Another "STEAL" from Tioma

The greatest reason to dance tango, in my opinion, is that it can be practiced as an evolutionary art form – the concept that I discuss in detail in the Tango and Conscious Evolution section. Tango is an interaction that involves our senses, our motor skills, our instincts, our feelings, our intuition – our whole psycho-physical totality – to such a degree that it can be used as a tool for a general development of a human being (especially if “being” is used as a verb). Tango is a creative interaction which can teach us deeper principles of interacting in general. In this way, like the best of Eastern martial arts, tango can act as an instrument of positive transformation of an individual’s mind, body and spirit. When practiced with this goal in mind, tango becomes a culturally significant art form of a rare kind, improving the well-being of individuals and of culture as a whole. But in order for this potential of tango to manifest fully, a correct approach to it is necessary. It started for me with the realization that the biggest key to progress in this dance was improving such fundamental abilities as standing, walking and controlling one’s mind. After that I started trying to understand how to practice this art form in such a way that it most directly connected to a general self-improvement. This is, in my opinion, what it means to purify an artistic practice. It is through this approach that I ended up experiencing the biggest improvement in both my dancing and my general well-being. Developing such an approach is the main motivation behind this website.

 

What Went Around Came AROUND

2006 with Gabriel Misse at the first Copes Festival in San Telmo and we were lost. Looks between the 12 of us, all beginners, were wide eyed and questioning. It became more complicated as the week went on. I expected more from my dancing after a year of learning the basics.
                                   NOW
2013 with Gabrile Misse at Dardo Galletto in NYC and we are finding our way. I loved the walking exercises, the pivoting and then learning to use my diaphragm to balance forward and backward. The 4 hours flew by and we were back on the bus, same day, to talk about and practice all we had learned. Again Mike is glued to YouTube and those gorgeous Misse pivots.

Lost HUSBAND = Marcela y Mike *Bellisimo*

Miguelito
He sits at the computer and watches Marcela Duran on YouTube.
He had the real and lovely Marcela in his arms on Saturday in NYC and the dancing was passionate but simple. We all cried at some point during the hour. There was no "step".
           This is and was the tango that Gavito described below.

Un tal Gavito

"If I could suggest a theme for our walk it would be : Tango es entre paso y paso. Tango is between one step and the next. Steps are not tango, steps are memory and choreography. Tango can never be in the things that are said. It is in the improvisation. The steps learned in dance schools are not improvisation, they are choreography. Small choreographies, brief ones. Then you learn how to connect one figure to another but one thing is still missing – tango. There is no step."
Gavito in “El Farolito”, Oct. 2003

Stolen WORDS

When Walter comes to the Tango TENT early to help us prepare food, etc., we often have an extra 30 minutes to practice some walking or his favorite milonga steps.
Last time he was here, he was scratching his head and saying with some concern, "You are dancing tango on the UPBEAT!"
That's right and I think it confuses others who watch us dance.
Here's a little explanation, though I've modified it by taking out the videos that were in his original blog.
                            closembracetango.com
With a little research I can hopefully find the name of the owner of this excellent blog.
              Can someone help me learn how to embed videos?
5 Types of Musicality                  Waiting" vs. "Listening"
                  How to 'Hit' the 'UPBEAT'!

Published May 15, 2011

Finding the beat in a piece of music is a daunting task for some, but can be done with practice, time, and patience. I’ve already written a treatise on how to do just that. However, there are times when you as a lead and or as a follower will want to go OFF-BEAT for a reason. Which is not the same as going counter rhythm, but is a kissin’ cousin, which is a whole other animal.

First find a flat surface, and place your hand flat, fingers together, palm down on the surface.


