Tango y Té

Tango Technique as Taught by Mimi Santapa

Note: the following is my best understanding (David Chayes') of Mimi Santapa's ideas. After giving it much thought, I am sharing this with others to help them benefit from Mimi's classes. The ideas expressed here are underlying premises that sometimes are lost in translation.

I welcome active participation from others in this effort. Mimi has not seen these statements, and so I am opening myself to be rebuked. Please, if you see any problem with the writing, challenge me. I very much welcome being corrected.

Fundamental Premise of Dancing

The fundamental premise of dancing is that dancing is body movement. By body movement I mean the movement of the body as a whole. Another way to say this is: it is the movement of your center of gravity. We also can talk about this as weight transfer.

Let me expand on this: in dancing the only movement that has meaning is body movement. Leg movement should be there only if it is caused by such body movement. The purpose of dancing is dancing the body; this has meaning, feeling in it. This is dancing.

3 goals of Dancing Technique

Mimi's techniques will help you achieve 3 main goals. Think about what these goals mean to you. Accept these goals as your own, at least for the duration of the classes.

1. Posture: Posture means: using gravity to create movement. Dance movement is analogous to a super efficient tent structure: pure compression and pure tension. The main compression pole of the tent represent your axis: it is the direct path of compression bearing down your weight through one supporting foot into the ground. The free side of the body is suspended, like the tension cables of the tent, from this column of compression.

If I have posture, then I have balance, and from balance I will have movement. All dancing is reduced to feeling when to press into the ground as the leg receives and propels the body's weight, and how to relax the free side of the body so that it can follow the direction of the body, being pulled along.

2. Freedom: Freedom comes from having a single clear support and being able to move in your own chosen direction, on your own. So you see that freedom is really the same as posture. Changes in direction are made by the rotation of the body as a whole, when it has a single clear point of support.

3. Togetherness: It means feeling that we are supporting our weight at the same time and in the same space and joining up in the same direction. There are specific ways to establish posture in the context of the embrace while preserving freedom.

The woman is inside the man's space of his embrace. When the man dances, his goal is to always create a space for her where she is free to dance, i.e. on the left side of his embrace. This means that the woman will always create her own freedom by controlling her axis on the right side of her body, even when she lands her weight on her left foot..

These 3 goals will help you master any step you want to learn. Whenever you are studying a movement ask: 1.how does what I am doing improve my posture? 2. How does it preserve my freedom? 3. How do I maintain my posture and freedom, taking into account that I am dancing together with my partner?

Implementation

All Mimi's techniques are implementations of the 3 goals. The following are some of Mimi's didactic techniques that teach mechanisms in a pure form so that they can later be used in a more precise and imperceptible way to dance beautifully:

Walking technique: learning to maintain the supporting leg as straight, using the point of support as a fulcrum, and using the "bicycle action" of the hips. This teaches weight transfer: how to allow the body to move first and then let the leg be pulled by the torso (back and abdomen)

Crossing the knees: This teaches one to always disassociate the free leg, reinforcing the axis as an unambiguous point of support so that the leg follows unambiguously the direction of the body. The ankles should never rest side by side.

Breaking the foot: the foot and ankle should be relaxed. A natural way of rolling the sole of the foot to-and-from the ground, and of making decorations, almost automatically follows.

Stretching the left side of the torso (woman's part) at various times helps to control your axis on your right side. For the man, stretching the right side of his torso helps him create a space in the left side of his embrace where the woman is free to dance, while releasing pressure from the closed side of the embrace that would interfere with this freedom.

Shaping the embrace as though holding a violin (man and woman): this shows where the comfort comes from in the woman's utilizing her space on the man's left while freeing up the woman?s left arm and shoulder.

Learning to make a small step with the left (woman's part) teaches the basic mechanism of controlling the woman's axis on her right side.

Learning to impulse a large step on the right (woman's part) teaches how to increase the length of the step by exploiting the inherent freedom on the right.

Placing the left foot: the woman's left foot, when crossing, is placed between the man's feet. This teaches alignment of the bodies.

There are many more techniques in the arsenal. Just keep in mind: always ask: how does this help me achieve the 3 goals? Mimi's theory is integrated in this way.