The mathematics of the dance

The mathematics of the dance is a way to understand how do you use your dancing repertoire and what is the value of the steps in your vocabulary.

Have you ever tough about how much steps you learned since you started dancing tango? Did you calculated how much of that knowledge you actually use when you dance?

I do not know if someone actually made that study, but I believe that the experienced tango dancers use just a small percentage of what they actually know. I think that male dancers usually use smaller percentage of their knowledge than the female dances (specially in the later phase of their development).

I know this because I know that tango is similar to the language.

…an average adult native English speaker has an active vocabulary of about 20,000 words, the Reading Teachers Book of Lists claims that the first 25 words are used in 33% of everyday writing, the first 100 words appear in 50% of adult and student writing, and the first 1,000 words are used in 89% of every day writing! Of course, as we progressively move to a higher percentage, the number of words starts to dramatically increase (especially after 95% of comprehension), but it has been said that a vocabulary of just 3000 words provides coverage for around 95% of common texts. (Lingoholic)

The parallel is obvious. There are very useful steps and elements in tango and there are those who are used just occasionally.

I will try to explain in this post what are the factors that limits the usage of our knowledge. This post is mostly focused on the male aspects in tango, but I am sure that many women will recognize the parallels in their dancing as well.

– Does anyone have any question? – I asked as I always do before I finish my workshops.

Silence. I hate when no one has to ask or comment. I need that feedback… And then, a girl rose her hand.

– I have a question. What did you meant ‘The mathematics of the dance”? I mean, it was mentioned in the description for this workshop, but you did not talked about that.

She was wrong. I was talking about it all the time, but I never used the term mathematics – I was teaching them how to make the best use of the repertoire they already have. This was the mathematics of the dance.

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Understanding how much of our repertoire we use will give us a perspective on what is important in our dancing and what are the things we should pay less attention to. This will give you a clear direction what should you practice more.

So, here are the factors:

1. Your mood – The way you dance always depends on the way you feel. We often say that tango is a feeling that is danced: than what happens when you feel bad, tired, angry, disappointed, scared? Than your dancing becomes an expression of your bad feeling.

Nothing can limit your enjoyment and your dancing ability like bad mood can. Of course, you can intentionally do some things to improve your mood, but there are situations when it is impossible. Let’s say you did not had enough sleep (which happens often on big tango events with non-stop dancing) – than no amount of good will can help you get in a good mood, you just need a pillow.

The mood also influences your ability for communication. People in a bad mood tend to be closed or they influence others to close up to them, which disrupts the smoothness of the embrace and the clarity of the communication.

But what does this mean for your dancing? When you are in a good mood you can easily enter in a state of flow, when all you want to do just works. When you are in a bad mood, the opposite happens – nothing works. Even things you usually make without effort can be hard to do. Being in a bad mood, you might end up limiting the dancing yourself, without external influences.

2. The music – The DJ can make or brake the milonga. It is wrong to think that if you are in a good mood, no matter how bad the music is you can have a good time. People sometimes can have good time, for hour or two, but eventually constant exposure to bad music can brake even the most positive people.

On the other hand, good music can lift up the mood of the milonga and can inspire even those who did not planed to dance a lot. I have seen people already prepared to go home from a milonga, going back and putting their dancing shoes just because they love the tanda.

Good inspiring music can make you get the best you have and expand your dancing repertoire. You can sometimes actually do stuff that you were not aware that you are able to.

Bad music can make you forget even what you already know, repeating over and over the same patterns in a same way, which will make your dancing boring to you, and boring to your partners.

3. The partner – Lets be honest: tango is dance of two people and the way you dance most of the time can be limited or inspired by your partner. It is not always you who have the responsibility.

Good dancer, of course, can get the most from limiting partner, but it is still a limiting factor. On the other hand, good partner who communicates well and who knows how to inspire you can make you dance like a hurricane 🙂

One of the factors is the right choice of the partner for the certain type of music. I love to dance slow emotional tandas with sensual partners who can connect on very deep levels. I love to dance fast rhythmical tandas with partners who inspire me to add more creativity and dynamics to my dancing.

If you try to mix those you will end up limiting your dancing. I do not say that good dancers can not dance both, but if you want to get the most from your dances you have to consider this factor as well.

4. The crowd – I always prefer to dance in crowded milongas than getting my way on a huge dance floors with few couples. Crowded milongas have this closeness and energy that flows from couple to couple, it has this feeling of togetherness which makes a warm feeling in my heart.

On the other hand, huge half-empty dance floors makes me leave earlier. It brings this sense of emptiness, lonely feeling that drains the will to dance.

But, dancing in a crowded milonga comes with a price. Specially if the people there are not well trained to dance in such close proximity to other couples. Using less space is the first rule of respecting others when you dance alongside others in a crowded milonga. If people do not do that the milonga can become a real nightmare.

If the dance floor is battlefield sometimes is better to go home and watch a movie or go for a drink with the friends than trying to dance. But even when it is not, even if all the dancers dance respectfully you might end up dancing bad because the space is too narrow and does not allow you to do many of the moves in your repertoire. This is why on your practicas you should practice from time to time dancing in a small space.

After explaining these factors we can make the calculations: the mathematics of the dance. This is a hypothetical example but every dancer should recognize some of these limits in his experiences in various milongas he attends.

Imagine you have in your repertoire 20 steps. Because you are in a bad mood or sleepy, five of them are not an option, so you end up dancing with 15. But wait, the music is flat and it does not inspire you to use all your repertoire. Lets say the DJ is not good and decided to play just rhythmic music tonight – and you have to forget about those steps for melodic music with pauses: so you end up with 10 steps.

And then, you decided to dance a tanda with a lovely girl who has limited dancing skills or she is not connecting well. You try to make a step and she does not respond, so you give up that one. You try another one – it works, but the next one, does not. This way you lose another 5 steps from your repertoire and now you are at 5.

It comes around 23h and the milonga is getting more and more crowded – the space available on the dance floor that one couple can use shrinks. From those 5 steps you have, 3 are completely unusable in this circumstances, so you finally end up with 2.

Huh, not a big freedom for expression.

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