THE TOOLS
The conscious mind can be at once the best instrument
of improvement, and the greatest interference to good dancing. The key is
learning how to use it well. Otherwise, a dancer can get lost in a sea of concepts
about dancing, and lose the direct experience of it (this has happened to me
many times). Through my experience, I have found four main kinds of mental
activity to be useful for improvement: direct feedback (obtained through
attention), intention, contemplation, and indirect feedback. Attention and
intention are to be practiced in the actual process of dancing, while
contemplation and indirect feedback are best done off the dance floor. I will
explain what I mean by each of them.
DIRECT FEEDBACK - ATTENTION
The most important tool for learning anything is the
ability to pay attention. We initially learn tango by paying attention to
someone else dancing it. In order to learn how to lead and follow one needs to
pay attention to one’s partner. At more advanced stages of learning, when one
must eradicate one's own counter-productive patterns, one must first become
aware of them. This can only be done by paying careful attention to all aspects
of one's dancing.
In a physical activity like dancing, paying attention
means engaging the senses. This is what I mean by "direct feedback" -
paying attention to how the dancing feels. Out of the common five
senses, the tactile sense is the one most useful for the direct feedback, for
we do not usually see, hear, smell, or taste it. There are at least two other
senses crucial for one’s improvement: the proprioceptive
sense - the sense of the shape and position of one's body in space, - and the
sense of the tension levels in one's musculature. As one progresses, other
special senses develop, such as the sense of one's partner's whole body while
touching only in a couple of places, a sense of other people on the floor, a
sense of space, etc. Such senses develop through attention and simply through
practice, and as they develop, they in turn allow for the better paying of
attention.
The wrong use of attention is noticing patterns and
attaching to them. The right use of attention is noticing patterns and getting
free from them or creatively transforming them. Do I really need all that
tension in my arm? Do I really need to do this or that with my hips/knees/feet?
The answer to all such questions is "no", so once I notice that I am
doing something, I try to stop "doing" and start "letting".
The intention of "nothingness" helps this process greatly (see the
following section on intention).
Working on one's body is a tremendous exercise in
attention. No system of exercise will produce significant results unless one
listens carefully and patiently to one's body. Ultimately, a healthy, balanced
body has some definite characteristics and proper degrees of freedom, but each
person lacks proper coordination in one's own particular way, and needs to
become aware of it and structure one's bodywork accordingly, or else it may not
be fruitful.
Directing one's attention to different aspects of
one's dancing is very useful for learning and training. It is essential for
noticing how one falls into patterns and learning how to stop doing that.
However, in the ultimate artistic experience, strict control of one's attention
is no longer necessary, as it is allowed to be everywhere at once and in no
place in particular. Attention can be at once with the music, the partner, the
space, one's own body, bringing them all into one harmonious experience. So far
I have glimpsed such states only occasionally, but enough to know that they are
possible. In the words of Zen Master Takuan Soho, the mind is like a cat which must first be tied up
and trained not to “grab the baby sparrow" - not to attach to anything -
but then, once trained, it can be "untied" - allowed to be free from
any conscious deliberation.
INTENTION
Another indispensable tool for learning and improving
one's dancing is what I will refer to as intention. By this I mean a
creative visualization, a projection of a vision directly into one's
experience. This may seem somewhat mystical and unrealistic, as it did to me in
the beginning. When I first started dancing, I was not aware of the power of
intention. Like most people, I believed that the only way one could alter one's
movement was by a purposeful change of position of some body parts, or by
practicing a certain technique, a specific coordination. It was through my
studies of Alexander technique that I found out that a human being is able to
"think inside one's body", to direct it without mechanically
manipulating it. It turned out that it was possible to project a conscious
intention and begin to change one's whole way of
movement immediately, and that it was actually much more effective than the
mechanistic approach. A simple example is relaxation. One cannot relax by
repositioning body parts (unless one simply collapses). During an activity, one
can only relax through conscious intention. Later I also found similar
practices in Tai Chi Chuan - for example, centered movement can only be trained
by imagining one's center and all movement as originating from there.
Intention is difficult to understand or even to
believe in for many people because of our modern scientific upbringing and
technology-based culture. We are used to thinking that there must always be
concrete means for the accomplishment of a certain goal. It is hard to believe
that a simple "wish" for it can accomplish anything. However, it
turns out that a human being can do precisely that. The issue of posture is a
good example. One wants the posture to be as balanced as possible with respect
to gravity. A mechanistic way of adjusting it would be for example trying to
position the head, the pelvis or the chest more back or forward, according to
one's sense of how it is unbalanced. A much more effective way is to intend
verticality - to imagine the entire vertical balance into being. It turns
out that the body has a way to respond directly to such an
intent, without any perceivable mechanical means. Coming from a
scientific education, such a thing seemed like pure magic to me. However,
through experience I have become convinced of its reality and supreme
effectiveness.
