … as the Nike commercial says, put on your dance shoes, take a deep breath and just do it.

Hi everyone, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Let’s talk about my favorite topic – basics! Learning any skill involves a progressive, building-blocks process. Fundamentally, you start with simple things, and move ahead from there. Sounds logical, right?

I just wish it were as easy as that.

For those of us who study Tango, most of us have come to understand that so-called “simple things” aren’t really so simple after all. Learning to walk by ourselves -- to execute forward, backward, and side movements, weight changes in place, and pauses – is quite difficult for someone who hasn’t had years of dance training.

What do you mean? It’s just walking, isn’t it?

If you’ve tried it, you know there’s no such thing as “just walking.”

When we add a partner into the mix, and introduce the idea of lead and follow, things really start to get tricky. The leader has to gently but confidently invite a single movement, accompany the follower as she executes this movement, make sure she’s ready for the next movement, lead the next movement … and make it all look effortless.

The follower has to patiently wait until she receives the invitation, read it correctly, make the invited movement, then wait for the next invitation -- never anticipating what it’s going to be by moving earlier than she’s asked to do. Help!

Now we add the idea of moving rhythmically. The leader has to hear the music, figure out where the beats are, decide whether to move in single time, half time, double, time – or pause for a few beat before continuing. And to make all this seem “musical.” What the heck does that mean?

As if all that isn’t enough, the leader has to watch out that he doesn’t bump himself or his partner into anybody else on the dance floor, while he’s trying to figure out all this other stuff.

And guess what: Everything I’ve just said falls into the category of SQUARE ONE. We have to know these things from the moment we walk out onto the floor to dance. And there just aren’t any shortcuts that will help us out. Or are there?

Do you know of anything that will simplify the process of getting past the basics without putting in the hours, taking group and (especially) private lessons, practicing, and spending as much time as possible on the dance floor? Can you think of any way to “get good” faster?

Think about all this. Let me have your comments. You can reach me at franchesleigh@mac.com. I’ll have more to say about his next week. See you on the dance floor.

In our last Tango Tip for followers, I discussed the proper technique in executing the leader’s indication for the first ocho walking step, at the end of which the follower should make a small pivot on her own to realign herself with her leader. She should end up facing his body, but she will not be fully in front of him.

Followers, one of the most important things for you to do when following in ocho is to “listen” very carefully to your partner’s lead. If he’s doing his job correctly, the leads will be subtle and you must be paying attention and be ready not just to follow the lead but to do your part in dancing an ocho.

Therefore, when you reach the point of making that small pivot to realign with your partner, you must be sensitive to what your leader wants next. Has he stopped leading you? Or is he indicating with his upper body that you should continue with your pivot and take the second walking step?

To complete the ocho from where we are now, the leader should move his shoulders in the direction he would like you to walk, and you should take that step. Your foot should curve around your leader so that it lands directly in front of him. As you bring your weight onto that foot, it is your responsibility to pivot to face your partner. If your foot has been placed correctly, the pivot should bring you into perfect alignment in front of your leader.

Followers, the final half-pivot is essential. Do not just stop after you’ve taken the second step—you will not be facing your partner and he will be unable to lead you to do anything else. He may even feel the urge to do the unmentionable…pull you around to face him in heaven knows what rough manner. We don’t want this to happen, so just remember when you finished the second walking step in an ocho, just do that little half-pivot to face your partner, and you’ll both be ready for anything!

Hi everyone, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Last week, Pat discussed the technique used by the follower in the walking phase of a forward or backward ocho. Today, I want to talk about what the leader does next in order to invite the follower to continue into the second half of this ocho.

Let’s assume that the follower is doing her job, and in reaching the end of her walk she is now in the process of automatically pivoting her lower half in order to align herself with you. If you want her to continue with the second half of her ocho, the lead for her to continue occurs during this automatic realignment. All you have to do is turn your upper body slightly in the direction you want her to rotate. She will feel this through the connection and know that she needs to continue her rotation in order to align herself for the walking phase of the second half of the ocho. Under no circumstances should you try to turn the follower by pushing or pulling with your arms. You arms are neutral. It is your upper body that creates the lead. The movement you make is simple – just a slight body rotation. The timing of this rotation, however, is crucial. If you turn too soon, you’ll pull the follower off balance.

