We have moved

This blog has moved and can now be found at www.limericktango.com/blog/.

Moving Site

I shall be moving over to a wordpress blog hosted at www.limericktango.com/blog/ shortly.

Please mind the gap

The lunge, the main form of attack in fencing, is properly composed of two actions: the extension of the arm and the lunge of the legs. In classical fencing this is taught initially as two separate actions. Extend and then lunge. The extension establishes the threat and the lunge delivers it (it is vital that the threat is established before any leg movement is made). Over time the distance between the two actions is reduced moving from 'extend and then lunge' to 'extend lunge' to simply 'lunge'.

Equally with the lead. The lead must become before any movement and when you begin it will be lead and then move but eventually it will become simply 'lead' or 'move'. This analogy came to me while working on that simple little exercise of both partners doing the move of the turn in a straight line, side-step, ocho-forward, side-step, ocho-backwards. It is a great exercise for making the concept of disassociation apparent and because if it is not done in the form of BAM! lead, move it just does not work and you can see people getting confused awfully quickly.

The Embrace

Café Periódico del Tango writes about The In-s, Out-s & In-Betweens of the Embrace specifically quoting Javier Rodriguez that:

"the gentleman should hold the lady in his arms like a baby during the dance"

I personally have always preferred:

"Tenez votre arme comme vous tiendriez un oiseau : pas trop fort pour ne pas l’étouffer, assez fort tout de même pour ne pas le laisser s’échapper."

Louis-Justin Lafaugere; Traite de l’art de faire des armes
(Lyon: 1820)

Most commonly translated as "Hold your foil as if you had a little bird in your hand, firmly enough to prevent it from escaping and yet not so firmly as to crush it" and turning up in the 1952 film Scaramouche paraphrased as "Think of the sword like a bird. Clutch it too tightly and you choke it. Too lightly and it flies away."

Backwards and in heels

Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.

In response to: The "PC"-fication of Tango

Johanna over on Tangri-La has an excellent post on The "PC"-fication of Tango which, to summarise, deals with how the feminist debate has interfered with the lead-follow relationship.

The origins of tango lie in a society where the gender roles were clearly heterogeneous. Thankfully over the past 100 years things have liberalised somewhat and greater opportunities are open to both sexes. However the driving force of this debate was towards giving women the rights and opportunities that they were denied, resulting in a paucity of discussion as to what man's role was to be in this society.

I have seen aspects of this in classes, especially when it comes to new leaders taking followers into the embrace. On one shoulder they have the angel of society reminding them that a woman should be given her own space be free to do her own thing. Now they have a tango teaching devil on the other shoulder telling them that they must take this woman in a strong, firm, embrace. When the tango teaching devil loses out to the angel the leaders hand usually ends up on her side around her spare rib.

Men, you are being asked to lead. You are not being asked to revert to Neanderthals, club her over her head and drag her back to your cave, you are simply being asked to step up to the mark and lead. Three minutes of leading a dance with a proper embrace is not a declaration of war against the changes that have taken place in gender roles in general society*.


*If you are using it as a declaration of war against the changes that have taken place in gender roles in general society please send me your address so that my seconds may contact your seconds.

You don't teach people tango, you break 'em in.