Limerick Tango

…danced for an audience of one.

Mr Fry in his essay Don’t mind your language raised the question:

Is language the father of thought?¹

No it’s not. Language is with what we frame our thoughts. Our thoughts are not words but as they bubble up through our conscious we abstract them into words and language. Each age views the working of the mind in what it can see around it. From computer routines to clockwork mechanics there are umpteen ways of describing how the mind works.

Currently among cognitive psychologists there are two competing chicken and egg theories about which comes first: thought or movement.

The first states that the neural pathways organise themselves first and then move out through the body figuring how to move these new found limbs.

The second states that movement begins first; stimulating the sensory pathways and kicking the neural process into action. This essentially means that movement is the basis for all thought even though it gets abstracted out as our thoughts get more complex.

Personally I subscribe to the second theory. It explains why my thoughts ‘move’ and why I do my best thinking while walking. It may also be the reason for my inability to use the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ immediately after performing a movement.

Think on this, or rather don’t, the next time you tango.

¹Obviously he’s not the first to raise the question but it was his essay that inspired this post and is the nearest reference I have to hand.

My last post on boleos acquired some attention (here, here, here and here). So I thought, rather than just make sweeping statements, I’d share some of the tips and techniques that led me to that conclusion.

The boleo is a whip-like action. Please note the use of the term ‘whip-like’ and not whipping.

In which case go fetch your bull whips.

You don’t have one so we will resort to flicking towels like you used to do to your siblings when you were younger instead.

Practice flicking your towel. Flicking it into free space will do, there is no need to call round to your siblings home and chase them round the bedroom like you used to. Concentrate on getting a good cracking sound with your towel.

You will note that a good whipping action is achieved not when all of the towel has been played forward and then pulled back but when the middle or the ‘belly’ of the towel has reached its furthest extent. To achieve the cracking sound you are using the forward going momentum of the trailing tip which flips forward as you pull back. Any hesitation between throwing forward and pulling back and that stored momentum will dissapate.

Now to putting that into physical practice. Partner yourself with the back of a chair. Stand with your weight on your left foot and your right leg free and easy. Pivot on your left foot clockwise shy of 90° and then counter-clockwise by turning first from the chest and allowing that movement to wind down through the hips and into the feet and the legs. Do that motion freely and easily for a while letting your right leg hang rag-doll like. Now as you turn out and you feel the back of your right knee reach its furthest extent turn back against the movement. If your leg is free and easy the lower half should flick up whip-like as you counter rotate.

My other tip for boloes is practicing a particular leg wrap. He leads a side step to the open side. As he does he places his right foot between hers effectively preventing her from collecting her feet together. He then impels her torso, and with it her free leg, backwards before bringing it in towards him casuing her to wrap her free leg around his. I have always found that the practice of this movement is approached with a certain timmidity that when insinuated into the free leg captures exactly the ease of movement required for quality boleos.

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Two photos of Enrique Ringa and Marion Krauthaker (of Caminos de Tango) preforming at the December 2008 Mamuska night in Limerick.

More pictures can be seen in the LimerickTango Flickr pool.

While watching the Insurance episode of Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money it struck me how much there is an element of risk in dancing tango.

You have no idea of your partners qualities or abilities, what steps they do or do not know, where the music will take you or what steps you will do.

It is, in essence, the gamblers perfect dance.

Adornments are a popular topic to write about. Recently Johanna wrote the following:

Adornos were “earned”, through an organic process of self-discovery over the course of time. A LOT of time. They emerged by learning how our bodies move, and how our listening translated into motion through our nervous and musculo-skeletal systems. And how different partners affected our ability to incorporate them into our dance. As a result, there was an infinite variety of individual embellishments, and the way we expressed ourselves with different partners.

To me that reads a lot like how one develops ones signature. That quasi-legible scrawl that you use as your mark, your insignia on documents. Did you recieve any instruction in the development of your signature? No one suggested to me that the i in my signature should devolve to a vestigial dot after the v that precedes it, but it has.

Your adornments are your signature, the emphasis being on your.

The “Tango walk” is similar to walking on frozen ground in boots with steel tipped heels. You have to keep your centre of baclance from shifting back onto those slippy heels and you have to find grip with your metatarsals.