Embrace

Four Ways to Lead Better

by Ivica Anteski · June 12, 2017

You should lead better. Well, easier said than done. Many male dancers put a lot of effort in practicing and learning, but their visits to milongas turn out to be frustrating experiences again and again. It is like there is a big secret that stays out of reach for them, no matter how hard they try.

Would you believe me if I say that it is not hard to lead better if you pay attention to just four things? I know, it sounds like magic cure, but trust me – it is.

Let me tell you a story – a true conversation that I had with one of my students.

“But, why I can’t dance well with others?”, she asked me.

“What do you mean? With whom can you dance well?”, and she pointed out few men on the dance floor. They were all good leaders.

She was just a beginner, but she was already dancing a lot with the best dancers in our community. Yet, she could not dance at all with some of the male dancers. I knew that she was not the problem – she knew how to follow, but they did not know how to lead a beginner.

My point with this story is that if a man knows how to lead – even an absolute beginner can follow. Tango is created by men who danced with a ladies with poor technique. A good leader can always make a woman dance well, no matter her level of dance.

[Tweet “Don’t practice a lot, dance a lot!”]

Do you want to lead better? Who doesn’t? Well, it is easier than one might think it is. In the these four points I am going to explain why and how good leaders are good and why some ladies have problem dancing with the bad ones.

1. Your body is just a tool – The best way to become better leader is to dance a lot, not to practice a lot. You have to train your body to become a tool that helps your partner. Practicing (alone or with your partner) can be good, but practicing means excluding some of the factors – for example, some people prefer to practice without music, and almost everyone practices without other couples near them (which is an unlikely situation in milongas). As a result, when people come to milongas they are focused on the music and other couples around them (or, in the worst case, ignoring them and bumping around).

I learned that the right way is to prepare yourself to face all these ‘obstacles’, so much, so they are not longer requiring for your attention – you do them unconsciously, by heart. This frees up your mental energy to focus on her. She will feel this, trust me!

“It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” – Bruce Lee

Your body is the finger, she is the moon. Do not focus on the body, focus on her; learn the moves, so they become so easy that you can concentrate on her.

2. Follow her to lead better – I wrote that I have a problem with leader/follower terminology and this is because I do not think that it is precisely describing the reality of tango.

The leader/follower confusion

In my experience as a teacher I learned that it can be misleading to the students to tell them that the man is the leader – specially if you want them to focus on emotion and not on the physical movements. When it comes to the movements and choreography, of course that the man is the leader; but when it comes to the emotion – it is the woman who has the lead.

If you want to lead better, then focusing on what her heart is telling you is the key. You have to read the limitations she has as a dancer, because they can cause her to tense – something which you want to avoid at all costs. But, that is just the beginning, you will want to go even further. When you lead, you must sense how she feels the music and, even more, how she feels you as a dancer and as a human being… or, if you want to go even deeper, you must read how she feels you as a man.

Being able to follow her heart is one of the most important skills to learn if you want to become a better leader.

The form you have selected does not exist.

How do you do that? Well, it is broad topic, but I will mention here two very important things: acceptance and flexibility. Those are not just abstract concepts – they must influence your movements to have some kind of physical manifestations.

3. Lead her center – Finally, the physical part. Over the years of teaching I developed a method that helps my students learn how to lead in a very smooth way. More important, they do it in a natural way without forcing.

The natural human walk consists of getting our center of gravity to the zero point (where we do not need to intervene to keep the balance) and out of it. Basically, every movement consists of controlling our balance center. Therefore the easiest way to lead your partner is to use her balance center, by applying a controlled amount of energy to her center of balance.

Additional benefit of this is that learning to lead her balance center will help you have a natural posture – this is the reason why I never teach my students about the concept of posture. They just do not need it.

There are a lot of ways to learn to do this and over the years I developed exercises to help students. The shortest way to describe it is lead her with your core in contact with her core. Doing this will create a real magic.

4. Dance with her, not with the music – I can’t stress this enough. When you dance in milongas you dance with her: not with the music, not with the other couples on the dance floor, not with yourself, not with the spectators. Forget about all this and focus on her.

The most important thing is your partner

Dancers often focus on the music more than they should. I agree, any dance is nothing without musicality – but tango is specific because of the proximity and unity that the couple creates. You can never benefit from your good musicality if it interferes with your communication with the partner. So, you must adapt how do you interpret the music to her ability to follow your movements.
Remember that she is more important than the music is. The music will forgive you if you make a mistake, but her heart will not. If you force her to do what she feels is uncomfortable or something which she is not ready to do, she will tense and the dance will not be as pleasurable as it should be.

