We express ourselves in dance through movement and stillness. Having clear descriptions of motion supports our growth as dancers and dance instructors. Since Einstein, physicists have realized that all motion is relative, and its description depends on the frame of reference. When it comes to dance, what are the reference frames we can describe movement relative to?
There are three reference frames we can speak from. We can speak of movement relative to 1) the space, 2) our partner, and 3) another part of our body. When we take a sidestep together, our hands move relative to space but stay fixed relative to our partner and our torso. While pivoting, we may have our hips move relative to our torso while our torso stays fixed in space. Each frame of reference provides unique insights, and understanding a movement relative to all three reference points provides a fuller understanding of the dance.
Most movements have an invariance, where one of the reference frames remains fixed throughout the motion. Finding the invariance is especially useful for understanding a movement. It is much easier to keep something fixed than to know how much to move, especially when the size of step or rotation changes. Often, the invariance is in the embrace, providing an oasis of calm for our partner as we move in space. A volcada, for example, has the invariance in our own body where we keep our own alignment while tilting. With dynamics such as compressions and elastic movements, we tend to keep a point fixed in space that our partners and ourselves both move relative to.
The three reference points help us communicate better, both as a teacher and as a student. Seemingly contradictory advice is often actually the same advice from different reference frames. Our arms sometimes have to move more in space to be able to provide a still embrace relative to our partner. One teacher may tell us to move our arms more, and another tells us to move our arms less, but they are both giving the same feedback just from different reference frames.
Feedback from our partner is often about what they are feeling, which coincides with how we are moving relative to their body. When a teacher shows us a new move, the advice is often how we move our body relative to ourselves. Comments from outside observers tend to be about how we move in space. Each type of feedback gives a new perspective. Seek out information from all three reference frames and then combine them to a fuller understanding of the dance.
What are the components of a step in tango? Of course there are many ways to step, and no person will move the same as another. And it would be too much to even enumerate the intricate joint and muscle movements that occur when we move, to say nothing of understanding or teaching such nuances. But is there a general high-level framework we can use to think about our movements to help teach and understand the broader concepts involved? Something that could help us be able to be more comfortable, connected, and creative, and minimize loss of balance and disconnection?
Here is a framework I have been teaching and using in my own dance which I find useful and seems to produce positive results in our students. I call it the 5 P’s of tango movement. Movements are broken into five sub-components:
Project – extend the free leg while maintaining balance on the standing leg.
Push – muscles of the standing leg propel us beyond our projection.
Plant – free leg stops moving and provides a counter-force to control our movement
Pull – muscles of the new standing leg work to pull our axis towards it
Possibly Pivot – depending on the next movement, we may pivot before the next projection
These components are of course not concepts I developed, instead drawing heavily on the knowledge of teachers and colleagues who have studied the dance more deeply than myself and have been generous to share their insights. I only hope that this specific framing of project, push, plant, pull, and possibly pivot can provide some small addition to the understanding of tango movement and teaching pedagogy.
The five P’s help us understand the pieces of movements that can practice to gain control over, and helps us diagnose challenges we often encounter in the dance. One common challenge occurs is when we push without any projection. When done unintentionally, this results in making both ourselves and our partner feel rushed. Another common challenge is maintaining balance throughout the step. This is largely a matter of planting and pulling to control the transfer of weight. If you find yourself losing balance in your steps, consider focusing your attention on planting the free leg and then using it to pull yourself onto the new axis.
We often struggle maintaining balance when pivoting. This usually occurs because we do not separate the pulling and pivoting portions. Though it may sound counterintuitive, if you find yourself losing balance in pivots, try delaying when you start pivoting so that you have more time to complete the pull. Similarly, delaying when we start the next projection helps us succeed in movements such as back sacadas.
Much of the time we perform all five in the stated order, but removing one component or changing the order can give new variations and flavors to the dance. A lapiz, for example, can be thought of as adding a pivot after a projection. We can also give each P a different amount of time or intensity. A small amount of pulling will bring our axis over the new leg while additional pulling will bring our new free leg to collection. Giving some components more or less weight results in different styles and effects. In general, gaining control over each P and being able to fluidly connect them provides a great deal of control and possibilities for creativity.
