How to Practice

Building Better Learning Environments

During a conversation with some fellow dancers, my friend Mitra Martin said something which I believe gets at the heart of the learning and teaching process. She said, “The job of a teacher is not to teach, but to create an environment where learning occurs.” Passing along information through instruction is a vital part of learning, but it is only one part of the broader learning environment. Even the best instruction will fall on deaf ears if the learning environment does not allow knowledge to be translated into skills. How do we create effective learning environments in tango?

We can look to other dance forms for inspiration. When I first started dancing, I was fortunate to try many different dance styles and see how each created the learning environments. At one end of the spectrum lies ballet classes, which leverage uniformity to promote learning. Everyone in class does the same movements, and many of the exercises repeat from class to class. This allows everyone to apply the same feedback given by the instructor, and information can be layered across classes to build proficiency. At the opposite end of the spectrum is breakdancing, which leverages individuality. Everyone discovers their unique style and then can share their discoveries with each other and ask for feedback, fostering a culture of collaboration. Dance forms such as ballroom, salsa, or modern dance also have their own approaches to creating learning environments. Each approach has its benefits and requirements to be effective.

At its best, the tango approach to learning combines positive aspects from several different styles. We have classes and seminars to provide a structured progression like ballet classes but can also have sharing and discussion during prácticas like in breakdancing. We have lessons and partner practice like in ballroom, along with the community support and learning like in other social dances. Of course, this is tango at its best. Unfortunately, it is too often the case that the tango learning environment ends up being an ineffective combination of seminars without structure, prácticas without practice, and community without communication.

Consider the pre-milonga class. The community spends good money on good instructors, but the instructors come in without knowledge about the number and level of students, and the students have no control over the difficulty of the class. Instructors often change week to week, meaning the teaching approach can vary dramatically, the feedback can be contradictory, and errors of understanding or retention go uncorrected. If that were not enough, the students do not even have time to practice the material they learn before going directly into the milonga. Festival classes often face these same challenges but also have the added factors of larger classes and sleep deprivation.

Organizers are balancing many aspects of tango that, such as making an event social, showcasing art and artistry, creating an event people come to, and making an event which is profitable and sustainable. It is little wonder that the learning environment occasionally gets neglected. We can’t put the full burden of creating effective learning environments on the organizers and instructors. It is the responsibility of the entire community to create and maintain healthy learning environments.

So, what are some steps a community can take to create better learning environments? It helps to first realize that there are actually multiple spaces that need to be created and coordinated to create an effective learning environment. Learning progresses fastest when there is a good balance between learning, practicing, and doing.[1] In general, practice spaces get the least attention. The simple addition of open floor times and guided prácticas can make a big difference by providing a space for actual practice to occur. At a festival, for example, replacing one of the Sunday class slots with a guided practice would probably be the most valuable use of the teachers’ and participants’ time and energy, because it would give everyone the chance to try out all the new material they have learned over the weekend and correct mistakes while they are still fresh. If, as a community, we value open floor space and guided practices and are willing to pay for them instead of just paying for the flashy classes and workshops, then I am sure organizers would be more than willing to provide such spaces. The different spaces do not need to be part of the same event or held at the same time. A big, generally missed, opportunity for learning comes after a community hosts a workshop or festival. If the community organizes review time in the subsequent weeks for participants to go over, practice, and discuss what they learned, maybe even with the guidance of local instructors, then it can substantially increase the level of retention and understanding.  It is the maestros who hold the workshop, but it is the full community that holdsds together the structures that allow learning from the workshop to occur.

Another important factor to remember is that the needs of a novice are different from the needs of an advanced dancer.[2] Ideally, different environments can be created to address the needs of dancers at different levels. Novice dancers learn well from structured, progressive classes from a consistent instructor whereas intermediate dancers often benefit from being exposed to many different concepts, teachers, and styles. The needs again shift when students transition to an advanced level where they require more mentorship along with goals to continue developing their skills. Opportunities to teach (or assist teaching) and perform are essential for advanced dancers to support their continued growth. At all levels, it is helpful to have a cohort of fellow dancers with whom to train and collaborate.

A final consideration is that not all spaces need to be learning spaces. We sometimes jam learning into places where it would be better to simply focus on connection and enjoyment. Instead of holding a pre-milonga class just because “it is what has always been done,” a community could instead have a pre-milonga cocktail hour to create a space for people to connect socially before the dancing begins.[3] Clear distinctions between learning spaces and enjoyment spaces allow for more focus when it is time to learn, and more fun when it is time to enjoy.

[1] You can read more of my thoughts on the topic of the various types of spaces here: https://tangotopics.org/prepare-your-tango-kitchen/

[2] You can read more of my thoughts on how training needs vary with level here: https://tangotopics.org/teacher-trainer-mentor/

[3] Shoutout to the organizers have started doing creative events such as having a potluck, or wine and cheese tasting before the milonga.  

