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Don’t look the other way (turn your head to your left).

Look at me, though I might not be a handsome man in your eyes.

And please, please, don’t tilt your head.

Either way you feel like running away.

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We danced two tandas in a row. Second night of the festival. First time ever.

In between the songs, We remained embraced. Magnetically.

The frantic circus of festival milonga disappeared. Magically.

The only awareness I had was the softness of her embrace, as if I were in the cotton field.

…

She is now gone for a tango tour in other countries.

Several days after…

The warmth of her embrace, however, is still lingering in my dreams.

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I met Sandra, a fellow student of Javier and Andrea,  this time in BsAs. She is one of the few memorable tangueras whom I had the pleasure to dance with and work with. This is the link to her experience with Javier and Andrea.  She talks about her own discovery of tango.  Excerpts:

Javier and Andrea encourages and inspires me to find myself and the freedom to express it in my tango, to enjoy dancing and not be absorbed into calculating how many degrees my hips should be moving; to understand not how to make an adorno, but why I am adorning; to be selfish, yet giving; to be submissive, yet active.

On the contrary to some foreigners’ view, Javier and Andrea have been promoting nothing but the spirit of traditional tango. For every negative voice, I could probably find five more positive comments. Then again, it doesn’t matter how others think despite their lack of first hand experience or on pure imagination. The most important thing, for me, is that every time I learn from them, I discover something more profound; my understanding of tango is deeper…

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When I first read MIM’s post , I laughed out so hard that my colleague thought I just hit the jackpot. Too bad the comment was off. Although it is a misguiding and provoking title, what they described in the post was roughly the same experience that I have had. A subject has been long in my mind yet never put into words. I am glad that they’ve taken the heat first.

Their second post explains one of the important technique: pulling your hips back. Another technique, that was not mentioned in their posts, is “Show off your breast” for the woman. Bring the chest up proudly. Together with pulling the hip back slightly, the culo will naturally “stick out”. Most of the female dancers have tight and round behind, firm legs due to the exercise they have been doing for years. I might be called sexist by saying this: the posture is the sexiest and most beautiful thing to watch.

And nobody, at least nobody whom I have learned from, has taught or being heard teaching anyone to “stick her butt out”. The visual is the consequence of the techniques. In some cultures, women are inhibited to show their feminine characters. Naturally, they are less inclined to accept this aesthetic aspect of the posture.

How this posture, despite different views on its aesthetic merit, actually feel on my side of embrace? When it is right, the moment I embrace the woman, I could feel that it is the beginning of a blissful journey. The connection from the moment the embrace completes is far stronger than the connections that I have experienced with other postures. (And I can’t tell you how much I dislike embracing a woman who stand straight and connect from waist up, which is probably the reason that I stop going out here.)

There are more techniques and benefits of this posture, which deserve another post or two to explore. But let me tell you this: I was in heaven almost every time I danced with certain women who have learned this way. I just wish there were more of them this part of the world.

Here is an example:

A few examples of the postures from different dancers:

Last but not the least

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and those who don’t .  Here is from Chicho, the icon of “tango nuevo”,  excerpt from his interview with Milena Pleb:

… I remember we were talking, then we embraced each other and in that moment I felt 40 years of tango. In the embrace, do you understand? We hadn’t taken a single step! It was simply from the way in which you held me. For me that was the most powerful moment of the tanda. The we danced for a long time. It was great, we did all sort of things. I enjoyed myself. But the moment of that embrace, like the one of my first class and some others, have marked me in regards to my relationship with the dance. I’m talking about the intimacy of the embrace. With very few people have I been able to feel the same way, much has been lost. My wish for the dance of tango, then, is that the shared intensity returns, in the soul. Not to stay in the surface, but to feel it inside. That the genre evolves from that intimacy. The essence of tango is in the embrace and the person you are dancing with.

Coincidentally, I wrote a post not long ago about my own similar discovery. Tango is internal. As the subtitle of this blog, in my mind as always, tango is a feeling in the embrace, the music and the sound of breaths. Simple.

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