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.
Why do some movements work much better on one side than the other? Why is the ocho cortado a “beginner” move on the closed side but an “advanced” move on the open side? Same goes with the cross. Turning one direction is often easier than the other. Perhaps most interesting of all is that the leader’s back step to the closed side is literally the first step most tango dancers learn (step one of the basic), but the back step to the open side is challenging even for professional tango dancers to pull off.
Eventually we want to know why moves work better in one direction than the other, if for no other reason than to have a better answer than “Well, that is just the way it is.” The simplest explanation is to blame differences in the embrace. Having one open side and one closed side creates an asymmetry in the embrace, which makes some moves easier in one direction than the other. Unfortunately, when we empirically test this hypothesis by using a symmetrical practice embrace (where we hold each other’s elbows) we find that the asymmetries persist.
Accepting that some moves are harder to lead on one side than the other even in a symmetric practice embrace, we jump to the next logical solution…blame our follower. It must be all the hours of other dancers leading the same cross that has spoiled their ability to understand my perfect lead to the other side. Tango moves must be like the side of the road you drive on. Maybe in England they all cross on the closed side? I heard that in Sweden followers used to cross right in front of left until one day in 1967 where the whole country switched to left in front of right. Joking aside, blaming a lack of familiarity is simply not the answer to explain the persistent asymmetries between one side and the other. For one, in a partnership where you can discuss what movements you are practicing and have ample time to get familiar with different movements, it remains that many movements feel better on one side than the other. But then what is the culprit?
Here is the answer I have come to, which has opened up movements I previously could not lead. Hopefully it is helpful for you too. The asymmetry between sides comes not just from the embrace, but from the offset of the head, spine, and feet. When we dance, our heads are offset to the left of our partner’s. This offset in the head causes our spines to be offset as well, which in turn results in our feet being staggered. While some dancers may set up toe to toe, most take a position where our left foot is outside of our partner’s feet and our right foot is between their feet. It is this staggered foot position that makes moves work better on one side.
Jonathan and Clarissa displaying the staggered foot position. Image from here
Unlike which hand is around our partner’s back, which is a set aesthetic of the dance, the staggered foot position is something we can control. We talk about being ‘inside partner,’ but there are actually two inside partner positions: the default where our right foot is between our partner’s feet, and a shifted inside position where our left foot is between our partner’s feet. This means there are four foot relations: (1) outside partner to the left, (2) default inside partner, (3) shifted inside partner, and (4) outside partner to the right.
As a follower, from the default position, it feels uncomfortable to step forward with our right leg (on the open side) because we have to step between our partner’s feet. Stepping forward with the left foot (on the closed side) is not a problem because of the staggered position. The common solution to lead our partner to step forward on the open side is to shift to outside partner so that there is a free path to step forward. But knowing there are two inside positions gives us another possibility. The shifted inside partner position suddenly makes the follower’s forward step on the open side feel more natural.
The staggered position means the follower is naturally ahead when turning clockwise while the leader is naturally ahead when turning counterclockwise. Some turns work better when the leader is ahead, while other turns works better when the leader drafts behind the follower. Thus, some turns are easier in one direction than the other. Same goes for many other movements such as sacadas, ganchos, and colgadas. One solution is to only do the move in one direction. The other (hopefully preferred) solution is to control both staggered positions so that the movements work on both sides. When a move feels like it only works on one side, first check the foot position and spine position before blaming the embrace or blaming your partner. There are two inside positions, and the non-default option opens the possibility for new movements. Having control of these small details facilitates moves that feel challenging otherwise.
To move your body through space, you impart force on the external world. The faster you move and the farther you move, the more force you must generate. Your body has two interactions with the outside world: one with the floor and one with your partner.[1] You can push the floor, and you can push your partner. Tango uses a mixture of both. Here I am talking about pushing to move around the floor, though the same applies to the push to overcome the force of gravity (if you don’t use the floor to keep yourself up, then your partner must hold you up) The right balance between using the floor and using your partner can be the difference between being a comfortable or uncomfortable dancer.
