Fancy Tango: The Good, the Bad, and the Indiscriminate
It’s a dancing tale as old as time. You learn some things, you get a little good, and suddenly it hits you: “Now I wanna learn some COOL stuff!” (You have only to visit the classrooms of dancing kiddos anywhere to see this in action left and right. Forget about perfecting the basics. They want to run ahead and do cool new moves, even if they are wobbly, out of rhythm, or poorly executed.)
It’s human; we all want to be a bit fancy here and there. And there’s plenty of fancy to be had in tango—adornos, boleos, lifts, interminable calesitas/planeos, enrosques, enrosques on your toes…
They’re spicy. They’re fun. They’re dramatic. They might earn some gasps, some claps, or some social clout.
They also can be a big ol’ pitfall to dancing truly great tango.
Let me paint you two pictures.
One: There’s a juicy, meaty Pugliese tanda playing late in the evening. You and your partner are feelin’ it. Here comes one of those stretchy, long, soaring lines of music that then BAM! punctuates with a satisfying rhythmic hit. You and your partner are like one mind; you both feel it coming. The boleo is perfectly (and safely) placed and timed with that rhythmic hit. *tango satisfaction*
The alternate version(s): Maybe that same Pugliese song gets half a dozen boleos splashed across it. Maybe the follower likes to do them on her own a lot and show off her legs? Or maybe the leader has gotten the impression that boleos look cool but over-leads them somewhat indiscriminately? Maybe it’s Fresedo or delicate di Sarli (not 50s punchy Pugliese), and the boleo doesn’t make any sense for the music at all. Maybe it’s placed at a point in the phrase or music without any real reason or impact. Maybe it’s just become habit. Get the effect? Gratuitous fancy that loses its power, waters itself down, and looks like an indiscriminate mess on the dance floor.
This brings me to one of the biggest "soapbox musings” that has emerged from my own tango study:
DO YOUR FANCY SHIT IN SERVICE OF THE MUSIC, NOT IN SERVICE OF YOUR FANCY SHIT. 📣
Think of it like a garnish on a dish—when perfectly selected for flavor and placed, judiciously, in just the right spot, it makes the dish sing. But if you dump that fancy herb all over the plate? Well, it will look and taste like a mess.
Here is where less truly is more. If 80-90% of your dancing is restrained, slowed down, thoughtfully sensitive to the music and your partner, you can then use that remaining percentage to sprinkle in some spice (with real impact).
Here’s an exercise for us all: Whether you are practicing solo, with a partner, or implementing your fancy moves at a milonga, take your favorite fancy move du jour. (Solo practice is actually great for this, because it’s just you and the music, no partner dynamics to deal with.) Followers, maybe it’s milking those brushy, spiral-y adornos. Leaders, maybe it’s leading a boleo or lift, or your "iron enrosoque." Tell yourself you have ONE place to use it in a song. Where do you place it to truly make it sing?
Make it about listening. Make it about hearing exactly where the music is asking you for that dash of spice. In other words, make it less about you.
And this brings me to the cringe-y, ruthlessly self-reflective part of the thing.
Where is your fanciness more about being fancy?
Where are your fancy moves getting overused or used indiscriminately?
Where aren’t you listening (with ears, limbs, breath, and feeling level) as deeply as you could?
Where is your tango more about you, instead of primarily about the music and your partner?
We all have potential for pitfalls:
We are so focused on our own technical execution that we lose connection.
Our excitement about learning new moves turns into, “Look what I can do!”
Our pride in how far we’ve come and what we’ve learned turns into needing to show off.
The number of videos we watched of pros doing la variación made us drunk with the itch to do more of their cool shit.
Our tendency to get in our head about our dancing leads us to neglect how deeply we feel our partner, and how much we listen.
Our reasons for dancing tango are all different, I know. And we are all there, in part, for some kind of satisfaction. And that is fine. But at the heart of tango is something that I think speaks to everyone who falls in love with it. At the core, it is about the music and the connection. Is that still your north star? How can you deepen and refine that orientation?
Sorry to go all Psychology Couch on everyone here, but let’s take a little detour down Ego Lane. Now before you all roll your eyes at me, let me say, I’m not talking ego as in, “that person who thinks they're the center of the universe.” We ALL have ego: It’s the sense of self that develops in our young life about who we think we are, what keeps us safe, and what gets us love/validation. We’re never going to completely get rid of the ego, but the place to get to is one of self-awareness. Can you become aware when it’s the one driving the car? When that protective/reactive/needs-validation sense of self takes the wheel, that’s when we need to put that puppy in the back seat. We can acknowledge it, it can ride along quietly, but it’s best if it’s not the part that’s navigating.
So let’s look our tango ego self in the eye and ask… Where is your tango more about you? Where is it about being seen, being "The Man/Woman," proving yourself as an expert, needing attention, needing to display your prowess? Again, I think we all have a bit of this in there, somewhere. We’re tango dancers; we all love a bit of drama. The question is, can you see it when it’s running the show (or running your dancing)?
Because the secret is — don’t shoot the messenger — truly great tango isn’t primarily about YOU. Truly great tango happens when you are primarily in service of the music, and the other person/connection.
Yes, you practice and prepare and polish and refine. You can feel good about how far you’ve come. I am not saying technique doesn’t hold an important place in dancing and practice. It does, most certainly. In fact, continuing to improve our technique lets us—surprise!—express the music more deeply and gracefully, and it lets us more sensitively communicate with our partners. It lays a good foundation so when you want to truly dance you can DROP IT and focus outside yourself. Then you become that dancer who isn’t just impressive and technically brilliant, but brings gifts of generosity and depth to those you dance with and those you inspire. (Heck, you can even bring those gifts without technical brilliance! Or at least still gift them while on your way there.)
We’ve all seen that person (I mean, there are pros who do this…) where you can just tell it’s primarily about them and their glory. What does that tango feel like? It can be the most technically brilliant tango… but I can guarantee you it will never truly take your breath away or move you into a state of transcendent ecstasy. I really believe that all great artists at some point realize that transcending themselves in service of giving and sharing the craft is when greatness happens. You are an instrument in a magical, musical, terpsichorean orchestra—not the conductor.
So for all of us mortals and our egos… can we recognize when our tango focus is more on ourselves? How can we more generously and sensitively listen (to music and humans) while dancing? And can we recognize that the moment you make it more about the music and the other person—that’s the moment things can really kick up?
This leads me to a point that is one of my favorite musings (and perhaps another article): How can we deepen that sensitivity of the music and the other? Like a nerd, I burst at the seams on this one: I think it has much to do with present moment awareness, meditative/mindful abilities, and dropping out of the thinking mind and into the body/feeling.
I’ll save more on that for another day, but to rein it back in to the article at hand, remember: Let your fancy tango be a gift to the music. Go ahead, practice your fancy moves—so that when the moment is right and the music irresistibly, deliciously demands it, you can give that one, precious, fancy move—in just the right way and in the right moment—to the Gods of Tango Music. Become the gift, not the prize.