Limerick Tango

A good dancer is not the sum of their steps.

Technique will only make you not bad.

Being able to earnestly and honestly engage with your partner is the mark of a good dancer.

Usually a single edged cut and thrust weapon, such as a sabre, has more than one edge. The top third of the back of the blade is often given an edge to add to the blades thrusting ability. Such an edge is known as the false edge.

The false edge in tango is blindly practising technique, ingraining your movements with the soulless movements of an automaton. Yes your movements will have gained an edge in their precision but your dancing will lose something in the way of feeling. If you want to find feeling when you dance then it is essential that you have feeling when you practise.

The height of feeling in your kicks is more important to me than their distance from the floor.

It is safe to say that tango is not the easiest thing in the world to learn. It can seem to have so many bits. Feet, posture, embrace, intention. And it’s ok when learning specific things about each element to concentrate on that element. But when dancing you must bring it all together. It is no good going “feet are in the right position” and then forgetting about them otherwise it just becomes a checklist tango.

My Maestro di Arma taught with a mantra of “Form, Tempo, Intent”. For their attacks to be effective a fencer should have good form. For that attack to to pose a threat it must have intent and it must be executed at the right time, tempo. It is a mantra that I keep bumping into the essence of everywhere, nowhere more so than tango.

Let us start with a quote from E. Santos Discepolo lifted from Tangri-La

“Tango is not about what is done, but how it is done”.

The form of tango is easily identifiable, its posture, its moves, its mechanics, the cogs in the timepiece, the what. Tempo is, of course, the beat of the music, the tick of the clock. With those two components you will have something that looks like tango, will move like tango, but it won’t be tango.

For it to be tango there must be intent, there must be a desire to connect, to communicate, there must be music (for music is much more than just the beat). Intent is to beat and to mechanics what the concept of time is to a watch. Without the concept of time a watch is a mere trinket or bangle, with the concept of time we can be desperately lost in the absence of that mere trinket.