438  The function of listening in dancing?

Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 05:04:22 -0800
From: Jonathan Thornton <jnt@NOYAU.COM>
Subject: The function of listening in dancing?

I had been taking classes in tango for nine month when I first heard
about dancing in close embrace. I was in despair of ever learning how to
do the various complexities of the turn like sacadas, enrosques, the
various leg wraps etc. A dancer returning from a tango week in Montreal
told me about close embrace and how you could not do as many things as you
could in open embrace but if you did them very well you could communicate
a lot about the music. I felt that was my only chance. I couldn't learn to
do a sacada to the right in parallel system and then do it in cross and
then flip it and do the cross and parallel sacadas while turning to my
left. I didn't have the facility. Any one little thing I learned would
require tens if not hundreds of hours of practise. Somehow I got the idea
if I could learn to do ten things well and learn to nuance them
sufficiently and with awareness of the music I might be able to eventually
*dance* tango. Such was my desperate hope anyway.

I noted I was using my percussionist background to set a metronome
in my head and then trying to practise steps in time unable to pay
attention to the music given all the other things that required attending
to. The few things I read quoted from milongueros led me to abandon trying
to learn new steps and instead I set myself two goals: to dance the entire
dance listening to the music the entire time and at the same time to
listen to my partner. This was a difficult long term challenge. Problems
of floorcraft, near collisions, or problems with my lead that would cause
me to "sweat" in embarrassment and I would discover I had lost awareness of
the music. It took at least a year, I don't know how long, ages, eons it
felt like, until I could dance and deal with many of the tasks of leading
while still listening to the music and being aware of my partner the
entire time. It was time well spent. For it is my experience to dance
musically one has to hear the music note by note, and to communicate with
ones partner one must listen to them the entire time one is dancing. I
have yet to really be able to put into words what this listening is or
what I hear, or what a partner tells me, but I know it's very important to
me.

It is that others in the tango community understand and express
the importance of these two *listenings* over moves and step patterns that
has made tango such a richly revealing learning experience for me. For me,
listening, though not a technique, is an essential discipline for dancing.
It is also with the development of these listenings that on occasion
something happened in the dance that I am still seeking words to express.
I have this idea that in order to express, one must first hear.
Hear the music, hear what one feels hearing the music, and hear how your
partner is responding to you and to the music. When those conditions are
met, the elaborateness of the steps is not so important. It's how the
steps are taken that expresses the feeling. And then, this is the thing
that has my deepest interest, sometimes a communication happens that is so
vivid and present, I almost want to say it is an awakening of some sort.
It is that dancing that I want to explore. Those are the all too rare
dances that keep me fascinated by this activity, that keep me wondering,
what really is it to dance?
Leading or following what do you listen to, listen for and what
have you heard? Having heard then I ask myself what is it I express, want
to express and how do I express myself?

I welcome and respond to all emails. Thank you.

peace, Jonathan Thornton