By sericson0, ago

Create a sensory-rich environment for your practice

When I discovered dance in college, I got hooked. And when I say hooked, I mean the training five different styles at the same time, skipping class to go practice, and breaking into the gym after hours to train a bit more at night kind of hooked. What I lacked in knowledge and experience, I tried to make up for in volume. I figured that the more time I put in, the better I would get. While my heart was willing to keep up this level of commitment, my knee apparently was not. After surgery to stitch back together my meniscus, I spent several weeks on crutches and several months doing physical therapy. As unpleasant as the injury was, the process of recovery gave me time to rethink how my body works and started me on a journey of reevaluating how I practice and train. The question I kept asking myself was “How should I practice so that I can continue to progress without injury?” I want to share a concept I learned along this journey and show some ways in which it can help you learn tango faster with better technique and less chance of injury.

We emphasize the “physical” part of physical activities, but really it is the brain we are training. We practice a skill to ‘build muscle memory’, but muscles don’t keep memories. We go to the gym to ‘build our body’, but strength comes as much from better firing of our neurons as it does from muscle mass. We talk about ‘stretching our legs’, but flexibility comes from our brain feeling more comfortable in end-range positions, so practicing your splits is really stretching your mind. Practice is primarily about providing a stimulus to our brain to create a desired adaptation.

When it comes to movement, our brain has its work cut out for it. It must select a pattern of movement, and then coordinate our muscles to fire with the correct sequence and intensity, while at the same time processing a barrage of internal and external sensations to determine any needed course corrections. As if this were not enough, our brain must determine where our body is in space and how it is moving. And it has to know which sensations are important and interpret what these sensation mean. Training our brain means practicing to: (1) remember more efficient and effective movement patterns and forget less efficient movement patterns, (2) improve timing and coordination of movement patterns, and (3) improve proprioception and reaction.

Junk volume is often worse than having never practiced at all, because you will have to unlearn the incorrect pattern to progress. Instead of practicing an incorrect movement a thousand times, practice the correct pattern ten times. Of course, we need to learn what correct movement pattens are, and we obviously can’t perform with the sophistication of a professional dancer when we are just starting out. So how do we spend less time repeating inefficient movements and spend more time learning more efficient movements? This is where creating what Dr Aaron Horschig calls a “sensory-rich environment”[1] comes into play.

A sensory-rich environment is when we provide a clear sensation to our brain of when it is on the right track or off-track. Our brain needs feedback to understand whether it is doing a movement correctly. This feedback can come from an instructor, but it can also come from well-placed props or well-chosen exercises.

So how can we apply the concept of creating a sensory-rich environment to our tango? Identify a movement you want to work on and then determine what constitutes the “correct” or “effective” pattern you want to aim for. It can be helpful to identify which body parts you want to move and which you want to remain stable. Now, find a prop or signal that will give you feedback when you are doing the movement correctly or incorrectly. Elastic bands, mirrors, and a helpful partner are especially useful here. After you practice with the prop to get feedback on what the correct movement feels like, try the movement without the prop to test your newfound awareness. Here are a few examples that I have found especially useful for myself and our students.   

A common mistake when twisting (such as in ochos or with leading the turn) is to move our arms independent from each other. My partner Jackie likes to call this “the Bowflex,” where the distance between the elbows increases. To fix this, put an elastic band around your elbows and practice your twist (you can practice solo or with a partner in open embrace). The band lets you feel exactly when you want to move your arms apart and allows you to quickly eliminate this mistake from your dancing.

A band between your arms cues you to move your arms together.

Another common mistake when pivoting is to let the hips twist along with the upper body. In tango, we want to be able to move our upper body while maintaining still hips. The challenge is that it can be hard to feel when our hips are moving. Place the back of a chair so that it is contacting the side of your hip and then practice rotating the upper body (a shelf or door handle can work as well). If you move your hips along with your upper body, then you immediately feel it in the change of contact with the chair.

We sometimes forget to push from the standing leg when walking backwards. This can lead to our lower back arching and to feeling heavy to our partner. To fix this, have a partner hold a band around your lower back as you step backwards. This provides two fixes in one: driving against the band teaches you to push with your standing leg and the sensation of the band cues you to not arch the lower back.

A chair helps you feel your hips.

Crossing our feet can be tricky to do well. That is because there are many ways to cross our feet, but not all of them are equally elegant. One way is to move our foot at the ankle, which allows us to cross but sickles our foot. Another way is to turn at the hips to make space, which works but often results in excessive movement. The preferred way to cross is to use your adductors (inner thigh muscles) to pull your leg across and then allow your foot to slot into the cross. The challenge is that it can be difficult to feel your adductors and feel the proper movement. To solve this, put a band on the inside of the leg you are going to cross and have a partner hold either end (or tie to something stable). The band gives you something to pull against, which teaches you to activate your adductors. Pull straight against the band and keep your whole foot on the floor. You can practice crossing both in front and in back in this way. In no time at all you will feel how to do a clean, compact cross.

These are but a few examples. Now that you know the principles, you can create your own sensory-rich environment. Focus on training your brain, and injury-free progress will follow.

The various ways to cross. Crossing using the adductors is generally considered correct. Pulling against a band cues you to use your adductors and helps you find the correct cross position.

