This is a rant. There are other references to the same topic on this blog but I think that I need to be a bit more direct.
The keyword for today is 'axis definition' which is produced by good posture. This post (and my whole blog) is written from the perspective of dancing tango by connecting to one's partner and dancing in a one body-four legs manner. If you don't dance this way then it may not make much sense to you. Or perhaps that's just due to the rich tapestry which is my writing style.
The blunt truth is that any dancer is a potato sack if they do not have good posture. They are difficult to lead and difficult to follow.
The blunter truth is that if you don't know how to stand up and define your axis then it might be best to learn to do so before wasting any further money on dance lessons.
I've watched so many teachers talk about good posture and chest projection, among other things, as fundamental requirements of dancing tango. Fabulous! Except that I always watch it melt away from their students within a very short time almost immediately afterwards (sometimes within the same workshop) until it re-emerges briefly at the next workshop by the next visiting teachers.
The students are usually being asked to do something which they don't need to do on a daily basis ie have good posture. It takes a conscious and sustained effort if one is going to change the habits of a lifetime, and one can't slouch one's way through daily life and expect to dance like a dream on those occasions when one steps on a dance floor.
Good dancers must produce themselves, teachers can only guide them.
So, the years, the workshops and cash outlay stream by and yet many dancers don't progress. Some of them notice and get frustrated that they appear to have plateau-ed, others don't notice at all and let their partners get frustrated instead.
And then there are the new people who arrive and are relatively good dancers in a short time. What do they have that the plateau-ed dancers do not?
I think of the lady followers that I've danced with around the world who other men enthusiastically described as 'natural dancers' and how that accolade had come to them very easily. It was mainly because they had good posture and preferred to dance 'with' their partners rather than 'at' their partners. This is not to let off the leaders in many countries whose posture and lead is often so bad that the women learn to dance on their own because it's what the men expect. If the local dance level is low enough then that's very often what the women come to expect as well.
Similarly I think of all the workshops and lessons where I've seen teachers giving their students what they want, steps and moves, rather than what they need (posture, connection management, moving with a partner). This is natural from a financial perspective because the teacher won't last as a professional if the students don't come back next week, and if the students pay attention to those fundamentals then they won't need to come back next week.
Two examples to illustrate my point come to mind:
1/ A lady with excellent posture who had not been dancing long asked me for feedback on the dance floor, because she knows I'm receptive to that kind of thing. (I'd much rather someone try to improve while dancing with me than stagger around making my life a Very Difficult Thing, and my income isn't tied to tango teaching so this can only turn out well for me.)
I told her that her axis was already excellent and that she only needed to hold her chest lightly against mine as though she was saving me from falling forward, to concentrate on constant shoulder height relative to me rather than worry where her feet should go, and that I would always walk towards her centre. Deal? Done.
She was immediately a lovely smooth dancer, I was able to lead a wide variety of beautiful things and we both had a wonderful time. How can this be made so difficult by so many people, both students and teachers? It wasn't as though I was teaching her some arcane system of signals which meant that she could only dance with me. It's first-principle stuff.
2/ A lady recently began tango with us after two years of salsa and many years of teaching deportment and modeling, but no other dance background. After one 20-minute solo lesson she knew enough about connection management and movement with a partner to enjoy social dancing as a follower in open embrace, assuming that the leader could lead. A little more time and she was leading me steps of varying length as well as colgada giros. And I'm 90 kg. Teaching her close embrace has been a similarly easy road.
The thread connecting these examples is that good posture and axis definition makes leading and following a breeze. If you've reached a plateau in your dancing then consider whether your posture is holding you back before spending any more money on lessons.
The keyword for today is 'axis definition' which is produced by good posture. This post (and my whole blog) is written from the perspective of dancing tango by connecting to one's partner and dancing in a one body-four legs manner. If you don't dance this way then it may not make much sense to you. Or perhaps that's just due to the rich tapestry which is my writing style.
The blunt truth is that any dancer is a potato sack if they do not have good posture. They are difficult to lead and difficult to follow.
The blunter truth is that if you don't know how to stand up and define your axis then it might be best to learn to do so before wasting any further money on dance lessons.
