The current tango community, of which I am also part of, in my opinion distinguishes itself from other dance styles by the high degree of surrendering oneself, that is required to achieve such a subtle cooperation.
Possibly partly because "surrender" is more difficult for people in leadership positions, it is often those, often highly educated people, who start dancing the tango.
Despite the doubt to participate in an activity, as long as we do not know exactly
who organizes it, which location, DJ, the equipment, the level and number of participants, the weather, etc...,
does this tango community not only manage to surrender more and more,
but also to put aside prejudices and to also participate in new yet unknown dance activities.
Rather than acknowledging this need for security, we usually seem to prefer the questionable luxury of setting high standards.
While these standards do limit us in the number of moments when we experience this ultimate cooperation with any random partner.
Despite that the commercialized dance classes teach us to replace our natural abilities to connect with simultaneous movements with which we "appear" to be connected,
this tango community often manages to achieve that ultimate fusion that is typical for this dance.
Although we often don't know how, because then we follow our feelings and have forgotten those basic steps for a while.
Many teachers therefore eventually urge us to unlearn those basic steps and to start dancing based on our feelings.
However, unlearning once learned habits often proves impossible and our natural ability to connect with each other is slowly diminished, I have noticed.
That's why I'd rather teach myself to dance as 1 body on 4 legs than learn to look like one.
I also see daughters of tango dancers who teach themselves to dance by dancing with their parents, without taking lessons, achieve amazing results in both roles within a very short time.
Since I broke my back in 2005, I feel my every move of followers and how it clashes with my movement, if I would continue to lead.
After all, during tango lessons we as a leader learn to indicate something, the follower performs the indicated figure, the leader follows her movement and stops her to indicate something else or if she threatens to collide.
So no connection because both move separately from each other.
Unless we feel completely at ease with each other and our basic steps give way to the connection that arises when the leader subtly moves his follower, and the follower, with the right counter pressure, forms 1 body on 4 legs.
http://fpww.nl