[1] https://youtu.be/TRmayQcweUc?t=410

By sericson0, ago

How to Remember Sequences

Written by Sean Ericson and Jacqueline Pham

Your teacher presents a sequence at the start of class, and even though they repeat the sequence several times, you struggle to remember all the steps and end up lost. While you may eventually get the sequence, your partners miss out on the practice opportunities while you struggle to remember. You also spend the whole class time figuring out the steps and miss the deeper lessons the teachers are trying to impart. It takes you a while to memorize the movements, but in no time, you forget the moves, going back to your same tried and true steps when you get to the milonga. Maybe the information you struggled to learn and then forgot will make sense one day, but probably not. More likely it will end up in the same void as so many other classes you took. We believe this describes the experience of most people during a class. It doesn’t have to be this way.

It is not the fault of the information, the class structure, or the instructors who put a lot of time and thought into how best to present the material. It is also likely not the fault of your memory, your abilities, or your desire to learn. Instead, the culprit is that you do not have a system to prepare for and process the information you receive. You don’t have a way to quickly memorize the sequence, so you spend the class trying to remember instead of learning. Here we lay out a method for being able to quickly understand and remember tango sequences.

Being able to remember steps and sequences is a valuable skill for any tango dancer, leader or follower, performer or social dancer. Of course, it is valuable for making the most out of classes and workshops. But understanding how sequences are constructed also helps when it comes time to develop your own sequences. Knowing how movements fit together is essential for improvisation, and being able to quickly understand sequences empowers followers to fully embody their dance and add their own voice (including embellishents). 

The trick to quickly memorizing sequences is to have a mental checklist that helps you remember the steps. Instead of watching the sequence and then afterwards asking “What did they do?”, you want to have a set of questions you ask before the teachers show the sequence and try to answer the questions as the sequence is being shown. Here we discuss a mental checklist we use which enables us to (usually) remember a sequence by the second to fourth time we see it and to ask better questions in order to understand the sequence. If you struggle to remember steps, we recommend trying out this process.

When you are presented with a sequence, try to answer the following questions:

  1. With which foot/feet do the leader and follower take their first step?
  2. What is the entrance?
  3. What is the exit?
  4. What are the nuggets of the sequence?

The first question is a simple one, but if we don’t ask it then we will figuratively and literally start off on the wrong foot. Don’t wait until you see the sequence before trying to answer with which foot you begin stepping. You can often answer it before the sequence even begins, saving time and mental space for the other questions. One trick we sometimes use is to think in terms of the open and closed sides of the embrace rather than left and right. We find it can be challenging to quickly identify yours and your partner’s left and right feet (especially given your partner’s feet are flipped relative to yours) whereas we tend to be able to quickly identify the closed side and open side of the embrace.  

Teachers construct a sequence around one or two ‘nuggets’ they find interesting and then add an entrance and exit to get in and out of the interesting parts. This helps us to quickly deconstruct and remember the sequence. Instead of seeing a long string of moves, look for a beginning (entrance), a middle (the nugget) and an end (the exit). The first time you see a sequence it can be helpful to focus on the entrance and exit, and then focus on the nuggets of the sequence the subsequent times you see it. Teachers also tend to use the same entrances and exits (probably half of class movements start with 1-2 of the basic and end with 6-7-8). Instead of trying to remember each step, see if you can map it to an entrance and exit you already know.

Once you identify the entrance and exit, you then identify the interesting nuggets of the sequence. This will be the interesting, unique, and often more difficult part of the sequence. Here are two tricks to help remember the nugget of the sequence. The first is to break the nugget into packets of two to three steps. We are already doing this by splitting off the entrance and exit, but it can be applied to the middle portion of the step for a longer sequence. The second is to relate these packets to a similar move you already know and focus on the interesting twist you don’t know. The more you can relate to moves you already know and identify the new and unique elements, the easier it is to remember the sequence. As a simple example of how these tips help, see how quickly you can memorize the sequence “wdelhlolrol.” Then, following the steps of packeting the sequence and relating to things we already know, note how the sequence “hello world” can be memorized almost instantaneously even though it is of the same length and uses the same letters.

Putting this process into action, imagine you are a beginner learning the basic eight for the first time. It is a challenge to memorize eight different steps, and even harder to also focus on the technique pointers your instructors and partners are giving you. Going through our checklist: (1) The first step is with the closed side of the embrace (right for leaders, left for followers). (2) We can think of the entrance as back, side, forward (for leaders, mirrored for followers). (3) The exit is forward, side, collect (for leaders, mirrored for followers). (4) The nugget of the move is stepping to the cross. Instead of 8 things to memorize, you have three pieces: the 1-2-3 entrance, the 4-5 cross, and the 6-7-8 exit. I have found this breakdown into the beginning, middle, and end makes it easier for beginners to remember the basic eight.    

The approach presented here is only one of many approaches, and you are encouraged to find what works best for you. The important part is to have a process for remembering the steps, which in turn helps you ask better questions about the nuggets. Waiting until the teacher shows the move to see if you can remember is a recipe for failure. Instead, have a plan for success and practice that plan. That way you will be able to spend less time remembering and more time learning, less time thinking and more time creating, and less time memorizing and more time dancing.

By sericson0, ago

Milo the Tanguero: Principles of Progressive Training

Milo of Croton was an ancient Greek wrestler with a novel approach to training. As the legend goes, to train for the Olympic games, Milo took a small calf and carried it to the top of a hill near his house each morning. As the calf grew bigger, Milo grew stronger to meet the greater challenge. By the end of the process, Milo had unlocked beast mode and could carry the fully grown bull up the hill. With his newfound strength, Milo went on to win gold at the Olympics. Let us apply some of this ancient Greek wisdom to our own tango journey.