Start a song from the beginning and find that same beat again, and this time, what I want you to do is pay attention to something that’s happening all by itself…without you doing anything at all. With your hand flat on the table Tap out the beat with the palm of the hand. As you’re tapping out the beat, note that your hand goes UP and then DOWN on the beat ? Notice that in the tapping you have to take your hand off the table, or go UP, and then down. That UP part is the UP beat that we’re wanting!
Now that we’ve identified the UP Beat. Now we actually want to hit it. This is a 3 step process to getting you into the upbeat.  Try it first with any sample piece of music where its so clearly defined what the beat is!
Step 1.) Find the Beat.
Step 2.) Double Time IT! What you’re going to do is instead of going up to lift your hand off the table, your going to double tap twice. That second tap, is NOW the upbeat!
Step 3.) Hold this upbeat steadily throughout the rest of the song.
This method takes time, patience, and at first a lot of mental energy to NOT tap on the downbeat or the 1. The first few times you do it, its gonna really throw you for a loop and seem like a daunting task. The reason for this is simple, because of the need for the mind to conform to order, and the beat is ORDER, the UPBEAT or OFF beat is CHAOS, the seemingly opposite of order. I have found that this method will get your mind around the process….and that’s the starting point, getting your mind around the process of learning the upbeat!
Ok, if you’ve gotten *THAT* far. Now we try this with a piece of tango music! Start with something VERY VERY simple and very rhythmical. Juan D’Arienzo’s “Pensalo Bien”

I’m not asking you to watch the video, I just wanted you to hear the same version of music that I’m hearing when I’m talking about this stuff.
Take a break, walk around a bit with this stuff in your head. Because the last step in this process is to walk with your partner on the off beat CONSISTENTLY

Makes me LAUGH

I watch tango on YouTube. For years I watched the feet and the legs of the women.
                 Now I watch the elbows and ankles.

Another Find From "Tango and Chaos"

From the chapter section: "Cracking the Code"

I finally decided it’s because tango dancers outside of Argentina just aren’t connected to the music. (The milongueros would say they don’t have the music “inside”.) We found that while some of the best foreigners may be dancing to the cadences of tango, they don’t really use the cadences creatively. And more importantly, they tend to do random sequences of patterns and figures. It's as if they're pulling them off the shelf one after another, instead of responding to the music.
The result is that they aren’t really “expressing” the music—at least not in the way of the best Argentines. This poor link between the movement and the music, especially when it’s combined with imprecise technique, makes milongas outside of BsAs feel out of focus. So, ironically, while people outside of Argentina tend to do a lot of big movements and expend a lot of physical energy, their selection of steps has a randomness that tends to cancel out the energy of the milonga. And the result feels chato.


    ME:   So what can we do? Load them is a bus and drive the 5,000 miles?

FOR PABLO - ONLY PABLO Lesson 2

I CLIMBED THE MOUNTAIN

My lungs opened and closed like Baffa’s bandoneon  -close to my heart in a rhythmical circle
     In and out - in and out.
Ever so slightly my eyes lifted-  slowly focusing on the space around me.
      With a straight forward gaze I became aware of the expanse away from me and the expanse above.
 I watched the tempo of the clouds with my chest high - at last my weight settled into the pleasure of the  peak.
     After the forever climb, both ankles relaxed and both heels held firmly into the solid ground.
Me, older, but there I stood, in my freedom
      breathing softly into the comfort of silence          
My hand  reached  quietly for the shoulder of my partner, my leader.
      No need to pull him to me as we communicated with little contact.
Only once a strong breeze turned my torso and my hip into the sky.
     Every muscle felt the sound of the wind- sweet music in the air.
In determined steps, one foot in front of the other, I conquered the mountain.
      It was if I were dancing a, perhaps, tango.

         Karen Lucey     April 29, 2013

Patience- TAKE YOUR TIME MR. MIKE

Augusto shows gentle patience at every lesson. The mix of learners makes me wonder how he manages all the levels of dance, or a class with many many more men than women or at times the opposite. Today the couples were fairly evenly mixed, though a new older man was there for his first lesson and a very aggressive woman was there telling  the men how to lead.  What he always emphasizes for me is this:
     Every step is a tango. Come to your axis before the next step. Feel the music and the beat. "TAKE YOUR TIME MR. MIKE."
     Every step has a communication between the man and woman before the next step.  This can be a breath, a lift to signal time for an adorno, a deeper relax of the knee to signal a longer step, or more disassociation to start the woman moving before the step. I write all this down to remember the things to take back to PA for our weekly milongas and newly added practicas on Wednesdays. As always, hooked on the tango.

