Article by Susana Miller Tango
All social dances « love » the floor. When you dance close to the floor, you have more balance, more connection with your own body and better communication with your partner.
To dance into the floor is the opposite of “floating.” It’s abandoning the weight of your hips without fighting against the law of gravity. The body should pose its natural weight on the floor, just as naturally as we do when we’re waiting for the bus with our weight on one leg. When we first learn to dance, the body tends to hold back its weight, like a small child that makes herself lighter so we can pick her up. With experience, the muscles learn to relax like shock absorbers, our energy is displaced toward the floor and consequently our movement becomes dynamic. It remains soft, but it projects energy.
Our weight “melts” into the floor, travels through our axis and is transmitted to the axis of our partner. When the muscles are relaxed our weight does not “bounce” into the air, but rather becomes discharged toward the ground. The abrazo creates empathy and the two bodies understand one another thanks to this “rootedness” in the floor. The momentum of dance is in exhaling not inhaling. Any attempt to retain this breathing reduces communication. When the body tenses its “rubber bands” the axis becomes silent.
____________________________________________
The word tango has the power to plug the body into a 110-volt socket and take it “to great heights.” Of course, this is the “idea” of tango and not the reality. Dance is a way of getting to know ourselves, learning to understand the body that we walk with normally without thinking. But when we observe how we walk, that’s when change occurs. The body speaks when we don’t give it orders, when we stop judging it. We use our mind to understand, but then we have to let the process continue on its own, “forgetting” what the mind has learned. Because it’s body memory that takes over at this point. That’s why, after dancing for many years, some dancers ask: “Is that all there is to it?” That’s when they stop observing themselves like an object and listen to their body, instead of giving it orders with their mind. If the mind becomes silent, the body will then know what to do.
_______________________________________________
When you put too much pressure into the floor, the body rises. This makes the body “work” and perspire. The feet should be relaxed, free of pressure, like when we walk leisurely. In this way, the floor will absorb the weight of the body (the principle of action and reaction) and will arrive at its final destination, which are the hips. The hips are part of the pelvic girdle, which is a powerful, vital (solar) structure. The weight rests on the hips when the body is in a state of inertia as well as when it is in movement. In order for the woman to have attitude, confidence and the correct “stance” she has to be on her balance and that depends for the most part on the weight of her hips. Felines use their soft parts to support their weight and slide along the floor; they walk on their hips. So does the tango dancer. Balance and sensuality in dance go hand in hand.
This is the common denominator of all social dances. They are always close to the floor, not in the air. The lower body is connected to the ground. Everything else stretches upward. The upper and lower trunk pull in opposite but complementary directions.
Tango is a language where nothing is forced. Neither resistance nor tension is required to communicate. In all languages, communication becomes a reflex. Tension eliminates this reflex and replaces it with a response that is devoid of meaning. Communication must be powerful but spoken “softly.” The body “speaks”; it doesn’t “shout.”
The women must be with her partner and not “on” him. In order for her upper body to stretch upward and forward, her lower body must reach downward. She relaxes her hips and places her weight in them. Knowing this technique is the lever that raises her level of dance.
Comentarii