What are the components of Milo’s training protocol which lead to his success? Milo sets a goal—win the Olympic gold in wrestling. To achieve his goal, he gathers his resources—a hill near his home. He chooses a training frequency—once per day. And finally, he chooses a difficulty—weight of bull. Milo uses a process called progressive overload, where you incrementally increase the difficulty of a task to build a staircase from where you are to where you want to be (see here for additional discussion on this idea). The same process of progressive training can be applied to our tango.        

We first decide where we want to go before we can get there. I suggest you take a moment to write down a couple of goals you want to work towards. Goals can be specific or abstract, and it can be good to have a combination of both. Here are some examples of goals I have had: develop a comfortable embrace, do well at a competition, finish a choreography for an upcoming performance, expand my vocabulary of steps, develop better posture, make clearer from the outside the musicality I hear inside, make my lead clearer from inside the couple and harder to see from outside the couple.

Having the right resources is critical to your progress. A tree grows when it has the right mix of soil, water, and sunlight. Our dancing is no different. Progress is the result of having the resources we need, and stagnation is simply a symptom of missing resources. The most crucial resources to tango growth are: (1) teacher, (2) partner, (3) practice space, (4) colleagues to collaborate with. Take a moment to check if you have each of these resources available. The fastest growth tends to happen when we have all four. But there are many ways to adapt if we are missing one component, we just need to be strategic. Say you don’t have a partner, probably the most common missing component for tango dancers. Instead of putting your progress on hold until the perfect partner magically falls into your embrace, be proactive. You can get with a group of friends to work together and work through concepts and drills together. It may be easier to find two or three people to work with occasionally than one person to exclusively partner with. This way you can fill the space of a partner in aggregate. There are many ways to effectively work with limited resources if you take stock of what you have and what you need.

How much do we need to dance to get better? Obviously if we have too low of a frequency then we won’t improve, but do we have to train every day like Milo? Tango dancers tell stories about their marathon practice sessions, and tend to exaggerate the training schedules of professionals, (e.g., “I hear they practice seven hours every day.” ) What we need to remember, though, is that not all tango time is the same (see here for more discussion of this idea). I have seen dancers go to the milonga every night and a marathon every weekend, but only actually practice an hour or two each month. You don’t need much time to get a lot of growth, you just need to be consistent and set aside time for actual practice.

Shifting the analogy for a moment, practice sessions are like houses in Monopoly. Any number of houses are better than none, and more houses pay more dividends, but the benefit of each additional home is not the same. The third home always gives the most incremental benefits. Similarly, any number of practice sessions is better than none, and more practice tends to give more benefits, but three practice sessions per week tends to give you the most benefits per hour spent. Less than three per week and your body starts to forget what it learned between sessions. More than three is nice, but additional sessions tend to have lower incremental benefits. So, see if you can sustain three before trying to add more. Each session does not have to be that long. Your schedule could be as simple as meeting with a partner once for 90 minutes on day 1, doing solo exercises for 30 minutes on day 2, and committing to focused practice for the first hour of a practica on day 3. You would then have gotten your three days a week of practice in just three hours.     

The monopoly card analogy of practice. each house (practice) gives you benefits, but the third house (practice) gives the most benefits.

Difficulty is a variable we progressively increase (see here for ways to change difficulty). Bringing the analogy back to Milo, try and pick up a bull right away and you’ll get crushed, keep lifting the calf forever and you won’t grow. So, what is the right level of difficulty, and how do we find it? Effort and accuracy are both functions of difficulty and are our guides to dialing in the right level of difficulty. Effort is the mental and physical exertion we feel, and accuracy is our success rate and precision. Effort increases with difficulty and accuracy decreases with difficulty.

High accuracy with low effort means the difficulty is too low. We call this this hanging out in the green zone, where everything is safe, and learning doesn’t happen. Low accuracy and high effort means the difficulty is too high. We call this the red zone, where you are overwhelmed, and you develop bad habits. The area of high effort to maintain high accuracy is the gold zone, the sweet spot of optimal difficulty where progress occurs. When you practice, you always want to find your gold zone. You know you have found it when what you are practicing feels challenging yet doable.

The difficulty curves. Shoot for the sweet spot, the gold zone giving a good balance between accuracy and effort.
DifficultyEffortAccuracy
Too Easy – Green Zone-Feel bored
-Task feels automatic		-Miss because not paying attention
-Always get it right
Lower End of Gold Zone-Comfortably focused
-Like a fun, interesting game		-Usually correct
-Occasional error
Upper End of Gold Zone-Fully concentrated
-Hard challenge		-Both successes and failures
-Struggle to get it right
-Know cause of misses
Too Hard – Red Zone-Overwhelmed
-Drinking from a fire hose
-Feeling of confusion		-Miss and don’t know why
-Feels like luck when you get it right

As you progress, your green zone expands, and the gold and red zones shift. You then need to progressively increase the difficulty to stay in the gold zone. You need a bigger bull to keep the same challenge. You have to keep challenging yourself. Training is about being able to do tomorrow what you can’t do today. If you just keep repeating what you could do yesterday, then you are not really training and should not expect to improve.