Mystery Teacher Stares at my Ankles

Freedom in the dance has come my way.  A wonderful dancer and teacher here in Buenos Aires has given us a private lesson in a little studio with mirrored walls and a smiling assistant. He ends up on the floor with his eyes at ankle level. "What do I think about the way I move my ankles?", he asks.
My ankles? Well, they talk about my posture, my head, my knees/legs/hips/shoulders/chest and on and on but NOT my ankles.
The wonderful teacher has me roll around on my feet and relax my ankles in place and then in the steps. I feel my whole body changing- feeling more relaxed and balanced.
Next I work on keeping my axis at all moments when I move. This only works if I use more weight on my heel when I walk. It takes a little practice, but I feel the vertical axis at every point in my step. Mike loves what this gives him as MY LEADER. We move around so freely. Now I work on keeping my head level. Yes it does organize my body. I train my eyes to always look above my eye level to look out at the space where I am dancing.
           "Be aware of the space", he suggests gently.
 Again the wonderful teacher has given me another way to find the freedom I crave  and need in the dance. The mysteries of tango unravel. We only walk forward with an added rock step, 2 more forward steps and a side step if it fits the mood and the music I can't wait to return for Tango Lesson 2.

From Susana Miller on her Facebook Page

Susana Miller Tango

March 30 near Buenos Aires

    A dancer’s steps are stories that the man tells the woman’s body. They
  are stories that become autobiographical, maturing over time as the
  man’s technique develops.
 
     As in art, tango always speaks to the soul of those that dance it, and
  like all art, it transforms everyday life into an extraordinary
...  creative work.

     The diversity of one’s steps increases the richness of these stories,
  provided they are told with the energy, emotion and mystery required of
  any good story. A comfortable embrace and a fluid walk will make for an
  enjoyable dance. However, there is added value to an enriched
  repertoire. A varied menu of steps is a dancer’s hidden treasure. Each
  step is a story in itself, much like those of “A Thousand and One
  Nights,” unfolding one by one, night after night, into the other’s body
  in a conversation that is profoundly intimate.

                                - Susana Miller

WATCH GAYLE and TIOMA on YOUTUBE

This was a cut and paste endeavor- first by Mike and then by me.
I didn't ask Tioma's permission to post it, but I need to study and think about this excerpt about MUSICALITY from his thoroughly researched tango site.
From Tioma Maloratsky  -El Ruso
tangoprinciples.org
Tango dancing has a unique freedom of musical interpretation. Unlike all other partner dances, tango does not have a set basic rhythmical pattern.

To begin with, it is best to keep one’s musicality as simple as possible. The most fundamental way to dance tango is to step on the 1 and the 3 in the four-count measure of the music.

The next degree of freedom to explore is syncopation. For example, one can put an extra step in between the “walking” beats - the 1’s and the 3’s - making either a 1-2-3 or a 3-4-1 pattern.

In addition to speeding up with such syncopation, one can also slow down the basic rhythm. The basic way of doing that is stopping to skip one or more of the slow beats (the 1’s and the 3’s). This is the most basic form of the pause, which is very important for advanced tango dancing.

One can see dancers who make one slow step over several counts of the music, or step slightly before, or slightly after the beat. That is when, in my opinion, the dance becomes truly worthy of the best of tango music. A tango dancer then becomes akin to a jazz musician, who syncopates and phrases his lines in ever more spontaneous and sophisticated ways. But an immediate problem with opening up such musical freedom is that it becomes difficult to maintain criteria of good musicality. It can sometimes be hard to tell someone who hears the music in a very advanced way from someone who does not hear it at all.

It demands a high degree of balance and stillness. It also requires a sense of rhythmical phrasing.  But in spite of these difficulties, to me the rhythmical freedom constitutes probably the most profound expressive aspect of tango dancing. Once I began touching it, there was no going back. It feels like the ultimate boon of all the work that I put into it – when suddenly unprecedented but perfectly sensible rhythmical patterns are coming out spontaneously, as though on their own accord, through my body, in harmony with my partner and the music at once. Such perfect moments are still rare, but more frequent than before. In my experience, choreographic freedom of this dance is nothing compared to its freedom of musicality.

