A tango-dance learning method

My work is not based on Feldenkrais’ method exclusively. It would be incorrect to state that tango sensodinamia^® is a combination between tango and Feldenkrais, since I developed it taking different elements from my own professional training: investigations on eutonia, bioenergetics, rhythmic and expressive gym, contact improvisation, evolutionary movement, sphere-dynamics, anthropological drama, etc.

Anyhow, it is true that Feldenkrais’ philosophy was the main discipline that inspired me when developing tango sensodinamia^®.

Moshe Feldenkrais’ methodology is based in the following summarized premises:

Human body is physiologically prepared to function by means of natural forces. Therefore, if we are able to optimize the internal perception of these forces then  we will be able to reduce unnecessary effort in both the movement and the functioning of our vital organs.

To reach balance, our body has its own mechanisms  responsible of keeping health and vital functioning. These “natural organic impulses”, embodied in our motor development from our very origin, are socialized little by little. That is to say, the child starts to condition her own needs with demands (including his parents’s) that society show as “right models”. As a result, children lost the connection with their own needs, dissatisfaction becomes a recurrent feeling and self-esteem weakens. The proposal is to retrace steps and recover the natural impulse of motor learning.

All human activities are based on natural impulses which are as mysterious as animal’s impulses are. Such is the inner need to dance in human beings.

The human being’s instinct is weak. To compensate this fact, we all have a huge learning ability. We can see an example of this in the difference between men and birds: the same bird specie sings the same song all around the planet. Human beings speak different languages and, what is more, they are able to learn many other languages apart from their mother tongues.

To sum up, what I like most of Feldenkrais’ philosophy is its spirit of scientific contribution when analyzing the motor learning. It is like returning to childhood, and such is the freedom we feel when we experience our body as a jack-in-the-box. Its main concept is “learn to learn”.

Feldenkrais’ discipline, as all disciplines focused on the study of the body functioning, aims to unify “consciousness in self perception of the body” as another unit belonging to the leaving creatures’ network and cosmos. It relieves us from the suffering produced by our consciousness of fragmentation and from the timeless condemnation felt by human beings when considering ourselves as something apart from Nature.

The Culture -our ability of leaning, evolving and controlling the rest of the leaving creatures- gives us great power and, at the same time, a great sentence. Our discernment ability makes us responsible for the rest of the leaving creatures. In order to respect and venerate Life, it is necessary we first learn to respect our own individual lives.

Our body, such as we posses it, is perfect and complete to dance. A greater beauty can be awakened through consciousness. We all have the chance to recover our movement’s innocence, no matter how old we are. tango sensodinamia^® works to tune our sensitivity and to recover our tie to the forces of Nature. These forces are all the energies surrounding us, going through our bodies (Earth magnetic field, air, atmospheric pressure, other leaving creatures, etc). Our aim is to depurate, and leave behind, social patterns that make us prisoners preventing us from feeling life’s constant change and its turmoil around us. This aim requires patience and a lot of tenderness with ourselves and with those who dance with us.

Learning tango gives us the wonderful opportunity to perceive ourselves through somebody else’s body. Many times we get angry with our dance partner’s response and start an endless argument on who is not doing it right. In these cases, I always advise to put the conflict right in the middle of the couple and try a strategy by means of which each dancer projects his or her own consciousness onto the other, so that both try to dance through the other’s body without trying to force any special movement. Approving the other becomes self approval. In this way, many tensions disappear immediately.

So, why do I combine tango dance with my research on movement consciousness? Because I feel that tango’s power of social communion is an enormous potential to open communication channels. International tango’s success and significance show how humans need to learn to open their cardiac center. Is there anything more powerful than learning to do it consciously?

Then, tango sensodinamia^®, the same as Feldenkrais, eutonia, rhythmic and expressive gym and all the techniques I came across during my investigation, have the aim of rescuing the deep sense of Life. In a modern world were man and woman patterns offered by advertising are getting far from reality, a world were love and enjoyment seem a privilege of just a few, I propose a real tango embrace where it is possible to open our heart’s force.

Tango as social custom is quite a new experience around the world. Here in Buenos Aires, we have the chance of learning from the experience of our elder people. As we get closer to the end of our lives, the need of valuing what we have and considering our peers really urges. Perhaps this is the reason why old milongueros’ tango is a ritual of friendship and respect to fellow creatures as well as a way to worship life. Energy starts to become blocked through our body early in childhood, and we only come to notice it when the stream of energy starts to decrease. Therefore, the sooner we have the courage to observe ourselves, the sooner we will have the chance to become friendlier with ourselves and with the others.

Beyond our personal conflicts, if we pay attention, we will soon discover that all human beings are part of the same social network, and that we all have, more or less, the same difficulties. Considered from this perspective, everybody around us gets a benefit from our auto-consciousness work. That small —and that huge— is the contribution we can make.

Summarizing, benefits from self-consciousness provided by tango sensodinamia^® are: improving our self-esteem,  our self-approval and our sensitivity expansion, relieving of stress, optimizing of the effort we use to move, opening our energy channels, more elasticity of our muscle-system, wider perception of the environment, speed and sharpness in our thought to execute movements. It also stimulates our sensitivity to notice the stream of movement in our body as well as in our partners’.