Did you like this post? Did it help? If I helped you, please help me with sharing this post with your friends on Facebook.

The secrets of apilado dancing

by Ivica Anteski · November 16, 2016

Apilado dancing is the way to increase the connection and intimacy in the embrace and it is most often used in the social tango. Since it is required to lean on the partner, for many people it is the ultimate challenge, much harder than the most complicated steps.

Being so, it has low commercial value – it is demanding and many beginners do not feel comfortable learning it. They would rather learn some fancy step. I believe this is the most important reason why many teachers avoid to include it in their programs.

But apilado dancing is one of the most effective ways to achieve a good connection and to increase the level of intimacy between the partners. In this post I am going to give you the five most important things you should know when you dance apilado.

Oh how many things in tango are controversial and cause for a major debates. This is because there is no one right way of dancing – and one can say that all of the approaches, if they are respectful, are valid (Learn more about some of the debates about apilado in this excellent article)

Apilado dancing is not on the repertoire of the 99% of the teachers I know. And, yet, it is one of the best ways to make the strong physical connection with the partner.

– That is magical. I do not know what and how you do it, but when I first felt it, it was amazing. Scary but amazing – she laughed.

We were having a private class and she wanted to improve her communication. I danced with her many times before and I knew she knows how to do it, even without someone teaching her. It came naturally to her.

– My back hurts. I love that way of dancing, but I do something wrong and I end up with a pain in my back – she said.

– Yes, I know exactly what you do and how can you fix it – I answered.

This back pain can go away with a few adjustments she can make and they are not even complicated – but she has to learn it: the same as many others who were never before exposed to apilado dancing.

But what apilado is? It is the basic technique of dancing in embrace. Many people do not make difference in the way they dance open position and embrace. When they close, they are just very very close with the partner. They do not change anything except the distance itself. This is wrong – one of the keys of a good connection in embrace is apilado.

[Tweet “Dancing apilado means to form a connection in which you both depend on each other”]

In this five points I am going to teach you how apilado can improve your dancing and how to do it properly.

1. The art of pausing – The last phase of the Golden Age of tango was characterized by changes in the way the music was played. It brought the changes in the way some people danced as well. As we can notice by the most drastic example in the music of Osvaldo Pugliese, the music became more dramatic, slower and more melodic. Some dancers from that period say that the music became ‘stretched’ and they started to add pauses in their dance.

Dancers slow down their movement and sometimes came to complete halt. Doing so, they developed this new style called apilado dancing. There is one very important aspect of making pause during dance – the tension.

Read this post to learn why do you need apilado

How to interpret different orchestras?

Halting the movements might has no big impact on the quality of the dance if it does not contain a growing tension. The silence has its value only if it brings a significance, only if it is dense and full with a tension.

In the dance is the same. When people are dancing apilado they keep the tension. It is a pause with significance, the one that signals that it is not a stop, but rather a moment which is temporarily frozen and that will continue. It is like you take a deep breath and keep it like that for a second – and your partner knows that it can not stop there, something else has to happen after that. That is a pause with content, a dense silence. That is what apilado means for the dance.

2. The ultimate connection and trust – When you ride a bicycle it is not just a mechanical device below your body: it feels like it is an extension of your body. As long as you move, you are stable and connected to it. When you stop, the connection stops and you lose the balance, so you have to stand on your own legs.

The connection in the dance is similar. When you dance the partners body becomes an extension of your body, the bodies are fused. It works the best when you have movement – but when you stop, when you make a pause, it might feel like it is the end of the dance, a time for disconnecting. Using apilado enables you to keep the connection even without movements, but it goes much deeper than this.

Let me explain this with another analogy – the relationship between lovers. To love someone means to put yourself in a vulnerable position, to give your heart to someone. To be able to do that, one must trust that the partner will keep it save, that will take care of it, that will not do anything to hurt it. Putting yourself in a vulnerable position means that you lose yourself, that you put down your shields, that you lose your balance and, in order not to fall, you lean on the partner. In the same time, your partner leans on you.

This way you form a connection in which you both depend on each other, you are so much connected that if one is missing, the other one will fall on the ground. To be able to do that, you need to trust your partner. If one of the partners is not able to do that, it is impossible, and for the other one it will become a real torture.

This analogy find its perfect physical emanation in apilado dancing. You give up your own balance and lean on the partner, using his legs as your own.

3. You can not do pivots in apilado – When we learn to walk, we learn to keep our axis in a balanced state. But there is a difference between standing and walking.

