About the lady's body position

I simply repost this here, translated into english. I will illustrate what is the position almost all argentinean ladies take, when dancing tango. The rare exceptions are almost always in the nuevo- and neo-tango species.

To focus the attention:

See the red zone, a curvature in the waist - in fact, this is the natural human body position, only a little but overdone.

Beginning with world-known argentinean couples:










Even this weird nuevo dance, arguably not tango at all, shows the same position, but not easy to see behind all the stuff going on:


The final (2009) of the world tango championship in "tango-de-salon" category:


All these couples, and many, many other, dance this way. Why? Is it a fashion? Or a genetic feature of argentinas? Or is there something else?

The genetics hypothesis is easy to prove wrong - she is brazilian:


American:


French:


Polish:



I think I have just proved the genes are not responsible.

Then? Fashion? Pure coincidence? Or an important part of the dance technique, that there is no good tango without?
The most interesting fact is, that, for my ten years of tango experience, I have not attended a single lesson or seminar, where this position is explained. Not that I did not attend hundreds of lessons and many dozens of seminars. Kind of mistery . . .

Actually, there was one teacher that touched the matter - Andrea Misse explained it once by instructing ladies to think as if their leg is longer (as it is straightened in the course of a back step), projecting above the hips, which is in fact leading to the position we discuss here. But still not quite well explained.

And, for an end, similarly to "Don't do this at home" - please, don't immitate this position unless you fully understand its purpose and right way to accomplish it. Immitating it just externally will do no good.

Sebastian Arce & Mariana Montes

So, how they dance in 2006:


In 2008:


And, in 2009:


What happened to them? They dance like a different couple? I think this is because they discovered High Tango, no matter what name they use for it.

High tango

Kind of introduction . . .

The term "High tango" is not something widely accepted. It will be used here to describe a way to dance tnngo. It is both old and new. Old, because in fact many tangueros danced this way for decades. New, because there are no known to me sources of information about it. At least, a systematic one. So, many things had to be reinvented, based on experience and pieces of information, coming from various sources (Web sites, youtube videos, workshops with good dancers).

Of course, my personal ideas about "high tango" may not fully coincide with the ideas of someone else, but still, these ideas come from more than 9 years of practice and are verified to be very fruitful. Both in the way the dance feels and the way the movements look from outside. Because for me, those are one and the same thing. Or at least, there is strong connection between them. "Form follows function", as mentioned on a respected web-site (www.tangoandchaos.org). One should care about function first, then about the form. In 99% of the cases, if the function works fine, then the look will be fine too without any need for additional work specifically targeted on the look.

"High" may be interpreted in many ways in the context of tango. One may be that this is elitist tango. Yes, it could be elitist, but not because it is not social and not democratic. It is open to every one, every one is invited to dance and berry the fruits. But it is elitist, because not everyone will be able or will invest enough time and effort to reach the point (or the height?), where the fruits become accessible.

Another interpretation is connected with the technique used. The couple generally stays high. There no grounding of any kind. And this is not about beauty, it is about effectiveness. Moving with knees bent is like crawling, a lot of unnecessary moves of strained body joints, which consumes energy, Instead, by having the knee bend less, the energy loss is less, resulting in very light movements of the couple, enabling flight-like experience. More on this topic in some later post.