The life cycle of the stereotypical tango dancer starts in the red zone, feeling overwhelmed with all the information. The ones who stick around then find a moment of the gold zone where progression happens quickly. (This usually occurs a little earlier for followers, but tends to last a little longer for leaders, which is why we often say followers learn faster early on, but learning is harder for more advanced followers). Eventually the dancer gets to a place where their dance feels comfortable to them, and they start to hang out in the green zone. At this point they no longer have a stimulus to promote progress, and their dance remains constant, if not slowly declining, for however long they continue in tango. If not addressed, then the gold zone also starts to shrink, locking in their current state. Usually this is due to a combination of frustration—”I’ve been dancing for 20 years, why can’t I do this?”—and arrogance—”I’ve been dancing for 20 years, and I’ve never needed that.”

Though common, this process is completely avoidable. We can find continuous and joyous growth for as long as we dance. Find some goals worth working towards. Marshall your resources and plan around your constraints. Set aside some time each week to practice. Find the joy in challenging yourself and pushing yourself to be able to do something tomorrow that you can’t do today. Little by little, and step by step, you will find your dance transform in a truly positive way.          

By sericson0, ago

Want a better tango walk? Then do this: Part II

In part I, we discussed some possible choices we can make to improve our walk. Next, we need to get our mind and body to do what we want it to do. Now that we picked our target, we need the accuracy to hit it. If we were throwing darts, then we would have the immediate feedback of where the dart lands to begin zeroing in on the bullseye. To improve our tango walk, we need a way to get similar feedback; to see where our metaphorical darts land.  If we use feedback in a manner which is healthy and effective, then our tango will quickly improve.

Here is a procedure for approaching feedback I find effective. I’ll call it the four Cs of feedback:

  1. Choose
  2. Capture
  3. Correct
  4. Compare

We first choose a specific element to work on. We then capture what we are doing. We next use this information to correct mistakes we notice. Finally, we compare ourselves after the correction with what we did before. For example, say I choose to work on my balance during my walk[1]. We film ourselves walking to capture how our walk looks. After slowing down the film, I see I wobble when I move my weight too far to the outside of the foot. I correct by practicing slowly transferring between feet while keeping my center of balance towards the second toe instead of the pinky toe. Finally, we film ourselves again and compare balance before and after the correction to see if I improved.  

Choose the focus before giving yourself or anyone else feedback. This narrows down the corrections to a manageable level. The most common challenge with feedback is that we are too critical about too many things. We think that we can criticize ourselves to improvement, but the truth is that when we are negative towards ourselves, all it accomplishes is this: we no longer seek out feedback. Not getting corrections is easy,meeting unrealistic standards for ourselves is hard. If getting feedback is a negative experience, then you won’t do it; if it is a positive experience then you will do it.

An analogy I think of is that feedback is like learning to box. Your partner throws punches at you so you can practice blocking and dodging, which is helpful and positive. But it would be hurtful and negative if they kicked you because kicking is not part of boxing, so you are not focused on it. The kick itself is not the problem and may be completely appropriate if you were learning kickboxing. The problem is that they struck you with something that was not part of your focus. Similarly, it would be hurtful and negative if someone randomly punched you while walking down the street, because this is not a time when you are focused on practice. When you give feedback, whether it is to yourself or anyone else, always keep in mind the focus of the practice and whether it is a practice space. Throwing punches in the gym is helpful, throwing kicks on the street is hurtful.   

To capture what we are doing, an external eye is critical. Internal sensations are essential as well, but we often don’t feel what we don’t have awareness of. External information and corrections train our mind to understand the internal sensations it is receiving, so we need a way to see from the outside what is going on. This can be done with a mirror, with feedback from our partner, by getting corrections from a teacher, or by filming ourselves. I highly recommend filming yourself and slowing down the film. This is one of the most effective means of improving your dance. But please choose what you focus on first and be very gentle with yourself. Remember that kicking yourself over all the things you notice won’t help you, it will just cause you to avoid filming in the future.

When deciding a correction to make or suggest, remember the chosen focus, and give one correction at a time, or even the same correction several times. It is better to give one piece of feedback a hundred times than give a hundred pieces of feedback once. As an example of what not to do, I once had a partner who, when I asked if she could give feedback on a fewer number of topics and provide positive feedback when I was improving, responded with “How can I give positive feedback when everything you are doing is wrong?” I hope none of you will be this blatant to your partner, but many of us say something similar with our internal narrative. It is not the corrections we get that are important, but the corrections we can improve upon that matter.

The final step is to compare yourself before and after to see progress. This step is often overlooked but is critical. For one, the correction may not have solved the problem, in which case you want to iterate with different options. Some corrections may work for some people but not others, or may only solve part of the puzzle. We want to find what works for us and in our body. Even more important though, you want to get the dopamine hit of seeing yourself improve. Take pride and joy in the fact that you are improving yourself and your dance. Instead of the masochistic onslaught of self-critique that we mistakenly think is helpful, mark the improvements that you make and celebrate each one. Make it a practice that every time you practice, you choose a few focused elements to capture and correct, and then celebrate each incremental progress. After all, it is not your current level that matters but your ability to grow that counts. Feedback in a focused and positive manner, as the four Cs hopefully provide, leads to sustainable growth and sustained joy throughout your tango journey.

