The most important thing is your partner

What’s the most important thing in tango? If I have just few seconds to teach you about the core of the tango, the advice I am going to give you here will be it.

Let me begin this with a short story that happened when I was in preparation stage of the Tango Mentor project.

“I have few ideas about the name, I already checked the domains and they are available”, I said to her. She was my tango student, but there was topic where she was my mentor – work.

“Tell me”, she said.

“Well, the two that I like the best are Tango Mentor and Tango Mindset…”, I continued.

“Tango Mentor!”, she interrupted me.

“That one is short and clear”, she added.

“I agree, but I like Tango Mindset more, since it describes better the idea and my approach”, I said talking more to myself.

Obviously at the end I agreed with her, but my point here is that the mindset you have is very important for your dancing. I mean, tango instructors teach a lot about movements or music, but I have feeling that they don’t pay enough attention to how their students think about their dancing.

And that mindset means this: when you dance, focus on your partner.

In this article I talk about my list of the four most often mindset mistakes people make during the dance and my guidelines how can you avoid them.

1. Dance for your partner, not for yourself

Focusing mostly on yourself during the dance is one of the biggest mistakes you can do, not only in tango, but in any human relations. It’s rude and impolite, but it’s also very unpleasant experience to dance with someone who doesn’t care how do you feel.

Of course, it’s understandable when it happens to beginners who are focused on their steps and moves, but it’s unforgivable when it happens to more experienced dancers.

On the other hand, the most pleasant dances are always with people who are focused on you all the time during the dance. This means that they open to you and they monitor how you feel and how you move – and this is important no matter if you dance the male or the female role.

Dancing with someone who is focused on you helps you to open more and give more.

Hey, sorry to interrupt…

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2. Dance for your partner, not for the spectators

Yeah! Youtube! 🙁

Dancers watch show dances so much that it damages the way they dance. I mean, those Argentinians who dance on festivals are entertainers – it’s completely different approach than what you do when you dance on milonga. Their job is to amaze the audience, opposite to what you should do: to please your partner (and also yourself in the process).

What’s the difference?

The social dancer should care less about how his/her posture looks like than how his/her embrace feels; less about the number of sequences he/she is using, than the level of his/her partner.

Feeling your partner, rather than focusing on what observers think about your dancing is the first step towards creating heaven out of your dancing.

3. Dance for your partner, not for the ronda

To some people this might seems strange – are there people who care too much about the ronda? Yes, there are!

If you travel to encuentros (those milonguero events I talk about often) you’ll notice that there’re dancers who are kind of overcorrect; who try too much to please other dancers on the dancefloor, rather than pleasing their partners (I am talking here mainly about the men).

Of course, I’m strongly against not respecting the ronda, but if it’s too crowded: better leave it, dance in the second ronda or in the center, rather than torturing your partner with repeating the same sequence over and over, just because there’s no space.

I respect the skill of dancing in crowded milongas, but not when it’s so simplified that it even stops being dancing at all.

4. Dance for your partner, not for the music

Tango is personal. Very personal and very intimate. But often people reject to accept this truth. One of the tactics to avoid this uncomfortable truth is spreading the idea that you dance for the music.

Yes, it’s very important how you connect with the music, but you should think about that only after you learn how to connect with your partner.

They say that the tango couple is four legged animal with two beating hearts, one single entity that moves with the music. This means that you first have to create that entity and to think about the music only after you passed that test.

You can’t create that animal if you are not focused on the partner first.

It doesn’t matter how good you can follow the beat with your steps if you’re not able to step on that beat together with your partner.

You probably already noticed how these guidelines are connected. One lead to another, one is caused by the previous one. Start right, and you are more likely to finish right.

So, when you dance, focus on your partner. Try to feel her/him. Try to read what is in her/his heart and body. When you move, move with your partner – create unity that moves, an entity called tango couple.