When we stand, we can get a perfect balanced axis. In order to walk, we have to disrupt that balance. We can think about walking as a series of disruptions and getting back in to a balanced state. We can think about walking as a playing with your own axis.

Tango is often a dance with fused axes. Women gives up her balance and gives it to the man, because by controlling her axes, he gains control over her movements. But the man can do that only if he leans on her as well, only if he loses his axis as well. This way he counters her weight and make a new balanced state.

Moments come in the dance where the man returns the axis to his partner. He does this because he knows she needs to have control over it, in order to make some movement. Most often – pivots. It is impossible to do a proper pivot while leaning on the partner. This is why the good male dancers will return the axis to their partner in the moments when they initiate pivots.

Check out how Nestor returns the control of the axis to Olivera as he initiates a turn. Watch the video here.

Having in mind what I just explained, we return to the beginning of my point. I said that the walking is perpetual disrupting and getting back in the balanced state. It is the same with the apilado – it is perpetual changing of the leaning and returning to a controled axis.

4. Use the core, not the hands – The most common mistake when dancers are trying apilado is using the hands. When you do apilado you should be able not to use your hands at all. The point of leaning is not even near to the hands. It is in the core.

Read more about embrace and using the core

Embrace like a lover, dance like the wind

While leaning you should try to relax the upper part of the body. It is useful for one more reason: leaning on the core makes you easier to the partner (this is specially important for the ladies). Just watch this legendary video of Carlos Gavito and Maria Plazaola. Look how she leans on her core. Her hands are totally relaxed and she uses them to embrace him in a sensual way.

I had few experiences with this with students who did not learned to dance in my school, but later continued their learning with me. They often called apilado dancing – a ‘volcada’ position. They complained that if they do it too much they have pain in their back. Their partners complained as well.

I do not use volcadas and it is not part of the program in my school. Yet, learning to do a proper apilado – one can learn all he/she needs to know about how volcada should be done.

The problem with the students was that they learned the volcadas as a step, an exception – they did not learned a stable position. When you do apilado you must get yourself in a comfortable position. When you do volcada, it is just a step, you do it and you continue dancing on your axis – you never get to a stable sharing-axes position. In this situation, people often learn to do it using their hands – their cores do not even touch. This way, instead of having relaxed back muscles, they are tense and get them in various unnatural positions which can even lead to an injury.

The form you have selected does not exist.

5. Keep yourself grounded – One of the most important things in good apilado dancing is keeping the connection between the core and the ground. The tension in the embrace is focused in the part of the body between the point where the dancer steps and the point where he/she connects with the partner – it is the lower part of the body. The upper part, as I already explained, is completely relaxed. The back as well.

But what that means? It has little difference how the man and a woman should do it. The difference comes from the different role they play. Since the man is the center of the couple, he should be strong and in control of the axes. He leans on her but in the same time he is controlling the movements. This means that he has to bend his knees a little and use his legs muscles, despite the fact that he is leaning.

On the other hand, the woman should stretch her legs, having her knees straight. This way she is giving up the control completely. She is taking back her axis only if the man is giving it back.

The grounding in a couple that dances is a bit more complicated. You lean on yours, but in the same time on the partners legs as well.

Share this post with your friends on Facebook or on the other social networks, or send it to your friends in a private messages.

How to achieve good connection?

by Ivica Anteski · November 13, 2016

There is no good dancing if you aren’t able to connect your partner. Even beginners understand this and, yet, people leave that to be achieved by accident, without any intentional action. It’s often defined as something which depends on the ‘chemistry’ or compatibility of partners.

But what if I tell you that there are things you can and you should do to have better connection with the partners you dance to? In my opinion, what we refer to as chemistry, is often overrated and can be changed by intentional action.

“Ivica, why you don’t dance with her? She is so elegant and experienced dancer. Why you dance more with people who are not that good?”, asked my tango friend.

He was just curious, but I knew that there are people who criticized me for avoiding some partners and dancing more with others, even with beginners.

“Because she is not open when she dances and I don’t get from her what I value in the dance the most: the connection”, I answered.

This article is all about the reasons why was this my answer.

In the past five years most of enrollments my online dancers mentoring program are from people who want to have better connection with their partners.

Sometimes they really need some help, but often they just need a little encouragement to execute on what they already know. This is why I think reading this article can reassure you that what you think might be correct.

There are three aspects of a good connection in tango: emotional, physical and social. This article addresses all of them.

1. Start right

It’s hard to button up a shirt in a proper way if the first button misses the right hole. Start the tanda in the best possible way.

