Tango dancers lost in the moment on the streets of San Telmo in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Tango – Take 2
Practice the artful dance of nonduality.
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Photo: © King Ho Yim | Dreamstime.com
BY rachel trachten
hink tango...Old-world elegance, classic style—and a surprising connection with modern-day movement practices. “The first thing you immediately discover in a tango class is that there is no basic step,” says Sharna Fabiano, executive director of Tango Mercurio in Washington, D.C. “That’s the shocking thing that sets it apart from other social dances.” As a fully improvised dance, social tango is built on connection between the two partners. Given a set of patterns, structures, and conventions, tango dancers rely on constant, subtle communication to create their dance. Mitra Martin, who co-directs the school Oxygen Tango in Los Angeles, describes her partnership with Stefan Fabry. “We have to be extremely present with one another, and with the music, for the dance to work,” she says. When either Martin or Fabry become distracted, the person who has lost focus says the word “here,” to reinforce presence for both. Though it’s natural to assume that the leader makes all the decisions in a tango, the relationship between leader and follower is far more subtle, according to Fabiano. She describes a process in which the leader decides on a step, then observes the follower’s reaction, which in turn influences the leader’s next movement. “There’s a back and forth,” she says. “Once you get into that zone, as in Contact Improvisation (CI), the leading and following
roles begin to blur.” In both forms, there is a shared dance vocabulary, but it’s the communication between partners that creates the flow. Martin views tango and CI as complementary disciplines. “Among those who have been exposed to both forms, there’s a lot of curiosity and experimentation about bringing the two together,” she says. In dancing the tango, she calls on the sensation of freedom and expressiveness, the attitude, she feels during CI. By summoning this attitude, she is able to express herself more authentically in tango despite the constraints of being the follower. Tango also finds a kindred spirit in the practice of yoga. Like yogis, tango dancers sometimes face intrusive thoughts or emotions—judgment, frustration, or impatience. Accepting these unwelcome intrusions without allowing them to distract is a goal in yoga studios and ballrooms alike. In both tango and yoga, steps and movement patterns are practiced again and again, but never truly attained. Martin likens the quest for the perfect “ocho” (a popular tango step originally based on the figure eight) to trying to perfect the plié or downward dog. Fabiano concurs. “You can’t finish learning it,” she says of the tango. “The desire is to be present to each unique dance rather than to achieve some kind of ideal. It’s in becoming more present that you discover more about the form and about yourself.”
“We have to be extremely present with one another, and with the music, for the dance to work.”
conscious dancer | FALL 2010
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