As a follower, the more you use the floor, the less you use your partner. If you generate 40% of the required force from the floor then you need 60% from your partner, while if you generate 90% from the floor then you only need 10% from your partner. There is a direct connection between the force that goes into your partner and how heavy you feel as a follow. Pushing more from the floor will make the embrace feel lighter. The optimum seems to be to receive a light but non-zero force from your partner (so maybe you generate 90-95% of your movement from the floor but still leave 5-10% to give some weight in the connection). A little bit of force provides a feeling of weight, connection, and assurance, while too much force provides a feeling of heaviness and sore arms.
Understanding that force is required to move through space helps clarify a common misunderstanding. From the leader’s perspective, we feel a force acting against us, which can be described as resistance. This perception sometimes results in teachers and partners giving followers the cue to “resist your partner.” In response, followers generate force in opposition to the movement, leading to a heavy embrace. We want the opposite of resistance, where both partners generate most of our movements from the floor under our own power.
As a leader, your job is not to push your follower, but to ask them to move from the floor. Here is a simple mantra that I believe all leaders should hear. Ask your follower to push the floor, don’t push your follower. Or, similarly, the force comes from the floor, don’t force your follow. You push your follower when you try to take a bigger or faster step than they are prepared to take, which usually happens because you do not give enough time between the start of the lead and the execution of the movement. You need to give your partner enough time to react and move under their own power. I personally find it helpful to think of the timing of the leader as similar to navigating while driving, where you give the directions well in advance of when the driver actually changes lanes (https://tangotopics.org/driver-and-navigator/). An additional tip: you also generate force from the floor so that your partner does not have to pull you. The goal is to coordinate the forces into the floor so that you can take strong powerful steps while maintaining a light comfortable connection.
A few more physics concepts are worth mentioning. Your connection with the floor is below your center of mass while your connection to your partner is generally above your center of mass. We need to distribute these forces throughout our body, or they will torque our body out of alignment. Beginner dancers tend to fall backwards (head gets behind hips) because the forces between the partner torques their upper body out of alignment of their lower body. This is especially common when walking backwards but can happen when going forward as well. The fix where you lean on your partner so that the weight of gravity counteracts the torque on your upper body is only marginally better (works decently when the follower walks backwards but compromises the ability for the follower to take assertive forward steps). A much better approach is to generate more force through the floor and transfer this force efficiently through your leg and core to maintain alignment while moving.
Changing direction or speed changes the velocity of both partners. If we change our velocity at the same rate, then we will accelerate in space while maintaining a constant connection between the partnership. But if we change our velocity at different rates, then one person will accelerate towards or away from the other. If we reduce the tone in our embrace then we can absorb these changes without imparting force on our partner, such as if we change from open to close embrace. Smooth changes in acceleration within the partnership can also lead to enjoyable dynamics of compression and elasticity. But rapid changes without absorption tend to be uncomfortable. In physics, a change of acceleration is called a jerk, with a faster change in acceleration resulting in more jerk. Remember this. Don’t to be a jerk to your partner.
We do this by generating force through the ground to move ourselves. We coordinate the timing of our movements so that we do not have to push (too much). We change directions and change speeds together so that we do not jerk our partner. In this way we can fly through space while keeping a calm, comfortable connection.
[1] Thank you to Sol Orozco for some enlightening discussions on this topic.
Pivots are a fundamental part of tango dancing, and a well performed pivot looks and feels wonderful. But let’s face it, pivots are challenging. We all know we need to work to develop our pivots, but what should we actually focus on? Here are two tips that can help.