The main doorway to musical freedom in this dance is the pause.

It means creating a pause in the midst of movement, as often as possible.

But ultimately, the whole dance can proceed in the state of balanced stillness, so that there is a pause or a near-pause in every step. This may be hard to imagine, but I attest that it is possible, and that it opens up unprecedented levels of freedom in all aspects of the dance, particularly musicality. This way, nothing is ever preprogrammed, nothing is contrived intellectually.

 When I started to find some stillness in every step, simple in-line walking suddenly became very exciting. That was also when I started stepping slightly off the beat in ways which somehow made sense to both myself and my partners. By waiting, both partners can enter into a freer musical dialogue, in which the timing of each step is never predetermined.

For a larger part of a tango song, both partners should try to pause and wait inside each step, whether in the process of a weight shift, at the beginning, or at the end of it. This way, unprecedented sequences and rhythmical patterns keep emerging.

It probably takes anyone years of dancing before the pause begins to make sense. I have been at it for 12 years and only in the last year or two began to experience its power with any regularity. In the first several years, I believe it is best to stick with the three fundamental rhythmical patterns which I described above. When trying to pause, an inexperienced male dancer is likely to lose connection with the partner, or rob her of her balance. It is better to first get into some rhythmical pattern, and feel an unbroken connection – both with the partner and with the music - through it. At the same time, it is good to be aware of the possibility of a freer musicality, so that when one is ready, one can begin taking advantage of it.

MYSTERY CARD SHOWS UP WITH LOVE

ON FEBRUARY 14th
A note from a man who calls himself Lorenzo arrived at our home with red and white flowers.
With a little phrasing it becomes a poem from his heart.

        I am surrounded
            By beauty
        Our home
        Our dance
        And so many other things
        BUT
        I want to concentrate
            on the beauty
            in front of me
        AND
        Not be distracted by the
            TRIVIA of the world
                         -LORENZO
hmmmmmmmmm????????
          






              

Last Day in Buenos Aires-

There are times
 When the ecstasy 
Of one step of tango
 Could last a lifetime

Mike Lucey
13/1/13

BUILDING a TANDA like an Argentine DJ- MORE LISTS!

Some notes about building a tanda from Jose Petrisko

1. In the tanda it works to mix the artists,  but keep the pieces of music within 1 or 2 years of the release date of the other pieces.

 2. Build from a slower piece to a faster, faster and faster piece in one tanda. Jose counts the beats for about 30 seconds to organize the music in this way.

3. In the next tanda reverse from the faster pieces and end with something slower.

4. Don’t mix vocals with instrumentals.

And my one addition to this is to play music we love. With so many to choose from in our extensive collection this should be easy.  Jose thinks that most dj’s use the same 200 pieces over and over. But why when there are so many great tangos?

Jose Petrisko- Substitute Teacher for Sonia Peralta

Today was my last chance for another lesson with Sonia Peralta- one of those teachers of tango who pays a great deal of attention to the woman. I scurried to write down her corrections from our lesson of 19 November- almost 2 months ago when we first arrived.
    1. more pressure on Mike's right hand
    2. more flexion on my standing leg
    3. freer free leg and hip
    4. don't go up and down. Johana tells me not to "jump"
    5. don't collapse my left side
Again we took the 23 colectivo to San Jose 224 where the Coqueta de Recoleta ( another Pennsylvania) runs the Monday afternoon milonga after the lesson.  Sonia had a substitute today. The profesor was Jose Petrisko (ANOTHER Pennsylvanian).  The name Jose came from Joseph somewhere along the way.
 Here we are in the middle of Buenos Aires with 4 people at the Casa de Galicia and all of us with one thing in common. We are all from Pennsylvania. Is this a little strange?
Now a list of Jose's thoughts. The lists go on and on.
For me:
    1. Allow myself to be lead.
    2. Stay centered and connected.
    3. Do what is lead when it is lead.
    4. Don't anticipate, stop or change weight without the lead.
For Mike: KEEP YOUR HEAD UP!
    1. Choreograph the woman's part and lead it.
    2. Chorepgraph your steps to fit hers.
    3. Listen and move to the music
    4. Watch the traffic.