[1] my partner chooses what they want to focus on as well.

By sericson0, ago

Want a better tango walk? Then do this: Part I

Every tango dancer wants a powerful and elegant walk. Ask a tanguero what they are practicing, and the most common answer is “I am working on my walk”. Whole books have even been devoted to analyzing the walk. For many, a good tango walk is synonymous with a good tango dancer. But how do we actually improve our walk?

Improvement takes two steps. You first make choices about what you want to do, and then you check to see if what you did was what you wanted. You first pick your target and then you check your accuracy. This article discusses choices we can make for the tango walk—the targets we can pick—and a follow-up article will discuss methods to check our accuracy.

The walk is too simple to be the only thing you practice. It does not have pivots, does not change systems, and does not have the pattern of alternating crosses and open steps that is fundamental to understanding many tango movements.[1] At the same time, the walk is too complicated to practice as a whole. An elegant walk is an integration of many specific components, each performed correctly and in the correct sequence. If we try to improve everything at once, then we overload our capacity to focus. Instead, we want to improve our understanding, control, and mastery of each component, and then reintegrate them into an improved whole. Practice the walk, and your walk won’t improve. Practice the components of the walk, and your walk will improve.

So how do we go about breaking down the walk into components and picking our targets? The approach I find helpful is to ask myself a series of questions about what I want to do. I have listed 10 questions below that are a good place to start (see here and here for a discussion of the joint terms used in some of the questions). I recommend you take the time to write down your answers for your own walk. These questions are just a starting point, and there are many more we could ask, especially related to the effect and intent of what we want to convey. The specific questions are less important than the specificity of your answers. Try to be detailed with your response. Clarity of intent leads to clarity of movement.   

  1. Feet: How do you line up your feet relative to each other and relative to your partner’s feet?
  2. Ankles: Do you bevel your feet, and when do you point or flex your feet?
  3. Knees: When do you straighten or bend your knees?
  4. Hips: When and how much do your turn out your legs, and when do you flex or extend your hips?
  5. Hip position: Do you keep your hips level to the floor?
  6. Collection: How do you collect? How does your collection synchronize with your partner?
  7. Embrace: Where do you connect with your partner? How do you hold them?
  8. Head: Where is your head positioned? Where are you looking?
  9. Balance: Where is your center of balance throughout the step?
  10. Effect: What do you want to convey with your walk? How do you want it to feel?

There is no “one true tango,” and there is not one correct way to walk, so there is not a right or wrong answer to these questions. What is important is to start making choices. That being said, some choices will better convey our desired effect, and some choices need to be bundled along with other choices we make. Studying the choices we can make, and the choices great dancers make can help with our own clarity. Consider some of the choices made by Jonathan and Clarisa in the images below (images taken from https://youtu.be/ujs4hFT2Kz0 filmed by 030 tango).

Images from Clarisa Aragon and Jonathan Saavedra dancing to “Patético” by Tango Bardo at Rathaus Berlin.

A few notes on some of the choices we can make. There are three main answers to the question of how do you line up your feet? One answer is to have the feet on two tracks, where the inside of the heels line up with each other. Another potential is to have the center of the feet line up with each other, so the back foot fits in the shadow of the front foot (if the light were directly in front of you). A third option is to have the balls of the feet on one line, in which case the center of one foot actually crosses the other. There are amazing dancers who use each of these three possibilities, and each results in a different style of walk.

Different potential foot positions.

Turnout determines where your knee is pointing relative to your hip, and beveling determines where your toes are pointing relative to your knee. The turnout and beveling combine to determine the size of “the pizza slice” your feet make on the floor. Your choice of beveling and turnout depend on your aesthetic preferences, foot strength, the music, and what you want to express. You can see Vanessa expressing turnout and some impressive beveling in the first image, and a more neutral ankle and turnout position in the second image (images from https://youtu.be/_7wySfMSuvA). Beveling the standing foot requires a lot of balance and ankle strength to perform safely, so I recommend most dancers to have a neutral ankle for the standing foot and play with different shapes with the free foot. One (more or less) universal rule is to position your feet such that when walking backwards the big toe is the first to arrive, and when walking forward the big toe is the last to leave. This rule is clearly shown by Roxana and Sebastián in the third and fourth images (from https://youtu.be/NFXs20kygAY).

Various levels of turnout and beveling by Vanessa Villalba (dancing with Facundo Pinero). Sebastián Achaval and Roxana Suarez displaying the big toe being the first to land when walking backwards and the last to leave when walking forward.

How you collect depends on some of the other choices you make. One important choice is whether your free foot is flexed or pointed when passing through collection. If your foot is flexed when passing through collection, then your knee, and ankle will pass through collection at the same time. If your foot is pointed, then your knee and ankle will pass through collection at different times, and you will have a continuum of collection (Credit to Jackie Pham for coming up with the term continuum of collection). In the panel above with Jonathan and Clarisa, you can see how they keep a pointed foot through collection. When Clarisa collects at the ankle, Jonathan collects his knees. And when Clarissa collects at the knees Jonathan collects at the ankles. This creates space for the step and makes the movement look connected. Your type of collection also depends on the amount of turnout of the standing leg. When you pass through collection, you want the knees to pass close to each other to not leave a gap between them. The more turnout you have, the more potential gap. This can be solved by turning in the free leg when passing through collection, which leads to a snakelike walk. If you want the snaky effect, then more turnout of the standing leg is helpful, and if you want a more linear direct effect then less turnout of the standing leg is helpful. The choice of turnout impacts your choice of collection, which in turn impacts the effect you display.  