I've watched so many teachers talk about good posture and chest projection, among other things, as fundamental requirements of dancing tango. Fabulous! Except that I always watch it melt away from their students within a very short time almost immediately afterwards (sometimes within the same workshop) until it re-emerges briefly at the next workshop by the next visiting teachers.
The students are usually being asked to do something which they don't need to do on a daily basis ie have good posture. It takes a conscious and sustained effort if one is going to change the habits of a lifetime, and one can't slouch one's way through daily life and expect to dance like a dream on those occasions when one steps on a dance floor.
Good dancers must produce themselves, teachers can only guide them.
So, the years, the workshops and cash outlay stream by and yet many dancers don't progress. Some of them notice and get frustrated that they appear to have plateau-ed, others don't notice at all and let their partners get frustrated instead.
And then there are the new people who arrive and are relatively good dancers in a short time. What do they have that the plateau-ed dancers do not?
I think of the lady followers that I've danced with around the world who other men enthusiastically described as 'natural dancers' and how that accolade had come to them very easily. It was mainly because they had good posture and preferred to dance 'with' their partners rather than 'at' their partners. This is not to let off the leaders in many countries whose posture and lead is often so bad that the women learn to dance on their own because it's what the men expect. If the local dance level is low enough then that's very often what the women come to expect as well.
Similarly I think of all the workshops and lessons where I've seen teachers giving their students what they want, steps and moves, rather than what they need (posture, connection management, moving with a partner). This is natural from a financial perspective because the teacher won't last as a professional if the students don't come back next week, and if the students pay attention to those fundamentals then they won't need to come back next week.
Two examples to illustrate my point come to mind:
1/ A lady with excellent posture who had not been dancing long asked me for feedback on the dance floor, because she knows I'm receptive to that kind of thing. (I'd much rather someone try to improve while dancing with me than stagger around making my life a Very Difficult Thing, and my income isn't tied to tango teaching so this can only turn out well for me.)
I told her that her axis was already excellent and that she only needed to hold her chest lightly against mine as though she was saving me from falling forward, to concentrate on constant shoulder height relative to me rather than worry where her feet should go, and that I would always walk towards her centre. Deal? Done.
She was immediately a lovely smooth dancer, I was able to lead a wide variety of beautiful things and we both had a wonderful time. How can this be made so difficult by so many people, both students and teachers? It wasn't as though I was teaching her some arcane system of signals which meant that she could only dance with me. It's first-principle stuff.
2/ A lady recently began tango with us after two years of salsa and many years of teaching deportment and modeling, but no other dance background. After one 20-minute solo lesson she knew enough about connection management and movement with a partner to enjoy social dancing as a follower in open embrace, assuming that the leader could lead. A little more time and she was leading me steps of varying length as well as colgada giros. And I'm 90 kg. Teaching her close embrace has been a similarly easy road.
The thread connecting these examples is that good posture and axis definition makes leading and following a breeze. If you've reached a plateau in your dancing then consider whether your posture is holding you back before spending any more money on lessons.
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Jeez... you're so right!!! The thing is... how to "feel" and store to muscle memory how it should be for you.
ReplyDeleteIt took me an hour of just dancing giro's with Quique Miller to relax my shoulder muscles and to notice every time I tensed up again to become aware of how my correct posture should feel to me. I think this one hour was more valuable then all the classes and workshops that I ever attended combined.
Nice post. I love the simplicity of basic principles.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to that it might help to stop saying "I dance" and instead start saying "I am a dancer".
The point is if you say you dance then you limit your hobby and mindset to the dancefloor.
If you are a dancer on the other hand then you are always a dancer. Doesn't matter if you're on the dancefloor or not. You're a dancer. That effectively will shift your mindset and keep reminding you of the following:
"I am a dancer so I need to have good posture."
This leads to being more aware of your posture in daily life and practicing constantly will improve your dancing.
One of my favourite teachers, Fabrizio Forti, taught me posture by playing a game. The idea was that every time I entered a room I would want people to look at my posture and say, "Wow! HE must be a dancer!"
DeleteSo, the game was I that had to 'make an entrance' into every room ie pause dramatically, check my posture and say to myself, "I...am a dancer..."
I was to start with 'making an entrance' to the bathroom at home, and then work my way up from there. The more that I treated it as a game then the better it worked (one doesn't need to be too grim-faced in life).