Hopalong CATASTROPHE

 A good name for Mike near the end of his 3rd tango lesson last Friday while practicing a TRASPIE to Canaro.

AUGUSTO asks????

Augusto Balizano speaks English. We are able to understand much more when he finally gets to the fine points in English of his lessons.  Last week at the end of the lesson ( 1 1/2 hours) at the Galerias Pacifico- Escuela Argentine de Tango- he asked his usual. " Are there any questions?"  He next asked for specific questions or complaints about the embrace. Every decent lesson starts with a review of the embrace and the posture, before we start the next part of the lesson- walking, balance and pivoting exercises to music. Since we were dancing with 6 couples who love the tango the same way we love the tango everyone listened and added something to think about.
The men:
They do NOT like the women's arms wrapped around their necks.
They do NOT like the women's arms over their shoulders with the hand pointed down-    fingers looking  like a bunch of bananas.
           I think Alberto Paz calls any form of this one the "kidney grabber".

The women:
They  do NOT like the men pulling them in.
They do NOT like the men's right hands limp on their backs.
They do NOT like their right arms raised above their shoulders. This one      
    throws women off the axis.
They do NOT like the men's heads pressing on their heads.
           What to do?  Embrace like a warm hug and dance the dance.

LESSON - PABLO VERON- A MASTER TEACHER

Keep my body relaxed and comfortable.  Stand in a normal position. There is no need for me to tilt forward or lean my head into Mike. Relaxing my body and breathing naturally helps me keep my free leg free, free from the hip, to move with the intention that starts from Mike's back. This generates every step. First the intention which starts my movement and then his torso to lead the direction. It all looks like one movement, but EVERY step is a tango. At times we change the embrace from close to a little open to even more open. Now all this with what seems like a contradiction or an impossiblbity - my energy from the waist up is upward, like I'd won a prize- boastful. My energy from the waist down goes into the floor.
And I thought learning to fly a plane was difficult.
Ever so slightly we pause and breathe in at the end of the forward, side, back or change of weight before moving on to the next step. Alberto Paz told Mike over and over not to run.
Now Mike is no longer a runner. He's a leader and a pauser, but still dancing the "silence". Impossible? Simple and beautiful? But what about the beat? Another year of work to find THAT.

WINDING DOWN / FALLING DOWN

Our one touristy adventure this trip ended with a really scary, honest-to-goodness TRIP. Today when I looked down there was Mike, sprawled on the floor of the gorgeous Teatro Colon. He was shaken, but I was shaking. When Mike falls he rolls into a ball on his side- says he learned this when he played football and when he was in the Navy practicing parachute jumps from a tower. There he was at the bottom of the stairs- missed the last step- thank God only one step, and landed on the inlaid marble floor. The guard, the guide and the other tourists gathered around with great concern. There was no injury, but my stomach did twists and jumps. Had to sit around for about 15 minutes to make sure all was well. Mostly with me I think. As usual, I ended up crying, but this time over "spilled Mike".
Our trip is winding down- OH NO!- We have shed all the bad habits  learned in our first year of tango in the states. On New Year's Day we literally ran up Tucaman to catch the 23 bus and  head out to a NO TOURIST milonga- Nuevochique on San Jose. The dance room was packed- women lining one side, men lining the other side, all jammed in double deep with couples packed into tables at the ends.  Our early arrival secured us one of the last good tables. We danced and danced- corazon a corazon to the mournful music. The women dancing with feet on the floor and the men navigating around tight little spaces. Mike was an Argentine- January 1st, 2013.  We have been waiting  7 years to tango like  portenos in a crowded milonga. Nothing mattered but the music and the connection.  Another amazing day here in Buenos Aires where I will always have an enormous part of my heart.
 As usual, these posts tie into tango. When we practiced "the borrachito" with Augusto on Friday he said you need to practice in both directions. Message to Mike:
 BUT Mike, not on the steps of the Teatro Colon.