This chapter shows you the ropes in Tango: it introduces some of its basic concepts and explains how to master them with some easy-to-do tricks I always have up my sleeve. To top it off, you will learn the eight basic steps in Tango, including the world famous Fifth position. So get ready to take the Fifth!
Dance Joseph, Dance
When you talk posture, you’re talking midsection. From the diaphragm on, every muscle in your midriff: the rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis and obliques, which are relatively superficial muscles, and -more importantly- the deep hidden muscles responsible for your upright posture. When you have a back pain, for example, you want to work these abdominal muscles to relieve the injured sector; and when you admire the grace and poise of a Greek statue, well, you are probably admiring the strength of their deep midsection muscles that allow them to position their bodies in such a way.
The equation is simple: get strong abdominal muscles and you’ll be all right. Actually, you’ll be far more than just alright! Get weak or sagging abdominals and you will probably have all sorts of postural problems, and all sorts of back pains and aches.
So there is more to working the core than just elegance and poise. It’s really a question of keeping a healthy spine and a healthy lifestyle, though sophistication is the cherry that tops it off!
Ever heard of a professional dancer with backaches? Never. The reason is that when you dance you are constantly engaging your muscles, elongating and strengthening them in a million different ways and from a million different angles. And guess what muscles are continuously working whenever you dance, in order to keep that perfect pose. You got it! Your deep postural muscles.
With TANGOLATES you’ve got one thousand and one moves -and one thousand and one reasons!- to work your muscles to the core.
Conscious and Balanced Movement
Why is it so important to be conscious about your workout? The answer is: because you are one thing before knowledge and quite another after knowledge. Let me give you a personal example. Not long ago, I suffered from a relentless upper backache that had its epicenter in my shoulder blades or scapula. No matter what I did -and this included rubbing, massaging, heat, and basically whatever came into my mind!- the pain would not go away. Everybody told me that it was probably stress, that I worked too hard and needed a vacation, and so on and so forth.
One day, I decided to personally test where the pain came from. So I started to move my arm in different directions until I could pin-point the movement that triggered the pain. By the good old system of trial-and-error, I could locate the pain exactly: when I moved my arm forward at a certain angle and in a given direction, a muscle moved painfully somewhere around the edge of my shoulder blades.
Where could it come from? After a little more testing, I found out that the movement corresponded exactly to the first row of my laptop keyboard, especially the “Delete” key.Since I spend long ours typing with my I book on my lap, I counted the ways I had to stretch my arm to reach the “Delete” key and the rest of the keys in the first two rows of my laptop in one hour. And you really don’t want to know!
It became very clear to me that the origin and first cause of my back pain was the “Delete” key. Now I knew it. And guess what? It stopped aching as badly afterwards. Apparently, once I obtained that crucial piece of knowledge, there was a conscious change every time my arm moved. The pain gradualy went away.
Your brain must know and understand what your body does. This is the only way to really work agroup of muslces, master an excercise or change life-long habits, in order to get the body you want and make it last.
TANGOLATES, as we said, is a mind-soul body dance. The importance of conscious knowledge of movement is part of both the Tango and the Pilates heritadge. Joseph Pilates spoke plenty about the connection of the mind with his exercises. Tango, with is concentrated, carefully calculated moves, also places conscious motion and mind control on a superior level.
This is the essence of Tango. This is the essence of Pilates. This is the essence of TANGOLATES.
First Think, Then Move
Picture yourself at a milonga -a place with a dark, alluring atmosphere where you go to dance Tango and only Tango.
You walk in to seen a couple on the dance floor approach each other meaningfully and start dancing.
First they walk up to each, usually staring straight at the other person’s face, indicating that they have chosen them for the next dance. Second, when they reach each other, standing face to face, ever so close, they lift their arms and hold each other in the Tango embrace. Third -and this is the most important part- they’ll spend a few seconds positioning their bodies, balancing from one foot to the other, their chests pressed together, stabilising their bodies and finding a rhythm in common. Then, and only then, he will make the first move, and she will follow.
So, let’s get this one point straight and perfectly clear: if you don’t set up your body correctly, you can’t even begin to Tango. And the same goes for PILATES FOR TWO.
During your first PILATES FOR TWO classes, you will learn how to focus on the proper position, you will set up your body correctly, and you will find your balance.
After you have accomplished finding your own steadyness, you will learn how to adjust your body to your partner’s, working up to more challenging positions where balance, control and coordination are the key to swift, fluent moves.
Throughout the exercises, you will be cued on how to arrange your body to adapt better to your partner.
And this is the key to Tangolate’s efficiency. Beacause two bodies can do more than one. Beacause as you master the art of adapting your body to your partner’s, you will challeng your deep postural muscles in a way you have never done before. You will work new muscles you never even new you had. You will learn about interacting with others, about the delicate middle point there is between conceding and imposing. You will lear about power and about control. And you will do this in such a way that it will go beyond the dance floor and you will feel it slowly crawling into your body and into your everyday life.
