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A couple of nights ago, I was about to leave the milonga early: shoes changed, bag packed and winter coat put on. One of my favorite dancers showed up, fashionably late. I greeted her and half jokingly complained about her late appearance. Swiftly she put on her shoes, and I mine, again. We went on the floor and danced a tanda of Troilo con Fiorentino. It was nice.

Just as I thanked her and was ready to call it a night, the next tanda came up: Pugliese con Chanel. I love this! I exclaimed. We could dance if you like. She was generous.  We stepped on the floor again.

We just slowly walked to the music, very simple. It was such a rare experience,  being able to stretch a simple step over the whole phrase in a flowing fashion. On the surface, I felt so calm; underneath I felt the energy surging and receding. At the end of tanda, I’d experienced the joy yet felt so peacefully, like coming out from a meditation…

I hadn’t been able to put this experience into words. I wasn’t sure how to make of this. This approach to tango, the lack of intention of movement, the profound satisfaction of submerging in the energy of the music, of my capable partner and mine… I don’t want to call it a spiritual experience. It sounds corny, especially to someone who hasn’t had similar experience. And I don’t consider myself a spiritual man, although I’d been practiced martial arts for many years, and yoga for a couple.

But I’ve been really feeling this approach to tango.

Coincidentally, my tango brethren posted a video of OSHO: Meditation Is a Very Simple Phenomenon. Looked into his website, I found that the Nataraj way has perfectly described my discovery.

Disappearing in the dance, then relaxing into silence and stillness, is the route inside for this method.

“Forget the dancer, the center of the ego; become the dance. That is the meditation. Dance so deeply that you forget completely that ‘you’ are dancing and begin to feel that you are the dance. The division must disappear; then it becomes a meditation.

If the division is there, then it is an exercise: good, healthy, but it cannot be said to be spiritual. It is just a simple dance. Dance is good in itself – as far as it goes it is good. After it, you will feel fresh, young. But it is not meditation yet. The dancer must go, until only the dance remains…. Don’t stand aside, don’t be an observer. Participate!

And be playful. Remember the word playful always – with me it is very basic.”

I had been experimenting this way of dancing tango, after my private with Cecilia: “Let your unconscious take over completely. Do not control your movements or witness what is happening. Just be totally in the dance…Dance in celebration and enjoy.”

Isn’t it more fulfilling than trying to figure out what step one should dance?

The first thing one should be learning, before the walk, the embrace and posture…, is how to relax before embracing the other.

While dancing, instead of focusing on the technique, focus on breathing into each movement.

Sometimes the biggest challenge in tango is to find oneself. You have to know who you are before understanding the other person in embrace.

When you reach a plateau, like most of us do, go back to the basic: embrace, posture and try to forget everything else that you’ve learned.

Don’t think about how to dance, think about what makes one dance.

In class, one learns. In practica, one practices what one has learned. In milonga, one forgets everything but trying to have some fun.

The problem with stepping in the floor with bending knee is that, the energy is blocked off.

A lot of teachers teach how to dance, few teach how to feel. Who to learn from, however, is entirely up to you.

You don’t need to take lessons, you just have to dance in the milongas.

I am not surprised when some amazing dances tell me that they’ve not taken a tango lesson in their lives. The world is full of talents and geniuses, people who are born with good genes, people who have life long training in other disciplines…

I am surprised by how many mediocre ones, men and women, stop learning just after a few lessons, thinking that they’ve already known how to dance. Many who have never stepped on the beat, who have never embraced, who could not stand on their own feet without using their partners’ body as a crutch, who could not walk without taking their partners off balance…and they have been dancing the same old year after year in the milongas. You know the type if you are reading tango blogs.

More often what I’ve learned and heard is how talented dancers still work hard and learn on the daily basis, hire coaches to help them to perfect their dance. I am not suggesting that everyone is doing the same. After all, tango is a social dance, not a competitive sports. It is a hobby for most of us. We want to enjoy it.

Some suggest that the milonguero(a)s do not take classes.

Well, first of all, there are milonguero(a)s whom everybody loves to dance with, many who are just average, and some whom most avoid. Milonguero(a)s, just because they’ve danced in the milongas for many years, don’t naturally make them all good dancers. Some have bad habits, awkward postures and embraces that make partners uncomfortable, uneven walks that feel like driving on a gravel road. The fact is that of many portenas whom I had danced with while I was in BaAs, there were only a handful I could honestly say that I had the pleasure.

Secondly, before there was a tango school in BsAs, people taught each other, among friends, relatives and families after the milongas, or close door practicas. That is considered “taking lesson”.

Although the follow quote might not be most suitable for this post, it certainly brings me to the next one.  So stay tuned.

No, a fool learns from experience. A wise man learns from the experience of others. -Otto von Bismarck, reply when told that a wise man learns from experience.

Here is the lastest El Tangauta, with interview of Andrea and Javier, my most influential teachers.  (it requires a simple registration) You could read the whole interview from the PDF. I strongly recommend it if you are interested in learning tango, regardless if you like their style or not. Note that, both learned how to dance tango from young age at milongas, then turned into professional later.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot and dancing much less.

I have been pondering how to not dance, how to erase the last memories of those movements that I had been learning all these years,  how to resist the urge to dance to my usual self when the music is very inspiring, how to reduce the movement so that each movement makes sense, how to do less…

Instead of how to do it, Why do it?

Instead of moving to the beats and the notes of the music, I am trying to find the energy in the music and expand and contract accordingly.  Breathing through the whole dance and breathe to movement, like in a yoga practice.

Levantarse, abrir los ojos, sentir la tierra, respirar, dar un paso, correr, saltar, caerse, para detenerse y continuar, y volver a parar, soñar, volar, enloquecer, amar, y sólo vibrar… en paz.- Cecilia Garcia.

Each maestro(a) has added something into my understanding of tango, from their own perspective. I am anxious to see what my upcoming trip to BsAs will bring.

I have been experimenting…

For the past few months, I have been trying to forget everything that I’ve learnt of how to dance tango. I’ve been trying to come to the embrace without thinking about how to dance: how to move, how to walk, how to turn…empty my mind.

When I could actually do that, without thinking about how to dance, the experience was great, memorable. Most of the time, I did what I did the best, I danced: walk, turn, pause, walk, turn… I felt uninspired.

Cecilia Garcia, of formerly Horacio and Cecilia, was in town. I used to be unimpressed by their performances. It was not my kind of tango. So I didn’t take their workshop when I attended Chicago tango festival last year. I didn’t even know who Cecilia was…until I saw her dancing in the milonga with Claudio Gonzalez and Pablo Villarraza. Wow…

Anyway, I took a private lesson with her. The essence of the class was how to use energy in the dance, so it matches the expanding and contracting energy of the music. After dancing three songs to three different orchestras: Di Sarli, D’Arienzo, Pugliese, I worked alone under her guidance. Listen to the music, through breathing, move my axis, connect to the ground, and find freedom by relaxing my body, my mind. As in meditation.

Then we embraced.

Don’t do anything, unless you feel you have to. And do anything that you feel you have to do. She said.

I didn’t take a single step, just changing my axis in place, embracing her and feeling her energy. At certain point, however short it was, I felt that our energy met… together grew and grew, expanded infinitely… it was magical!

What makes one dance? No… what makes me dance? I asked her, at the end of the class.

The music and your energy from music. Her answer was essentially the same as Pedro Sanchez’s.