First and the most important thing is to be sure that your partner dances with you because he/she wants to and not because feels uncomfortable to decline your invitation. As I explained that in my post about the cabeceo, it’s necessary to start the communication in a way that the partner feels he/she has been respected.

Why do we need cabeceo/mirada?

Inviting people in respectful way is much more than a ritual or politeness. It’s one of the guarantees that the doors are being opened for you.

If you are not satisfied with the number and the quality of dances you get, don’t think that aggressive invitations will change something. Instead try to improve your dancing, get better teachers, put on better attitude. That way you’ll enjoy more and you’ll let the others have better time as well.

It’s also important to start with a smile. It’s a sign of friendly and polite behavior which can help your partner open up easier.

Hey, sorry to interrupt…

Do you like reading my articles? If you do please consider a small contribution to the existence of this blog.

I don’t sell a book or run ads: I share these articles for free. Unfortunately I also have to pay my bills, so if you see value in my work please consider a small donation/gratuity (the same way you tip your favorite bartender).
From my heart to yours!
Ivica

Thank you button

Securely processed via PayPal

2. Be positive and relaxed

Let me begin this point with an example. It’s a segment of a conversation which I had with one of my most favorite dancers. She is a teacher and experienced dancers, a former participant of the Tango Mundial in Buenos Aires. We talked about her favorite dancers and when I asked her to explain why she likes one of them, she said:

“It feels like he’s in love in my dancing. I don’t feel that he is bothered if I make mistake. There is no judging, no forcing or insisting on anything. I feel like he unconditionally accepts everything that I do”, she said.

This is something which I have heard few times before. People like to feel accepted when they express themselves. Dancing is exactly that – expressing who you are. You can’t expect good connection if you are not able to accept how your partner is dancing.

I had this problem myself. As a teacher I formed this bad habit of analyzing of my partners’ dance. I had to work on myself a lot to change that and to get more enjoyment in their dancing and their energy. And also, to allow them to enjoy in my dancing and my energy.

It’s also important what you say to your partner in the pause between songs. Being flexible, having positive attitude is a key to a better connection. Don’t complain about the organization of the milonga, about the quality of the music, about the floor – rather than that say what do you like, what is good. Trust me, it will change your experience: and it will change the way people feel when they are dancing with you.

3. Follow

The core of the art of connecting is to learn how to read your partner.

Tango isn’t about the movement – it’s about the emotion. Learn how to read the emotion of your partner and try to dance to it, try to add to it, try to shape it. It doesn’t matter what role you’re dancing, it’s a play of emotions and energies and that’s what makes tango so magical.

If you are dancing the mans role and you feel that your partner is becoming tense, you should try to follow her emotion and use more relaxing posture and choice of steps. If you feel she is uncomfortable with some of the steps you use – stop using them. If you feel she needs more energetic movements – adapt and start dancing more energetically. Don’t forget that the she is always the emotional drive of the couple – if you are not willing to follow that, she will disconnect.

If you are dancing the womans role be always aware to lead the emotion in a smooth way. Be confident, let him feel you, let him understand how you want that emotion to be shaped. Never forget that your primary goal is to focus on the connection. Let him construct the choreography – you just paint it with your color.

4. Give

Tango is like life. You must learn to give first, in order to be able to receive. The biggest enjoyment will come to those who know how to give. It’s not about finding the perfect partners, it is about being the perfect partner.

When you dance tango you must give everything. If you can’t do that do not dance.
Ricardo Vidort

This means that when you dance you should focus on giving enjoyment to your partner. Create an experience.

That alone can lead you to enjoy yourself, to loose yourself, to get in a state of flow. It might seem mystical, but to me it’s the most natural thing: you must think of others in order to forget about yourself. The joy of dancing tango is all about forgetting, about getting out of this reality.

Trust your partner. Believe that he/she is also prepared to give. Emotionally, but physically as well. Leaning on the partner means trusting them and it’s one of the most important physical components of good connection.

5. Feel the moment

Tango is about enjoying the moment.

Be grateful for the moment and be grateful for the partner who shares that moment with you, who is enabling you that. Your partner will feel that and will respond accordingly. Be grateful for the music because it enables you to dance, be grateful for other dancers because every milonga is a collective embrace, without them there would be no milonga, and also, be grateful to the organizer who enabled this experience. Tango most of the time isn’t profitable activity for them, which means they invest a lot of love in it.

When you dance you connect with your partner in this moment. You should forget about the past steps and you shouldn’t try to predict what’s next (this is especially important for ladies). Thinking about the past and anticipating the future are things which are connected to the thinking, to the intellect – tango is quite opposite of that. Tango should be about feeling, not about thinking.