Year by year you arrive to a point where you have more feelings than steps. You can always work on making beautiful steps, but when the Tango is over, you are going to remember how it felt, not what steps you did….It is better to be transparent in what you feel.
For me the secret of the Tango is in the abrazo and it is important to experience it. More here
So what is the secret of the embrace? For me, the first and foremost: attitude…
Not long ago, a friend of a friend came to the milonga with us. A very beautiful young woman she was. She was asked even in her street shoes and wrapped up in leather jacket. She was sitting there watching, skeptically.
“So how do you find this?” I asked her.
“looks interesting” she was being diplomatic, judging from her facial expression. “but it looks sexual, i wouldn’t let anyone get so close to me other than my boyfriend or husband.” Truth was spilled out. I smiled:” I understand. You have to be comfortable to be embraced.”
I think the most difficult part of tango is to embrace and to be embraced by, a stranger; much harder for people who come from cultures that do not encourage or even prohibit touching of bodies. Imagine when one doesn’t accustom to embrace one’s own family: brother, sister, parents, how could one embrace a stranger?
Yet for whatever reason, we dance tango.
Some say that tango is the few dance that man can still be a man, woman a woman. It seems sexist, old fashion, politically incorrect, from many modern eyes. For a lot of us, that is the exact reason we dance.
Most of my private lessons with various of maestros, i was taught how to dance with the right attitude: from the posture to embrace, to movement (yes, attitude in movment!) and energy… i could only remember once or twice that I was actually working on technique in the classes. I still remembered that once, Silvina Valz asked me why i went to embrace the woman. Let her come to you, tango is machismo dance. Of course, she didn’t mean by dragging the lady into my arms. But that underlined the fundamental roles of man and woman in tango, IMO: man invites, woman accepts.
That is why often Andrea stresses to female students: if you don’t want to dance with the man for whatever reason, don’t! If you accept his invitation, then give 100% of yourself, try to kill the man. It makes sense, right? You can’t dance to one body four legs, with one side is reluctant.
As much as I remembered all those great moments, I was scarred by dances where women were absent minded, trying to escape, tense…regardless how good looking they were, how technically proficient they were. The bad feeling after lingered for the rest of the night, sometimes days. I would rather sit and listen to music, than dance a tanda like that. That is why i use cabaceo most of the time, by looking at the woman, I could pretty much see how much she wants to dance (with me). If the intention isn’t strong enough, I always look away. Some say that you will miss chance of dancing with good dancers…well, if she isn’t showing the intention when she has it, she has some learning to do to become a good dancer. If she isn’t interested, even if she is the tango goddess, she is not the one I should be dancing with anyway.
One friend told me his experience dancing in Russia. One woman would take about literally 30 second to embrace the man, her left hand would slid slowly up to his right arm…I have goosebums he said to me, while imitating the movement on my arm. I felt a chill, and a tanguera friend of mine, who was standing next to me watching, was in awe.
Tango is a sensual dance…dancers ought to understand sensuality. Otherwise, it is only steps, movements, without a soul.
Stay tuned… 
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