Classes framework

I combine exercises of perception and dynamics consciousness. My proposal is to come into the dance from a deep knowledge of sensations always related to the emotions that the music suggests. I have decided to work in this way after having understood that learning through sequences of movements (figures) is a method that considers bodies with fixed parameters as if they were perfectly predictable machines. I consider this kind of methods as means of getting away from the reality proposed by music, as well as a source of permanent self-criticism on our movement ability; these two negative characteristics are against the natural aim of dancing: reaching a balance of our body’s energies in a healthy way.

I can say all my classes are unique, since I am always trying to adequate them to what dancers need each different moment. When I work with groups, as well as when I teach privately, I am constantly ready to change the schedule because I am listening the others through my own emotions all the time. I am teacher and learner at the same time, since each body has a particular wisdom, each culture, a deep knowledge.

My objective is to “untangle” the other’s bodies. I do not exclude other kinds of music apart from tango. Many times, it is necessary to go through different sensations before facing tango. Music has a great cleaning and connecting power. Tango has the huge power to open our hearts, so sometimes it is helpful to work other emotions fist so that we are not afraid to open ourselves with the strength required by tango. It is also advisable learning to close the heart channel to avoid the feeling of being exposed. Each time I teach, I immerse myself together with my students on a trip of being permanently connected to understand what they feel. I use my body as an emotion “detector” and from this intuition I choose the right music to harmonize them and myself so as we achieve a smooth opening that allow us to tie our energies.

My personal history

My personal experience somehow developed this method. Ten year ago I suffered a back bone illness. During these days I was training flamenco dance and theater dance very hard. Due to a slipped disc I had to give up my artistic studies. After failing with treatments during a year and a half, traditional medicine offered me a surgery as the solution to my problem. I accepted doctor’s advices and underwent the operation, after which I did not have any relief, and even felt worse and with no chance to rehabilitate my health by natural means.

A year later, I suffered an internal hemorrhage due to an ovarian cyst. This was the limit I could bare, so I decided to treat my health by means of alternative medicine. My first move was Bioenergetics therapy (an Alexander Lowen’s technique. A. Lowen was a Freudian psychoanalyst that followed Gerda Alexander’s concepts about energy). In a short time, my health improved considerably and I was able to start practicing tango dance. I chose tango because I thought it was the smoothest dance to rehabilitate my back bone.

Balance was re-established, and I went through my first years dancing tango. Nevertheless, problems reappeared when I tried to dance tango professionally: pain came back once and again jeopardizing my career as professional dancer. I then realized I needed some sort of technique classes, but any of the traditional ones took my problem into account. I used to consume huge dozes of anti-inflammatory medicine.

This was another limit I had to overcome. I realized that, if I really wanted to dance, I had to search for another solution. I met then Graciela Aldazabal, a woman who has developed a wonderful sensitivity to guide people to be conscious of the use of their bodies using exercises from Feldenkrais and Gerda Alexander.

So, I started to apply what I learnt with Graciela to my dance. People started to ask me on the best and healthiest way to move. Then, I started to teach and so I was able to prove that it is possible to learn to dance tango from the understanding of the essential mechanic of our bodies and from shearing this experience with a partner. Besides, at Susana Mildderman’s classes (Rhythmic and expressive gym) I leant to trust in the music and its piercing power to produce movements. The first time I attend one of these classes I could not believe my eyes when watching how old people move, with a freedom that professional dancers develop in years and years of practice.

Trusting our own organic impulses to dance is the most difficult task, but I strongly believe that this is what we are looking for when be decide to start dancing, and, no doubt, all well known dancers are those who have allowed music to shape them, those who trust in the deep long for dancing and sharing. Modern dance techniques are focused on the organic nature of human beings. They are based on the respect for the vital strength our bodies have and always avoid muscle and joint injuries. This is my search: in order to trust our vital energy we have to develop consciousness. It is quite difficult to define what consciousness is, but… who has the right and unique answer? I think it is the human being’s ability to realize she is alive and his willingness to shape this force. But, in order to shape it, we have to understand and respect it first. To boost it with our dance, we have to take care of it, protect it. We have to surrender to the vertigo of being alive, like trees offer their fruit and drop their leaves, always trusting in the coming of the next Spring.

My personal work

When I started the way to my health’s improvement, I first focused myself in the painful zones of my body. But soon I realized that I had to pay attention to my body as a whole if I wanted to see any lasting result. Later, when I started to dance tango, I understood that it was important to focus on the relationship with my partner to be able to produce a well-being feeling. Now I am a teacher, I see I also have to be aware of the whole group of students to keep a balanced mood. Each of these discoveries meant a crisis and a growth. Each new vision made me face an even more complex challenge. I am still a learner, it would be funny to state I know life’s vastness.

I dreamt a funny dream some years ago, when my body still pained a lot. I was traveling with a group of people in a spaceship. This ship was spiral-shaped, it was like an enormous snail shell all covered with colorful little stones. We all were on a trip, and this trip meant just one thing: we all chose to be somebody different from who we were in ordinary life. My choice was to be a teacher. I woke up filled with peace and hope.

Years later, fate guided me towards teaching, though I never had the conscious intention. I am not alone in this trip. We all are on this ship. We all play different roles in this world, but, apart from that, we all are teachers and learners full time. The snail shell represents the spiral of vital cycles. The trip is life in permanent change. I invite you to watch this wonderful timeless landscape.

Text by: Natacha Iglesias