Wait until she is realigning her lower half in order to face you ... then turn slightly, and watch in deep admiration as she rotates herself.

As the follower is coming to the end of her rotation, turn your body slightly in the direction you want her to walk. Remember that with a back ocho your lead for the pivot and your lead for walk move in the same direction. However, in the forward ocho, your lead for rotation and for the subsequent walk move in opposite directions.

At the end of this “second half” the complete ocho is at an end. If you want her to execute another ocho, use the technique of offering a slight body rotation lead again at precisely the right moment as described here and in previous Tango Tips. If you want her stop, all you have to do is stop leading. The skilled follower will align herself to you, and wait for the next lead.

Hello everyone, Pat here. Fran and I are currently discussing in detail the leading and following of ocho.  This week I will discuss how the follower responds, when her leader asks for a forward or backward step, following the pivot (which we talked about two weeks ago.)

Followers, having executed the pivot, you wait with your head and upper body facing your partner and your lower body facing your leader’s chosen direction. (In other words you’re in a twisted position.) Your feet are together and you are ready for the lead to walk.

If your leader invites this movement correctly, as you are finishing your pivot you will feel his upper body turning slightly in the direction he wishes you to go. Having felt that lead, it is your responsibility to take the step, bringing your weight fully onto the stepping foot, and then your feet together. Followers, as you take the walking step your head should still be facing your partner’s upper body -- and therefore you will continue to be in the strong twist at the waist that we discussed during the pivot. (Now, you have been practicing this—and taken off some days from work to do so, haven’t you?)

As your feet come together from the walk, you will make a half pivot with the lower half of your body, thus un-twisting and re-aligning yourself, facing your leader and ready for the next lead. This half pivot is not led, and is therefore your responsibility to execute.

Followers, as you are waiting for the lead to walk, if you do not feel any lead, don’t go anywhere. The walking step is not automatic after a pivot! Too many followers will just take that step without being led. The result is that you anticipate the lead, and he may a lazy leader. Why should he bother, if you’re just going to do it? Please, followers, wait for the lead!

And so, having received the lead to walk, in addition to your response described above, there is an important piece of technique that the follower should observe. In order to keep equidistant from your partner and to stay on an invisible circle when doing ochos, the follower must curve her step around her leader. This will preserve your dance connection and prevent the creation of large gaps that can pull either one or both partners off balance.

Next week Fran will discuss what the leader does to complete the ocho.

Hi everyone, Fran here with your Tango tip of the Week. We’re in the middle of a somewhat in-depth discussion about leading and following ocho. If you’ve just joined us, you can catch up on what we’ve said so far by logging on to the Firehouse Tango Web site, going to the Tango Tips, and bringing yourself up to date.

Last week, Pat wrote in some detail about following the first part of a lead for ocho – the pivot. An important thing for followers to remember, when rotating, is that they must not immediately execute the walk until it is led – as a separate part of the ocho. Many followers automatically take their step at the end of the rotation, without waiting for the lead to walk.

This week, I want to talk about how the leader invites this walk. As the follower is finishing her rotation, he simply turns his upper body in the direction he wants her to go. Responding to this, she will continue from the rotation or pivot into the walking action. (If he doesn’t give her this lead, she will simply stop, turn to face him, and wait for his next invitation. More about this next week.) The actual amount of body rotation the leader needs is somewhere around an inch to an inch and one half.

No more than that!

By giving the follower this small amount of body rotation, the leader is inviting the beginning of her walk. It’s up to her to respond by executing the entire walking action. Leaders often feel that they have to literally carry their partners through the walk – as if their followers will never be able to get to the end of the walk on their own. This is bad dance practice. Tango is a collaboration between leader and follower. The leader provides the invitation to move; the follower responds and executes the move.

Try this lead the next time you want to invite a forward or backward ocho. We’ll talk  about how the follower responds to this invitation to walk next week.