So, you want a better tango walk? Then do this: ask questions and come up with specific answers. These answers give you specific components to work on. Work on the specific components and it will lead to improvement and clarity in these components. Better components sum up to a better walk.

[1] Practicing a range of movements exposes our body to new concepts, improves our balance and coordination, and highlights technical flaws which can then be corrected. Improving a variety of movements makes us a better dancer, when in turn gives us a better walk.

By sericson0, ago

Prepare your Tango Kitchen

The recipe for a good meal: (1) shop for ingredients, (2) cook the food, (3) eat and enjoy. The process is not complicated, but each step must be followed. Shopping ensures you have the ingredients for a flavorful meal. Skip shopping and your meal will be bland and incomplete. Cooking transforms the raw ingredients into actual food. Skip cooking and your fresh ingredients inevitably spoil. Eating gives the whole process pleasure and meaning. Skip eating and you starve.

The same process of shop, cook, eat produces progress in tango. Shopping is where you gather information; where you obtain the recipes and ingredients to grow as a dancer. Classes, workshops, and private lessons, studying tango videos, analyzing tango music, and learning from partners and colleagues all go into the shop category. Cooking is where you prepare yourself and your dance. Solo practice, partner practice, group practice, and conditioning[1] go into the cook category. Eating is where we get to appreciate and enjoy being a dancer. Milongas, house parties, tango marathons and  festivals, watching performances or performing yourself, and tango concerts all go into the eat category.

A healthy balance between time spent shopping, cooking, and eating supports joy and progress in tango.[2] An imbalance between these components can lead to the pain and struggle that so many tango dancers experience. While the perfect balance for you depends on your preferences and experience, a near or complete lack of any one of the components will always lead to problems. Take a moment to write your response to the following:

  1. How are you currently feeling about your tango and your tango progress?
  2. How much of your tango time do you spend in the shop category, the cook category, and the eat category? You don’t have to be super accurate, general fractions will do.

If you answered question one negatively (you struggle with your tango progress) then look to question two. There is a good chance that not enough time in one of the categories is at the root of your symptoms. If you answered one positively, then still take note of your time allocation as a sign of a healthy balance (unless one component is missing, in which case this may be a bellwether of future challenges).

Here is another test to diagnose potential imbalances. Think of something you learned in the last month. Maybe a new step, technique, or musical idea. If you struggle to come up with one, then you are probably lacking in the shop category. Are you better at the concept now than when you first learned it? Can you do the step you learned in class better now than at the end of class? If you answer no, then you are likely lacking in the cook category. Some information must be cooked quickly or spoil, while other information needs to ripen and be prepared slowly, but most information needs to be cooked before digested. Finally, when in the last month did you set aside time to just enjoy dancing? If you struggle to remember a time, then you probably are not eating enough.

There are many tango food deserts that struggle to shop for quality, fresh information. Professional dancers often struggle to find time to eat. But what is by far most commonly missing is cooking. Think of what occurs at a festival. We pack class after class until our head explodes. We then feast, dancing the whole night away. But at no point do we stop and go over what we just learned. We don’t talk with our classmates about the moves, we don’t analyze and practice with each other. Maybe we try out what we learned at the milonga, but it often doesn’t work. After a few weeks it is as if we never took the classes to begin with. I believe the lack of cooking is partly due to the current tango culture, partly due to a lack of space, and partly due to economics.

Classes and milongas are social scenes, while practices are often a solitary or partner endeavor. It doesn’t have to be this way, and I would argue that deep friendships result from collaborative practice spaces. But the fact remains that until we create more collaborative practice spaces, then practice comes at the expense of social interactions. A lack of practice space also leads to a lack of practice. You can’t cook without a kitchen. Let us not kid ourselves about most practicas, where often very little practice occurs.[3] A good tango kitchen should be noisy, busy, and have lots of chopping up of movements and sequences to prepare them. If you find yourself at a practica dancing whole tandas without stopping and analyzing, then you are at the dining table, not in the kitchen.  

There is a clear business model for classes and milongas, but not as much for practice spaces. Practice often works best with a smaller number of people than a milonga, and practice requires a different hierarchy structure than classes. In a class, the teacher has the information, and you pay them to give it to you. In a practice, you, your partner, and your fellow colleagues all have information to share so no money is exchanged. There are also many dancers who are not interested in improving. This is understandable, there are many priorities we need to balance in life, and practice is by no means a requirement to be part of the tango community. But this does mean that only a subset of dancers who will show up to the milonga would also show up to a practice space, further reducing the profitability of such a space. The economics dictate that we can rely on professionals to sell us ingredients, and organizers to provide spaces to eat, but it is up to the individual and community to create kitchens to cook in.

