Mathematicians play a game where they pick a few assumptions and then see where these assumptions lead. You can make any assumptions you want, but the rule is that your assumptions can’t say something false is true. The more things you can prove with your assumptions the better, and you get bonus points for elegance by getting away with fewer and simpler assumptions.
We can play the same game with tango: come up with assumptions for how the dance works and then see where these assumptions lead us. The more movements and concepts we can infer the better, and it’s even better if we can explain a lot with a few elegant assumptions. But remember to check that we don’t have incorrect assumptions that lead to falsehoods.
You may say that tango is a dance, not mathematics. It is something to be felt, not thought about. While intellectualizing movement is not the same as doing the movement, it is often our mental framework of the dance that holds us back. I believe it was John Maynard Keynes who said “Practical dancers who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct tanguero.” (Keynes was a well-known D’Arienzo-side economist). It is worth taking a moment to examine and clarify our assumptions for the dance, and maybe update some old ones or make some new ones.
An assumption I have often heard is that our upper body counter-twists when we walk, so we twist to the right when we step with our right foot and twist to the left when we step with our left foot. This gives a nice feeling when we walk parallel inside partner and when we take a first step outside partner. But we find that that a second step outside partner would have us both twisting away from each other. Maybe we add the assumption that “We counter-twist except for the second step outside partner.” But this is not a particularly elegant solution. Going into cross system also recreates the problem on the first step, so eventually we decide it was not a very good assumption after all.
An assumption I remember having when I was early in my tango journey went along the lines of “You and your partner should lean into each other to share an axis and create connection in the chest.” Leading a back step with this assumption made sense as I would simply lean more into my partner until they felt the need to move away from the oncoming pressure. I could even convince myself that this was what “a real tango connection should feel like.” Leading my partner to step forward was trickier, because when they felt the embrace going away they would sometimes just lean more to try and keep the connection. I would then have to convince myself that “You never step backwards in a milonga anyways.” More cracks in the theory came about when I tried to pivot, as leaning often means our hips are tilted relative to the floor. Either your hips don’t pivot at all relative to your upper body, or your hip comes up whenever you pivot. I also started getting lower back pain, as it turns out our spine is not designed to be torqued while out of alignment and under load for hours on end. The solution was to tell myself that “All I need is a good walk.” And of course, the only way to make colgadas work if we are both leaning forwards is to respond with “I only care about real tango moves.”
I finally had to admit that leaning forward to share an axis was not a very good assumption because it inhibited moves other than walking forward. To progress, I had to update my assumptions for how the dance worked. Given the general prevalence in tango of sore backs, hips coming up during pivots, heavy embraces, and difficulty with leading forward steps, I wonder how many dancers currently have the idea of leaning on their partner embedded somewhere in their assumptions? Maybe, it is time for us to update our framework for how we think about the dance.
My partner Jackie and I like to say that our legs move rectilinearly forward, side, or back. Passing through collection is implied from this assumption, and it helps explain how to lead and where to step as a follow. You want to lead your follower to step somewhere, then you first ask them to pivot their hips so that they can then step directly forward, side, or back. Movements such as crosses and planeos don’t seem to fit into the framework of rectilinear steps though, because in crosses, the leg moves diagonally and in planeos the leg moves in a circle. A solution could be to just consider these movements as special cases, but this is not a particularly elegant solution. A more elegant solution may be to update the rule to “We change our axis directly forward, side, or back relative to our hips.” This keeps the same properties as before while also incorporating planeos and crosses. We keep the same axis when we circle our leg in a planeo, and when we change weight in a cross we move sideways, meaning a cross is simply the expression of being able to change weight to both sides. Another solution could be to discover a different assumption, maybe where straight steps are only one type of many possible step types? Maybe you have your own assumption or solution?
A set of assumptions that I have been enjoying exploring are: (1) the couple maintains the distance between their axes, (2) the follower stays directly between the elbows of the leader. These assumptions imply that leading largely boils down to (1) making clear where my axis is and will be, and (2) making clear where my elbows are and will be. Several insights can be inferred from these assumptions, e.g., where you signal your axis is going to move determines how much your partner pivots. You can even deduce how to lead the basic cross by strategically placing your axis without the need to push with your arms. These rules do leave out how to change the distance between axes, which requires additional assumptions. Maybe these assumptions help you discover something new in your own dance, or maybe you find different, more elegant assumptions that better suit your tango needs.
There is no one right way for how to dance tango and there is no single set of rules for how the dance works. Even one plus one doesn’t have to equal two. One plus one equals ten to a computer, one flip plus one flip equals zero flips to a coin, and pressing one twice still just gets you to the first floor on an elevator. Different assumptions suit different needs. We each come with our own assumptions of how dance works, and part of the joy of social dancing is discovering how we can make our assumptions all fit together. I encourage you to make explicit the assumptions you make for yourself and interrogate your own framework. Maybe you will find some assumptions that are better dropping, or maybe you find ways to make your assumptions more elegant. And maybe you even discover some new insights that open up new possibilities in your dance.
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