Teaching Emotion in Tango

You can’t teach emotion? Yes, I agree, but I strongly believe that isn’t everything one can say about it. While teaching someone how to feel in a certain way is impossible, you can help people cultivate what they feel, express it, channel it; you can give them tools to give their emotions a form.

I always believed that there is a part of tango that is well beyond the scope of a tango teacher. In fact, I’m not sure if I consider it a dance at all.

There’s something unique happening between humans when they move together in intimate embrace – so, I would rather say that tango is meditation for two.

This means when you dance tango you learn how to better communicate with others; how to exist in a community, you learn empathy. Then, as an extension to that, tango is a great platform to work on yourself and your own flaws – because it’s a mirror in which you can see yourself without the usual self-deception we’re all so good at.

Beyond Teaching Tango

I think that if you’re a good tango teacher, part of your job description is to help your students get through all these complicated processes… Of course, you teach them steps, but your role goes much deeper. In fact, every tango school needs a tango teacher and a psychologist (or even a psychiatrist) – or if you like, a spiritual guru 🙂

Jokes aside – my point is that tango teachers are not always well-equipped to deal with problems their students have. I’m talking here about local tango teachers – Argentine celebrities come for workshops and leave, but the local teacher should continuously take care of his students’ development.

If you feel your job is to teach them the moves and make them memorize steps, you’re probably fine – but then you’ll be a bad teacher, because what they learned has to work with a partner, in the music, on the dance floor, at crowded milongas…

And then, in all of that chaos and challenges – you expect them to express their emotions!?

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My Strategies for Teaching Emotion in Tango

I think that there are no ultimate solutions when it comes to teaching emotions, but I can summarize my own experience in three main strategies. I write them here in the hope they will help my fellow teachers, but I also want to let dancers know what they can do as well.

1) Building a Foundation

You can’t express emotion in the dance if there is no way for it to take shape, a material form. So, you don’t start with emotion; you start with learning some basic movements. I first teach my students to walk on beat. This is simple enough for them to learn quickly and gives them some basic musicality – there is no music without a beat, and there is no dancing without recognizing it.

Second, I give them a very basic pattern – the 6-step basic. I’ve seen people calling it the square step or “baldosa”… whatever you call it, I strongly believe this is more than enough to dance tango with emotion, even for experienced dancers.

Here’s an excerpt from one of the videos in my online course recorded in 2017, just to illustrate what I’m talking about:

This is all a teacher can teach – the physical movement! Now, it’s up to the dancer to learn them and channel what they feel.

2) Embracing Silence

Others should judge, but I think that I am one of those tough teachers who get people into uncomfortable situations right away to challenge them to learn. Well, not always, but I believe that people have to be pushed out of their comfort zone if they want to learn new things.

I often challenge my students to stay in an embrace doing nothing. Intimate closeness is for many people a challenge, and their brain shifts into panic mode when they have to stay silent and do nothing – but one can recognize their own emotions only if they’re able to overcome that panic.

You can’t fill a cup if it’s not empty – so help them empty the cup. Once they start feeling comfortable and relaxed in an intimate closeness, then the emotion will emerge.

So, what do they do? They act out emotion. This is one of the reasons why we see so much fakeness on the dance floor, which gives me a feeling of repulsion when I see it.

3) Raising Criteria for Learning

Once students learn how to dance in an intimate closeness, the harder job is to keep them doing it. We all want to learn quickly, and many unfortunately take shortcuts. Well, you can’t cheat your way to dancing with emotion!

I believe a good tango teacher has a responsibility to have high criteria about when students can consider a new step learned. Most of the bad dancing comes from half-assing when people learn – picking up a new step at a workshop with a tango celebrity and considering that it’s enough to incorporate it into your repertoire.

One step should be considered part of your dancing vocabulary only when you can do it without effort while maintaining calmness in the embrace and connection with your partner. If you have to sacrifice all of that for the sake of doing a step, in my book, you’re a bad dancer.

You can only express emotion when your movements are easy and natural!

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From my heart to yours!
Ivica

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While emotions themselves can’t be directly taught, tango offers great platform for cultivating emotional expression. It’s a dance of connection, a mirror to self-discovery, and a pathway to deeper communication.

I disagree with the idea that tango teachers’ role is to teach just dancing: we are facilitators, guiding students through the complexities of physical movement, emotional vulnerability, and milonga codigos. Because without that, tango classes are meaningless!