A magical aspect of intention is that it can extend outside
one's body and include the body of one's partner. Ultimately, a good lead is
just an intention. More precisely, for both partners the communication can
become a curious mix of intention and sensitive attention to the other. That is
when things happen as if by magic, communication becomes incredibly direct,
where neither of the partners is any longer aware of the actual mechanical
means of it.
The "nothingness" is an example of a useful
intention. Intend the nothingness - the sensation of no effort, no weight, no preset pattern. As soon as, through attention, I become
aware of a rigid pattern in my body or my mind, I begin to intend it to
subside, to say "no" to it, or to "inhibit" it using the
terms of Alexander Technique. It is usually impossible to "make" it
disappear immediately - one cannot suddenly change one's posture or stop
contorting the body in habitual ways. But if one notices the pattern, keeps
paying attention to it, and realizes that it is not necessary, it begins
to gradually dissolve. I have dissolved a lot of excess muscular tension by
first noticing it, and then gradually letting go of it. In this way, attention
and intention work together: notice the compulsive pattern, intend the
freedom from it.
Another example of useful intention is creative
attitude. Very often, dancers fall into believing that certain
circumstances are preventing them from having the ultimate dance experience. It
can be lack of desirable partners, a floor that is too slippery, sticky, or
crowded, or one's own physical or psychological limitations. If any such things
are perceived as obstacles beyond one's control, this is defensive attitude.
Seeing them as opportunities to learn and improve is creative attitude.
I have learned a lot of tango from dancing on difficult surfaces and from
partnering beginner dancers. When one is challenged is when one has the best
opportunity for a new breakthrough. The right intention is to simply make the
dancing feel good in whatever circumstances. Blaming someone
or something while dancing creates many more counter-productive patterns.
I realized this very clearly when I discovered one day that when I was able to
suspend my mental criticism of my partners, they invariably began dancing
better instantly. I understood that by focusing on their shortcomings, I was
subconsciously doing something physical to bring those shortcomings out, to
expose them even more. But if I managed to accept my every partner as simply the
partner, I was letting my body adjust to their movement, and their supposed
shortcomings became a lot less noticeable, and many times not noticeable at
all. This is just another example of creative attitude, which can and should be
applied to all aspects of tango, from one's body to any particular tango
"scene" that one is in.
In my experience, intention is essential for guiding
oneself through the process of learning and improvement. Intention is the
enactment of one's most lucid vision of what tango wants to be. Ultimately, intention
and attention become merged, where there is no sharp dividing line between the
creation of a beautiful experience and the perception of it.
CONTEMPLATION
By contemplation I mean everything that amounts to the
gradual creation and development of one's artistic vision, or, more precisely
artistic sense. It includes watching other dancers, being inspired by
them, evoking their image and their energy in one's mind. It can be both
exploring everything tango has been up to the present, and imagining what it
can be in the future. It can be a contemplation of some particularly blissful
dance experience that one has had and cultivating the feeling of it inside
oneself. Sometimes looking at an old photograph, or a painting of tango
dancers, can bring insights, can reveal something on an intuitive level. It can
also be a process of a more rational understanding of the dynamics of this
dance and of the human body in general, which may be necessary in order to move
consistently towards the desired experiences. Tango strikes many chords inside
the dancers - some aesthetical, some archetypal, some sensual, some physical,
some even philosophical and spiritual. To contemplate such resonances is to
grow one's artistic vision which will then gradually but inevitably manifest in
one's dancing.
INDIRECT FEEDBACK
By indirect feedback I mean all the possible
information about one's tango that one cannot receive while dancing. It can be
watching a video of one's dancing, for example, which is almost always an
extremely humbling experience. It can make one see many problems with one's
body and one's psychology which are not yet apparent through direct feedback.
But focusing too much on one's outward image as a source of feedback can easily
lead one astray. This happens to many professional dancers, but also to some
amateurs - one begins to do certain things in order to "look good".
If looking good becomes more important than feeling good, one's artistic
process becomes corrupt, for truly good looks are the looks of someone whose
body is simply functioning according to its design, and whose dancing is free,
harmonious, and full of feeling. It is best to focus on one's own and one's
partner's experience of the dance, and let the image be what it may. If
one is bothered by one's image too much, it means that there is some gross
limitation in one's movement, one’s partner connection, or one’s psychology
which one is not aware of yet through direct feedback. It is a signal to pay more attention to one’s
experience. But if one begins to manipulate the body in order to look better,
one is certainly on the wrong track.
Indirect
feedback can also come in the form of other's opinions of oneself. The number
of dancers who want to dance with you is a fairly good indicator of one's progress.
A less reliable one is the opinion of non-dancers who watch you dance, for
appearances can be deceiving. This is the case with many professionals, who may
have a successful performance career, but are not very good on the dance floor.
In general, all of such feedback is inferior to the direct feedback. It is
useful mostly as a reality check - to dissolve certain illusions about one's
dancing which tend to build up sometimes. Ultimately, however, the quality of
one's experience while dancing is far superior as an indicator of progress.