Weight a minute!
I test you, you test me.
* For groups of two or more.
* Take a relaxed forearm-to-forearm hold [1][2] with your partner(s).
* Someone starts by giving a weight change intention.
* Together, you all make a weight change, which can range from in place, to small step, to large step in any direction.
* Everyone stands on one leg, with the free leg relaxed by its side.
* Now, with the intention to test but not destroy your partner’s stability, move your core weight around, up and down, with or opposite your partner. Wiggle, wobble, twist.
* The challenge is to see how well you can use your core muscles to resist your partner’s efforts to move you. Can you resist without touching your free leg to the floor or swinging it wildly?
* After a few moments of this, the next person takes a turn initiating a weight change, then testing stability.
Let’s twist again!
Round and round and up and down we go again! [3]
* For couple partners.
* One partner starts as the twister by placing their hands on the sides of the shoulders [4][5] of the twistee.
* The twister takes a step (open, front cross, or back cross) around their partner. Part of your challenge is to see that during this movement you keep your partner vertical over their standing leg.
* The twistee can respond in a variety of ways to activate a variety neuro-muscular awareness.
* Resist the twist, not allowing any part of your body to rotate.
* Allow only the upper body to rotate, attending to your vertical axis, not leaning in any direction and not breaking at the waist.
* Allow only the lower body to rotate, so that your partner’s pressure on the shoulders acts like a pressure switch — as long as there is pressure in a certain direction, it turns on the hip rotators.
Tango taps!
The kung fu master sees with the whole body.
* For couple partners.
* One partner will start as the sensor, with the other partner as the mover.
* The mover takes a relaxed forearm-to-forearm or other comfortable open hold with your partner.
* The sensor keeps their eyes closed throughout their turn.
* The mover gives an intention for a weight change. The intention can ask for one or the other to move, or both to move in parallel or cross-system, and in parallel or cross-direction.
* Release the hold entirely!
* Now the mover asks the sensor to touch some specified part of their body with some specified part of the sensor’s body.
Examples:
* Your free leg taps my standing foot.
* Your embrace-side hand taps my hand-side.
* Your standing knee taps my free leg.
* Variation: the sensor initiates the movement–while keeping their eyes closed! The other partner still calls out what to tap with what. Try it with the sensor holding the mover.
Discussion
Our understanding says that there are but two elements in the DNA of Argentine tango: Changes of weight and Pivots.
Change of weight means moving our weight supported by the floor from one foot to the other foot. This can include
* In place, with no movement of the feet.
* A step of any size. The cardinal directions for steps are forward, backward, and to the side (away from the standing leg). These are generally rectilinear (straight line) movements in an orthogonal (right-angle) direction, but they may include curved steps, slightly diagonal steps, and even steps across the line of the standing leg. A step may leave the weight over the new standing leg, or may displace the weight only temporarily, returning to the original leg.
Pivot means keeping our weight balanced in a straight column over the ball of one foot. But we don’t move as a solid column; we move in vertical segments. Generally a leader initiates the pivot through a twisting of their torso to indicated a desired pivot to the front or to the back. The leader may also indicate this be stepping around the follower. The follower senses the twisting in the torso, then spirals that energy down to the hips and legs, magnifying the amount of twist as it goes down. A pivot can also originate in the hips, often as an adornment. There are many more details, but for purposes of warming up, this will suffice.
We’d like to make play activities that will wake up our neuro-muscular system for tango for balancing and for torsion (twisting, contrabody) through the body. We also want to wake up our sensing of our partner, where they are in space and the space they occupy, where is their weight, how are their torso and their hips facing?
Notes
[1] Forearm-to-forearm hold. We want to keep the arms close to the core and relaxed.
[2] Feel free to experiment with other holds, such as hands at side of their shoulders, or even hands on each other’s rib cage.
[3] “Let’s Twist Again” by Chubby Checker. Originally “The Twist” by Hank Ballard.
[4] We don’t place our hands palm down on top of a partner’s shoulders because we want to keep weight off our partner, and we want our arms in a relaxed position with elbows toward the floor.
[5] If both partners feel comfortable with this, the twister can place their hands at the sides of their partner’s hips to produce different kinds of neuro-muscular awareness.