Thinking about collection is bad for your tango

“Collection” was eliminated from our tango vocabulary for many reasons.

I’ve written about collection in other articles, “Moving with your line of gravity” and “How we think affects the way we move”, so it is no secret that I don’t like what thinking about collection does to our dance. When we started developing our TangoBreath vinyasa, “collection” was one the first things we eliminated in our teaching and in our descriptions of Argentine tango movement.

We wanted to avoid “collection” for many reasons. One of them is that it is completely unnecessary. We never mention it in our TangoBreath vinyasa class, yet everyone, complete beginners and advanced dancers alike, all do what “collection” is intended to instruct. Their feet pass each other nicely in every movement. Another reason to discard “collection” is that it is mostly harmful to our development as dancers. We do mention it as something that happens as a result of well executed movement, but collection is not something to which it is necessary to give any thought. A beginning tango dancer has enough to think about already. Later on, it will be essential to think about what it means to have pretty foot movement. But that is a topic far beyond collecting.

Posted by Eric Gebhart on Feb 6, 2012 in Article, Beginning, Concepts, Visualization | 0 comments

Moving With Your Line of Gravity

Moving the line of gravity literally covers more ground

In the last post I described how the relationship between the center of movement and the line of gravity created internal dynamic tension which is a part of what creates presence or intention within the embrace. Moving the line of gravity literally covers more ground, but is easier to explain than the micro movements that create dynamic tension.

Any movement starts by moving our center away from our line of gravity to create dynamic tension. Our center of movement can be imagined as being a spot at the top of our sacrum in the center of our body. Standing still, the center of movement is intersected by our line of gravity.

Posted by Eric Gebhart on Nov 15, 2011 in Article, Concepts, Uncategorized, Visualization | 0 comments

How we think affects the way we move

Visualization enables the best movement and posture possible

TangoBreath has made us very conscious of how we describe the Argentine tango movements we are guiding. It is crucial to be concise in our presentation – the evolution of which is well understood by our attendees. How we think, and what we think, has a profound affect on the way we move. We are fortunate that discussions and feedback following TangoBreath are revealing new ways of verbally describing tango movements and various visualizations that individuals have used to conceptualize – and physically embed – the core technique of Argentine tango. Likewise, in our own practice, we have come to find our own ways of visualizing and comprehending movement.