Tango, a down to earth dance
Por Nicolás Bottega
Communication codes
Being tango a dance that is performed in couples, some kind of code of transmission of information between these two people is necessary. Every couples dance have theirs, born from the characteristics of the dance. For example, in salsa, rhythm and arms play a much more important role in communication than the one they have in tango. In others the gaze is used, such as in Zamba. Thus, dance and code evolve symbiotically, making the dance that that the code allows and prohibits, and at the same time is the essence of the dance that shapes the code. This essence has a lot to do with the music that is danced, but also with its historical and cultural background.
Choreography and expression possibilities that tango dancers have today, developed from a history. It is certainly the embrace one of the most important shapers of this historical evolution. Most likely, the fact that tango was born with a very close embrace between a couple, its due much more to socio - cultural reasons for the time in which it was forged, than any other possible reason. But the important thing of all this is not to find the root of the reason of the embrace, but to understand the consequences it had on the evolution of the dance.
Surely the first hurdle that the dancers had to solve was how to communicate a displacement. Evidently, it was by instinct how they found the solution, and this was that the best way to communicate movement was through the information transmitted through the embrace about the weight of the body. It was so how evolution of tango gave its "first step", and from then on the weight of the body would become solution, and also possibility. From the possibilities that this part of the code offered, new choreographic and expression possibilities were born, and others were left behind. On this foundation was built the tango danced today.
Center of gravity and axis
In tango, much of the communication between the bodies is intended to find where each of the dancers is spatially positioned. To simplify we can reduce this location, as much as possible, just to one point in space.
Resorting to physics, the concept that describes what I am trying to plot is the center of mass or center of gravity. The center of gravity is the geometrical point, in this case of a body, which acts as if all the mass (or weight) thereof was concentrated on that point. Our center of gravity is the average weight of our body, which does not mean it is the geographic center of it, but is rather related to the way in which the weight is distributed in our body, which is variable from one individual to another.
For example, if we try to hold a spoon with just one finger, the point where we will place the finger would be the center of gravity of the spoon, and not necessarily will be the middle of it.
While the center of gravity of the body is one, we can speak of "sub-centers" of gravity, one that summarizes the weight of the upper limbs (head, neck, torso, arms) and another of the lower limbs. The axis would be the average line that summarizes these three points (center of gravity and sub-centers).
The importance of ordering our body around this line is basically a matter of efficiency, namely to perform movements with the least possible expenditure of energy. If we were to move, or even to stay still, unaligned from our axis, our body would have to make countervailing forces.
Our body instinctively knows how to order ourselves efficiently around our axis, as we learned in the early years of life. What's more, our bodies evolved in their physiognomy from this. What happens, when learning to dance tango, is that we need to reeducate our body as it is not used to the codes that this dance has.
The axis, the weight and communication between the bodies
In addition to efficiency, the issue of ordering our body around the axis, in tango gains a much more important new meaning, which is related with the transmission of that information that we discussed before, about the location where each body "is". The best way to accomplish this is to ensure that our axis, is as clear as possible, passing through each of the sub-centers of gravity, both from the ones that we established and from other subdivisions that can be made.
If any part of the body misaligns from the axis, its weight will cause the axis to shift and consequently to misalign from the rest of the centers of gravity. As a result a misleading information will be transmitted to the partner about the spatial location of the body, and quality of movement will be lost. As we get our dance to evolve, we can get more demanding into achieve higher levels of quality in the effective communication of "where we are".
Effectiveness in weight grounding
The effectiveness in the grounding of weight, increases as the axis is clarified. To understand this, I’ll borrow an example from architecture. In a building, no one would think to build columns that are not straight, and this is because it is the straight line the most efficient way to ground weight to earth. I would lik to think the body not as a bloc but as the sum of an infinite number of points, each with its own weight. Our body has hundreds of muscles and joints that can affect the grounding, and as a column is a stationary block, we can use as an example a fall of water, which falls perfectly from above, without any interruption of any kind. To that fall that we surely visualize transparent and tubular, we can add partial interruptions of any kind, such as touching it with the hand, the arm, with a branch, etc. Those little interruptions cause to that fall of water to lose strength, since its fall was partially interrupted. The waterfall will exert on where it lands, a lower force than it would have exercised if nothing would have interrupted its fall.
This analogy helps me to explain what happens in the dancer's body with unnecessary tensions. Obviously, to move our body requires some muscle activation, but often also activate other muscles that do not need to be activated, and generate tensions. These tensions end up acting as interruptions to the grounding of body weight, loosing strength and clarity. This is why it becomes very important to eliminate all kinds of muscular tension in all parts of the body, especially the muscles around the joints like the ones in the soles of the feet, ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, neck, even we can pay attention to the face as it can be an indication of a state of tension.
Efficiency in the order of body parts
The human body evolved to achieve a certain standard order of body parts, and it works the best when it respects this. Of course that from individual to individual exists variations to this ideal standard.
When dancing, the ordering of the body is different from the order of everyday life, due to dance codes, such as the embrace. The difficult part is to achieve that this new way of organizing the body during the dance, be as close as possible to that of everyday life, i.e. the most natural and effective as possible. And it is when unnecessary forces for dancing are introduced, that are not demanded by the code and are contrary to the ideal order, when the body is disorganized, and therefore the axis loses clarity.
If we are well ordered, every part of our body will become an indicator of "where we are". For example, from the contact that occurs in the hands on the open side of the embrace, we can get an idea about the rest of the body of our partner, and create a kind of virtual map of it. This happens all the time during the dance, since the contact points are constantly changing and we are still able to "find where is" our partner.
Finally, the bodily order also affects the correct grounding of weight. To align the gravity centers of the body with the axis, creates a clear information about the positioning of our body, which in last instance its reduced to the projection of this line on the floor. In this way we can say that all of our body “is” in this point of the floor. To misalign body parts making the subcenters of gravity to distance from this line, creates confuse information. No doubts that this takes away quality to the communication, and therefore to the dance.
This is equally important in both roles, because in my opinion, much of the essence of tango is about being together through movement. And to be together, it is necessary to be clear with the other about where we are.
Tango, a down to earth dance
Due to sociocultural reasons that made tango evolve into what it did, weight grounding became a major factor in the code, being essential for communication between partners, and it is for this reason that most of the technique points directly or indirectly, for this grounding to be is as clear as possible, in order to obtain a more evolved dance, at least from the aspect of movement. That is why it’s said that tango is a dance "down to earth", similar to most African dances (from where tango also historically descends), and unlike classical dance for example, which is a dance mostly “to the air”. This is part of its cultural essence, and it is for this reason that it will hardly change, although it would not be impossible from a technical point of view.
