Limerick Tango

It goes:

Left
Left
Left
Change the weight onto the left, left
Open left
Close left

In all seriousness the words right and left are not words that I’m able to work with. There is the weightbearing-leg and the free-leg. Attaching the identifiers right or left to these is nigh on impossible to me at times. Layer on top of this the sides of the embrace, the open-side and the closed-side, and you have the perfect dance for someone who has two left feet.

As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

Jingo- Terry Pratchett

One of the lessons I use in fencing has a strange quirk. It is a chain of exercies that moves up through multiple orders of feints. The quirk is that people don’t perfect the first stage until they have perfected the last stage. The quality of movement that is exposed by the last stage is exactly that required to perfect the first stage.

In a way you could describe it as wisdom. “…I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor…” and this time I know what to say.  (Hindsight is all very well but it’s better when you can recognise what is coming down the tracks.)

I’m begining to think that this applies to the dancing of Tango¹. That your basics may never be great until you delve deep into the mysteries of the embrace. That it’s not just enough to make the journey but to return as well. That each layer of tango that you unwrap applies not only to itself and those inside it but those that came before it. It indicates the potential folly of ‘becoming Advanced’ and leaving those things of beginners behind. That in the end you have to walk the miles.

¹Note capitalisation, I’m not writing about the dancing of tango.

“The bandoneon told me to do it, your honour.”

You’re tired. It’s been a long day spent hunched over your desk but still you make it to your tango class. You reach out your arms for the tango embrace with your palms facing the ground causing your shoulders to roll which destroys your posture and can potentially make the entire class a waste of time¹.

When you extend your arms for the embrace face your palms upwards, only turning them when the embrace closes. This will keep your shoulders upright and relaxed giving you one less thing to worry about.

¹Depending on what material is being covered.

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.

Slightly inspired by the previous post, and by other recent observations, I have come to the conclusion that human beings are not designed with eye-foot co-ordination in mind. Far too often one sees dancers crucify themselves by trying to watch their feet. The result is too often dis-improvement rather than improvement of their movement. Part of this is of course caused by the break in posture. A heavy head, the hips shifted back to give a clearer view, the feet brought forward of the weight, the feet should never be forward of the weight! The other part of this clumsiness is, as I have already stated, due to the fact that eye-foot co-ordination is not a part of our make-up. We are bipeds evolved, rather than designed, to stand on our feet and scan the horizon. The whole feet walking business is supposed to go on underneath without too much interference from us above. Take the duck on water, all calm gliding along above, underneath it is furious paddling, and you don’t see ducks with their heads stuck under water checking where their feet are going. Before you strike back with the suggestion that footballers (the non-American kind) have great eye-foot co-ordination I would like to point out that footballers do not spend the time with their eyes glued to the ball. Most of the time their eyes are on where their opponents and team mates are. They know where the ball is, that is called ‘ball control’. Quite simply you are not supposed to watch yourself walking, so don’t, let your feet do the walking.

The lunge, the main form of attack in fencing, is properly composed of two actions: the extension of the arm and the lunge of the legs. In classical fencing this is taught initially as two separate actions. Extend and then lunge. The extension establishes the threat and the lunge delivers it (it is vital that the threat is established before any leg movement is made). Over time the distance between the two actions is reduced moving from ‘extend and then lunge’ to ‘extend lunge’ to simply ‘lunge’.

Equally with the lead. The lead must become before any movement and when you begin it will be lead and then move but eventually it will become simply ‘lead’ or ‘move’. This analogy came to me while working on that simple little exercise of both partners doing the move of the turn in a straight line, side-step, ocho-forward, side-step, ocho-backwards. It is a great exercise for making the concept of disassociation apparent and because if it is not done in the form of BAM! lead, move it just does not work and you can see people getting confused awfully quickly.

Ireland is currently being buffeted by winds gusting up to 150Km/h in places, so when you turn a corner you get a good opportunity to practise your tango walk. The trick is to resist the urge to drop your head but instead relax your knees and plunge your chest into the on coming force like a ships figurehead.

In fencing one stands with ones feet squared. Your feet are at 90 degrees to each other, your front foot points directly forward, your rear foot points off to the side. Moving forward is achieved by first hinging out the front foot, testing the water so-to-speak, the rest of the body follows. [1]
Movement in Bartitsu[2] is slightly different, the foot positions are the same but when moving forward you throw the body into the movement by pushing with the rear foot.

I write of the first movement to contrast with the second which is how one should move in tango, propelling yourself forward with the trailing foot, pushing the chest ahead like a ships figurehead. After talking with Armando Copa at the weekend I am going to modify this idea slightly further. With the same sense of motion do not throw yourself into the forward but push yourself away form the behind.

[1] Image from The Theory and Practice of Fencing, Julio Martinez Castello, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933
[2] An eclectic martial art and self defence method originally developed in England during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.