Keep the foot and pelvis of our standing leg aligned. We want the foot and pelvis to turn at the same time and at the same speed. It is as if our standing leg and pelvis are in a cast and move as one unit. Another piece of imagery: you can think of headlights shining from your standing foot and the middle of your pelvis. You want these headlights to point in the same direction throughout the pivot. Keeping the foot and pelvis aligned will provide balance and minimize our chance of injury. We want to utilize the freedom in our hips, but we want the movement to happen in the free leg, not the standing leg. It is common for us to rotate in the hip joint of the standing leg without moving the foot. This reduces our stability and makes the pivot harder. More important though, moving the pelvis separate from the standing foot puts a lot of torque on our knee, ankle, and foot, which can cause pain or even injury. If you find yourself having a sore knee or ankle after dancing, there is a good chance that you are moving the hip and foot separately in your pivots. Focus on keeping your standing foot and pelvis aligned throughout the pivot and see if it helps.
The spiral in the upper body has a counter-spiral in the lower body. Finding the counter spiral through the floor helps provide balance, provides a feeling of groundedness, allows for more rotation in the upper body, and makes our pivots look more dynamic. As a concrete example, say we are doing a front ocho with the right foot so that we will turn in a clockwise direction. Our upper body goes in the same direction of the turn (left shoulder comes forward, right shoulder goes backwards). The rotation of our upper body puts a torque on our hips which will pull them clockwise as well. To counteract this torque, we twist our foot into the ground counterclockwise, sending energy towards our midline. The torques from the spiral in the upper body and the counter-spiral in the lower body cancel each other out to give us a steady pelvis. You should feel that the counter-spiral grounds you and allows you to twist the upper body more. You release this counter-spiral at the moment of the pivot, which should now feel has more ease and energy. The rule for the counter-spiral is to twist your foot into the midline in front ochos and away from the midline in back ochos.[1] We want to just counter-spiral enough to stabilize our hips, not so much that it starts to twist our knee.
The two tips (1) keeping the foot and pelvis of our standing leg aligned, and (2) finding the counter-spiral in the lower body should help with your pivots. Cleaner and more efficient pivots then help with all the other movements you want to do, opening up new possibilities in your dance.
[1] Some teachers use the terms disassociation when the shoulder opposite the standing leg comes forward, such as with a front ocho, and association when the same shoulder as the standing leg comes forward, such as with a back ocho. The more general rule is that the foot spirals towards the midline in disassociated pivots and spirals away from the midline in associated pivots. I first heard the terminology of disassociation and association from Gianpiero Galdi and Lorena Tarntino, though I am not sure whether they or someone else first coined the terms.
When I was two years into my tango journey, I attended a workshop with a couple whose dancing I admired. At the end of the classes I was lucky enough to dance with the instructor. Afterwards she said my was coming along well and asked if I was open to a piece of feedback? Of course, I wanted to hear! She said, “Remember to make a triangle for your sacadas.” The whole ride home I was repeating to myself remember to make a triangle for sacadas, remember to make a triangle for sacadas. When I got home, the question finally came to me: butwhat kind of triangle?
I majored in mathematics, so I have a knack for overcomplicating everything, and for thinking way too much about triangles. Are sacadas the symmetric beauty of equilateral triangles? Or maybe the right answer lies with Pythagoras? A sacada is a cute step, so should I think of acute triangles? Or wait, scalene and sacadas both start with ‘s’ and have seven letters. that must be the answer. I believe I finally have an answer, which I share with you here.
A bit of vocabulary. The term sacada is comes from the Spanish word sacar, which means to take out.[1] Our standing leg is the one we have weight on and our free leg does not have weight. We step onto the arriving leg, and step from the trailing leg. A sacada is when our arriving leg intersects our partner’s trailing leg. In this way, we generate the effect of “taking out” our partner’s leg. There are three points: the foot of standing leg which will be our trailing leg when we step (S), the foot of our partner’s trailing leg (T), and the foot of our partner’s arriving leg (A). These three points form a triangle.
Our arriving leg intersects our partner’s trailing leg somewhere between the ankle and knee. The figures below show a sacada towards the ankle (where there is no gap between the intersecting feet), and a sacada towards the knee (where there is a gap between the intersecting feet). All photos are taken from a performance of Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Ann in Austin Texas (https://youtu.be/Ez8y8iS8qPQ).
