The Embrace

The embrace is what makes Tango what it is.  You either have it or you don’t.  Take a look at the couples on the  floor of the milonga.  Although you may see many women with their eyes closed while connected chest to chest with a man, you will often see an awkwardness in the embrace, or rather, the way the couple is holding one another.  Many women appear to have difficulty embracing the men they dance with (outside of Argentina).  Although women want their men to embrace them properly, we say it is absolutely critical to a man’s dance for the woman to embrace properly.  In other words, a woman wants it, but a man needs it.

Picture the typical North American hug.  The one where people create as much space between themselves and the person they are hugging in order to avoid making any real contact.  The arms don’t truly wrap around one another, the heads don’t touch, the eyes are looking around, and the person is obviously not focused on that hug.  This is a commonly seen embrace in North America and shouldn’t come as a surprise considering we don’t live within a culture of touching.

A year ago, K had the embrace on a technical level which means on a physical level it looked right, but it didn’t feel completely right and it definitely did not “dance” right.  By this we mean the following:  The embrace also includes constantly “looking for” your partner.  It’s not enough that you are “giving yourself” completely (a rather passive action), but you must actively look for your partner (your chest is always attempting to connect with your partners chest).  Which is also another important point.  The elusive “connection” people are constantly talking about is almost entirely a physical term.  It is easy to connect with you partner if you are both embracing one another and emotionally interested in that embrace.

As for Jorge, his embrace was O.K., but it was not the Elusive Embrace. An important aspect of discovering the “elusive embrace” was learning to lead with his body and not (only) his (flexed) arms, relaxing all of his body, understanding what it meant to dance as a man, and learning what it meant to look after a woman while dancing.  Tango teaches you what it means to be a woman and a man.  The inability to accept, and dance with, one’s womanliness and manliness in Tango can often translate into the inability to embrace.

In order to embrace your partner, here are some important points:  As a woman, you must devour your partner.  You must attempt to get within his skin.  This might sound sexual, but it is not.  As a man, you must take care of your partner.  Give her your chest and then hold her and protect her.  And then together you look for one another throughout your dance.

*We are obviously speaking of being in a close embrace since Argentine Tango is primarily danced in this form of embrace.

Are You a Leading Cheater?

The best dancers are supposed to be able to lead anyone, regardless of the follower’s level.  Really?  We have always questioned this “fact”.  How is this possibly true?  If a woman does not know how to embrace the man, if she doesn’t understand what the lead feels like (in general), if she is lacking necessary technique, then what?  We’re not saying we haven’t seen all these “great teachers” lead women exactly where they wanted them to go.  We are saying that these “great teachers” are often totally cheating in doing so.

Jorge is not one of these “great teachers” and cannot, for the life of him, make his followers do what he would like.  Apparently Jorge is not a very good leader then.  He must have been lied to over and over again in Buenos Aires because he was consistently told how clear his lead was and how he lead with his full body (by teachers and dancers).  The main criticism/feedback was to “increase the font size”.  That is, his lead was clear and good, but he could make it even clearer, even better, even bigger for those women who weren’t very sensitive followers.

Why can’t Jorge make the follower do what he wants?  The answer lies in the question: the word “make”.  It is not in his nature, his personality, or his dance to “make” a follower do anything.  If he feels that his follower cannot follow a certain movement, he simply will not do it again.

Entonces, what is meant by “cheating” in the lead?  Leaders can cheat in one of two ways: with the killer left arm or with the killer right arm.  Let us describe what we mean.

The killer left arm is popular among some in our Tango community.  It is actually taught as the proper way to lead in Tango and in all honesty, if the follower offers enough resistance with her right arm, the leader can basically lead the follower to do anything.  Does it feel nice for the follower?  Well that depends.  If you are a follower with an ego who just wants to be perfect at any cost, the answer is yes.  However, if you are a follower in love with the dance and the embrace, the answer is no.  And well, the answer is a definite no when the man uses his left arm so much that you are left with a sore shoulder after the dance (there are a few of these leaders in TO and many followers complain about it and don’t enjoy dancing with these men, but saying no is just too difficult).

The killer right arm, conversely, occurs when the leader crushes his follower.  In this situation, we are not speaking of the awful right HAND lead.  You know what we’re talking about ladies.  That evil hand you feel on your back pushing and pulling you through ochos.  Shudder!  No.  We are speaking of the men who cannot trust their followers (often with good reason) to embrace or follow the lead.  Therefore, these men crush the living daylight out of their followers so there isn’t a chance a step will be missed.