Those of us lucky enough to have our partners and our own tango kitchens go away on our own time and practice what we learn. We find the space to transform learning into doing and then can go out and enjoy. We progress faster, but of course we do; we had the space to. This same progress can happen for everyone, we just need to provide the space and intention for it. There is no reason we can’t have more practice and collaboration. There is no reason we can’t create in the community and at the festival a space for all of us to share and practice and improve our dance together. If we put more intention in cooking together, then we will all have better food to enjoy together.

[1] For many sports and arts, conditioning should probably get its own fourth category. I include it here in cooking in part to maintain a cleaner structure, and in part due to tango being primarily a social dance with relatively less physical requirements. While still important, the physical requirements of a high-level social tango dancer are less than say the physical requirements of a high level gymnast, boxer, rock climber, or ballet dancer. If you are interested in the performative side of tango, it may be useful to place a greater emphasis on conditioning to ensure you are preparing your body to accept the movements you want it to do. 

[2] The quality of time spent is of course a critical component, but we will set that aside for the moment.

[3] There are of course exceptions to this statement. If you say “but our practica is different” then it probably is, but that is also probably because the organizer and participants are spending a lot of time and care in ensuring the space is conducive to practice. 

By sericson0, ago

Dial up your Tango Dance: How to Progressively Grow Your Dancing Skills

To get strong, you start with light weights slowly increase to heavier weight. To become a better runner, you progressively increase the speed or distance. To learn a musical instrument, you start with simple scales and songs and progress to more challenging pieces and concepts. In all cases, we learn by progressively increasing difficulty such that the task stays challenging but not too challenging. We build a staircase where each new step is a little bit higher than the next. The same principle applies to learning Tango.

Beginner dancers often feel overwhelmed and lost, and most dancers struggle to integrate moves they learn in class into their dance in the milonga—both symptoms of the difficulty being set too high. At the same time, dancers who have been at it for a few years tend to plateau, reaching what psychology professor Anders Ericsson calls “that level of ‘acceptable’ performance and automaticity [where] the additional years of ‘practice’ don’t lead to improvement.”[1] This stagnation is a symptom of the difficulty being set too low.

The gym has nicely labeled weights that we can add, and we can change variables such as reps, sets, exercises, and recovery time to increase difficulty as we get stronger. But how do we vary the challenge of Tango? What are the variables that we can use to dial up or down the difficulty of the dance?

There are six variables that determine the difficulty of a move, sequence, concept, or really any part of the dance. I’ll call them familiarity, complexity, accuracy, timing, partnering, and navigating. A new movement is more difficult than a familiar movement. A complex pattern is more difficult than a simple pattern. Execution with precision and accuracy is more difficult than ‘just doing the step’. Specific timing and musicality is more difficult than doing a step to the beat or without music. Leading or following a step with a new partner is more difficult than with your regular partner. And finally, navigating a crowded milonga is more difficult than when no one else is around.

Familiarity, complexity, and accuracy are internal variables while timing, partnering, and navigating are external variables.[2] Internal variables are based on our own knowledge and actions—our familiarity with a concept, our choice of movement complexity, and our accuracy as a dancer. External variables depend on the external environment—who asks us to dance, what music is playing, and the amount of space.

Learning depends on being able to progressively vary the difficulty, so learning Tango depends on our ability to vary the difficulty of these six variables. Few if any dancers can accurately execute a new, complex move musically with a new partner in a crowded milonga. Something must give. The challenge is that in the milonga the external variables are not set by us.[3] The milonga dials up the external variables, increasing total difficulty, which often leads to sacrificing the development of internal variables to meet these difficulties. We all know dancers who pull out every complicated move, but without accuracy or grace. We also know dancers who may be musical and have a yummy embrace but just repeat the same few simple steps over and over at every marathon they attend. So many late-night Tango conversations revolve around the merits of fancy moves versus elegant posture versus connections versus musicality. But the truth is we can have it all. We can learn new concepts and dance complicated sequences musically and with connection in a crowded space. We just need to turn down the external dials for a bit.

For many of us, we go straight from learning a new step in a class to trying it out at the milonga. It ends up not working so we go back to our tried and true dance. But of course it doesn’t work. at the milonga all the difficulty dials are all turned up to 11. It’s a recipe for disaster. Instead of trying our new step at the milonga, first go to a quiet space. No music, no navigation, no need to perform, no distractions. Turn all the dials way down and then build back up. Start with getting familiar with the concept. Then break the movement into small components to reduce complexity. Drill each component and film ourselves to work on accuracy. Then start combining and adding back in the external variables. Play with different variations to work the lead and follow. Practice to different music to work on musicality. Start controlling the spacing, see how big and how small you can make the same movement. Ask for help and feedback along the way. Finally, test it out at a milonga. Soon enough you will have a new move to play with, dance and enjoy. By controlling your dials instead of being controlled by them, you build your staircase to become a more expressive and enjoyable dancer.

[1] Anders Ericsson spent much of his career studying what makes experts experts. I highly recommend checking out his research and writings. Quote comes from the book Peak: Secrets from the new Science of Expertise

[2] With a little word smithing, I was able to get the internal variables to end with ‘y’ and the external variables to end with ‘ing’, which can be helpful for identifying each.

[3] Granted, we can choose who we dance with and the songs we dance to. But the fact remains that it is generally frowned upon in the milonga to do things like trying the same move several times in a row paying no attention to the music or space. 

By sericson0, ago