Sacada towards ankle
Sacada towards knee
The game of sacadas is all about where we position our standing leg. We position our standing leg (S) such that our free leg can step in a straight line to intersect our partner’s trailing leg without having to cross our own feet. What makes this game challenging is that our feet and our hips have width. This is not a problem when our free foot is inside the base of the triangle but presents a challenge when our free foot is outside. Doing a back pivot compounds the problem, because it generally moves the free foot farther outside the base of the triangle.
Here is my diagram to highlight the idea. Our partner takes a sidestep from their left trailing leg to their right arriving leg. If our standing leg is on the right, then our left foot (F) lies inside. This is the most forgiving sacada as most triangles work. A right triangle even works well here (first figure). Now suppose we are standing on our left foot, so our right free leg lies outside the base of the triangle. This is less forgiving, as a right triangle would make us cross our feet. Because of the width of our feet, we need to shift the vertex of our standing position to be more like an equilateral triangle. Finally, say we are standing on our right foot and want to do a back sacada. Then we need to shift over the standing leg vertex even more because the hip has width, and the back pivot moves our foot outside of the base of the triangle.
Front sacada with left foot
Front sacada with right foot
Back sacada with left foot
A great game is to have your partner pause with feet apart. Play with how the position of your standing food needs to shift to comfortably complete the three sacada positions shown in the diagrams. You need to shift your standing foot when your other foot is in the outside position and shift even more to when the back pivot moves it to the outside position. Another great game is to do the same sacadas but do it in the sidestep after the forward in the turn. The 90° degree turn between the forward and side step changes the geometry. Take a few minutes to play these games, they are well worth the time.
The figures below show an interesting example of this principle. In the first figure, Gielle’s standing foot is close to Gustavo’s arrival foot to accommodate space for her back pivot. In the second figure, Gustavo also does a back sacada, but his pivot brings his free foot inside the base of the triangle, so Gustavo’s standing leg position is closer to Giselle’s trailing leg.
Back sacada with pivot to the outside
Back sacada with pivot to the inside
Sacadas work or fail based on where the standing leg is positioned. Where the standing leg is located depends on where you last stepped. Thus, a sacada will work or fail, will feel comfortable or uncomfortable, based on the step before. You could spend forever troubleshooting a step without any progress, because it is the step before that matters. My final answer is that there is not one kind of triangle. You move the standing foot to make space for your foot width and for your hip pivot. Now go find the triangle for each kind of sacada you want to make.
Nota Bene from Jacqueline Pham
Similar to Sean, I think of sacadas in terms of triangles. We have the same map, but I invite you to consider an additional angle of the sacada triangle.
The partner receiving the sacada will typically move horizontally across the trajectory of the partner entering the sacada. Thus, the Trailing and Arriving legs of the receiving partner are the same as the above diagrams. However, I tend to think of the remaining leg of the triangle (which belongs to the partner entering the sacada) as the FREE leg (F) rather than the standing leg.
Notice that in each of the 3 sacada triangles above, the free leg forms a right triangle as it enters the sacada near the Trailing leg (the 90-degree vertex of the right triangle). Sometimes this trigonometry can shift, but aiming for this right triangle using the Free leghelps me find the sweet spot, regardless of whether I am leading or following, entering or receiving the sacada.
As a leader: if I am entering or receiving the sacada and my partner’s trajectory is too close or too far away from me, then I can adjust my standing leg however necessary to have my Free leg form a right triangle as it enters the sacada.
As a follower: if my partner’s trajectory is a bit askew or if they do not pivot me enough, I can use the goal of achieving a right triangle to either A) turbo-charge my pivot before the sacada to get my Free leg into the right trajectory, or B) understand that I will have to enter at a more challenging angle and turbo-charge my pivot after the sacada/upon arrival to compensate and correct the trajectory. I use the same right triangle principle for both entering and receiving a sacada to chart out the ideal setup and resolution. Consider this the Drive Assist that I, as the driver of our tango vehicle, can engage in case of unexpected road conditions to turbo-charge our dance.
[1] In high school Spanish class, we had to memorize the phrase “sacar la basura” which means “to take out the trash.” That and how to ask for directions to the library are pretty much the sum total of what I learned in my years of high school Spanish.