A good leader invites his follower to move with him and a great leader finds a way to invite the follower with little choice of rejection.  The use of arms and excessive muscle cancels out the chance for an invitation.  All we saw and felt of the good dancers in Buenos Aires were comfortable cloud-like (close) embraces that used the body (with arms being an extension of the body) to invite the woman to  follow.

Here’s the analogy: Tango is often compared to a language.  Therefore, if a woman visits Argentina with no knowledge of Spanish, can a man really make her understand what he wants her to do?  He can of course use body language, but if some of the body language is different between the cultures, this will be of little help.  Perhaps he’s asking her to join him for “mate” and holds an imaginary cup to his face with one hand while holding and imaginary straw to his lips with the other hand.  This could easily be misunderstood or not understood at all.  He could use “force” and drag her to his place and show her the mate gourd and straw, but is this really an enjoyable experience?  In other words, it does not matter how great his body language is.  If she does not have some basic knowledge of the language, he will either have to force her to understand or they will both look a little silly not being able to communicate with one another.

For us, the moral of the story is that women need to be taking “Spanish” classes before attempting to communicate with advanced speakers. Men who do not want to use force, have every right to speak only with women they feel comfortable communicating with.  When they both decide to show up at a “Spanish” practica, then they can attempt to communicate together because it is a place of practice.

To further add to the analogy and as a side thought… After one spends time learning, practicing and speaking a foreign language in a foreign country, it is usually the case that the foreign language will deteriorate when one returns to the home country.  When no one else is speaking that foreign language, it is quite difficult to maintain the level previously achieved unless one continues to communicate with others of the same or better language abilities.  So why is it so difficult for people to understand why we, for example, do not want to dance with people who do not dance with good technique and a proper embrace?

Old School… “May I Have This Dance?”

After spending 8 months in Buenos Aires and experiencing the intelligently invented “cabeceo“, returning to Toronto’s way of requesting dances was quite difficult… to say the least.  One lovely milonga here in TO is encouraging it’s attendees to use the “cabeceo”.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that our community will “accept this dance” and be transformed.

Without the “cabeceo”, the somewhat accepted norm is that men ask women to dance.  Not surprisingly, as a feminist, K never hesitated to ask men to dance.  We are not in the 1950’s (or whatever time period you want to choose)!  These are modern times and IF a community does not want to fully incorporate all the codes and traditions of Argentine Tango, then we do believe that both men and women should be asking for dances.  That said, women and men must both learn how to say “no” AND how to be ready for and accept rejection.

We both have difficulties saying no.  The ability to say “no” truly says a lot about one’s personality.  K needs to mentally prepare herself to do so.  After surveying the dance floor and its dancers, and making personal I-will-NOT-dance-with-him notes in her head, she is more prepared to say no if any of those men approach her.  K is the list-maker… the organizer.

Meanwhile Jorge keeps repeating to himself and to K that he will NOT dance with such-and-such a dancer, but when that dancer comes and asks him, “yes” is out of his mouth with barely a hesitation.  Jorge is a people-pleaser (something he hates about himself) and has difficulties dealing with conflict.

What an absolutely ridiculous situation to deal with when the “cabeceo” exists.  However there have been comments in our community that the “cabeceo” is archaic.  Sorry… what?!  Archaic is the idea that women are supposed to sit in a milonga looking pretty while they wait for a man to come and ask them to dance!  That or they can stalk men, corner them, and practically force them into a dance (unfortunately, that tends to be the extreme that women who do the asking choose).

The point is, IF individuals or communities do not want to use the “cabeceo”, then women and men should be able to ask one another for dances.  If you find it difficult to ask, then let that person know that you would be interested in a dance with them and walk away.  But never, NEVER stalk your potential dance partner.  Both of us have been the victim of this.  K’s stalker sat only a few seats away and attempted to “cabeceo” her.  Instead of understanding that she did not want to dance with him when she ignored him, the stalker continued to sit and stare through 2 tandas and only stopped for the third tanda when she got up to dance with Jorge.  However, upon her return, stalker decided that since the “cabeceo” didn’t work, he would just go straight up to K and ask for a dance!?  K politely declined, but could not believe the audacity of this person.

Jorge dealt with a similar situation when a female dancer, rather than coming directly up to him to ask for a dance, sat down a couple chairs away (twice) to “cabeceo” him.  Obviously there is a huge misunderstanding of how the “cabeceo” is used if the situation is still causing discomfort and awkwardness for one or both parties.

This may be Toronto, but we are dancing ARGENTINE Tango.  There is enough difficulty in our Tango community embracing our partners (another post for another time).  The least we could do is embrace the culture of Tango.