Opposite Tension: Demystifying Tango’s Silent Signals

👉This episode is about three realisations that helped me understand:1) how we communicate our free-leg position,2) how elegant lines are created and3) how we connect different body parts so that our partner can get ‘access’ to them during the dance.   For more tango, check this: thecurioustanguero.com/argentinetango  👉A huge 'Thank you' to Sara Grdan and Ivan Terrazas for teaching me most of the things you are about to read or hear. They deserve all credit for whatever makes sense. Everything that doesn't make sense, comes from my own misunderstanding.   Transcription: Many times, when in classes, I heard the following phrases from teachers: ‘You have to communicate to your partner where your free leg is.’ ‘You have to stop controlling your free leg, and let your partner control it.’ ‘Straighten your back leg, you let it always relax and pointing in the wrong direction.’ ‘I can’t feel where your body is.’   And many more, around similar topics.   When I hear statements like these that sound like instructions, I try to understand if they are actually instructions or they just ask for a final result without providing a way to get there.   Well, for me, all the above are NOT instructions on what to do, but on what result they expect.   This email is about three realisations that helped me understand: 1) how we communicate our free-leg position,2) how elegant lines are created and3) how we connect different body parts so that our partner can get ‘access’ to them during the dance.   Let’s start with the third one:   Connecting different parts of our body to allow our partner to either understand or control them.   Most people believe that dissociation is the tool we use to stay in front of our partners. We rotate our chest so that we can continue looking at our partner during a giro, even though our feet might move toward different directions for example. But for me, this is not the most important function of dissociation. When you rotate your upper body in respect to the lower body, a set of muscles and tendons are engaged. This engagement creates a stronger connection between two different parts of your body. This muscle tension, where two different parts of your body seem to be pushing toward a different direction is a tool to connect those two parts. And once that connection is achieved, you partner can use one part of your body to communicate to the other.   If you start thinking of dissociation not only in terms of ‘opposite rotation’ but in terms of ‘opposite direction that creates tension’ you might start noticing that it exists everywhere:   When your teachers tell you that the bottom part of the body needs to push toward the earth while the upper part goes to the sky?  …You are creating this tension that connects the two parts of the body.   When your teachers tell you to push down your shoulderblades while you elongate your neck toward the sky? …You are creating this tension that connects the two parts of the body.   ‘Opposite’ tension creates connection.   I have come to perceive all these ways to create tension by expanding toward opposite directions as ‘dissociation’.   Whenever I want to create a clear connection between two parts of my body, a create that tension.   To sum up: Dissociation is a way to create tension, and that tension connects two parts of your body. Starting considering using dissociation not in a limited way (communicating a pivot, staying in front of my partner) but as a connector of different body parts.   Alright, second point:   Communicating where the free leg is   With some followers (or leaders) it is incredibly easy to understand where their free leg is and how to control it. Let’s call the ‘A’ dancers. And that allows advanced dancers to stop a movement in the middle, to create elegant shapes and adornos, to control the size of a step, etc. But with some other dancers this seems simply impossible. For me, the main difference is this: The ‘A’ dancers create the motion of the fre