Gancho - Dance Technique
None
- 00:00
- So Frank and I will talk, Frank
- 00:03
- and I will talk to you about dance technique
- 00:06
- because we don't want you just to be good tango dancers.
- 00:10
- We want you to be good dancers.
- 00:12
- And there's some principles of dance
- 00:14
- that apply certainly in tango, all of them, right?
- 00:16
- That's the nature of dance principles.
- 00:20
- But in certain steps,
- 00:21
- these principles are often more violated.
- 00:23
- So if we're talking about gancho as an example, well,
- 00:26
- one thing that's helpful to pay attention to is the sense
- 00:28
- that you are lengthened.
- 00:30
- So to define that, if you, uh, look at how tall I am, uh,
- 00:32
- and maybe look at the distance
- 00:33
- between my head and the top of the screen.
- 00:35
- Right now I have good posture, I'm stacked well.
- 00:39
- Now imagine I'm carrying the weight of the world, dun dun,
- 00:45
- and now I'm very compressed.
- 00:47
- And then if I wanna be very lengthened,
- 00:56
- and so this, you know, maybe I grew a quarter of an inch,
- 00:59
- but the dynamic in the body's very big.
- 01:01
- The very big difference.
- 01:03
- And when you're doing GaN show, there's a risk.
- 01:06
- And the risk is that you will become, uh, much shorter,
- 01:09
- that you'll go to as the follower, you'll walk over
- 01:13
- and then when you GaN show, things will tighten, compress,
- 01:18
- and even ricochet.
- 01:20
- And so you wanna say really length and length
- 01:23
- and lengthen to
- 01:28
- keep that beautiful long line.
- 01:29
- And the same is true for the leader, that
- 01:31
- as you're bringing her back,
- 01:32
- there's an instinct to go towards her.
- 01:34
- And instead you want to sort of sit back
- 01:36
- and take her around your axis.
- 01:38
- And just because you're going down doesn't mean you have
- 01:40
- to shrink down, but rather you stay long
- 01:43
- and tall even as that knee bends.
- 01:47
- So that's number one. Really pay attention to,
- 01:49
- am I lengthening through the hips?
- 01:51
- We'll have other videos about this.
- 01:53
- Uh, the second thing I'd like to pay attention to is
- 01:57
- a mapping, especially for the followers.
- 01:58
- We talked about this in another video,
- 01:59
- but I wanna spend more time on it here.
- 02:02
- Namely that you don't move your
- 02:07
- leg without your body.
- 02:08
- That's right. So this is an arbitrary gesture.
- 02:12
- It doesn't mean anything.
- 02:13
- Um, on the other hand, if I do this,
- 02:18
- then you see that my center of gravity is moving that leg
- 02:22
- and my center of gravity is moving that leg.
- 02:25
- And so you wanna really work.
- 02:28
- What does it mean for that leg to move out with my center
- 02:33
- of gravity and then back with my center of gravity?
- 02:37
- Um, and, and this idea of having the body relate to itself,
- 02:41
- that you don't say, oh, I'm gonna open my arm.
- 02:43
- Where your arm is cut off from your body.
- 02:45
- You say, oh, my arm is part of my body.
- 02:47
- And that it opens
- 02:49
- because of the, the way the body moves organically.
- 02:52
- And the same is true of the leg.
- 02:53
- The arm is not a separate thing.
- 02:56
- The leg, sorry, the leg is not a separate
- 02:57
- thing. And so one of the
- 02:58
- Things, the things that's very dangerous in Tangos,
- 03:00
- there's a lot of drilling, which is done separately.
- 03:03
- They say, stick out your leg.
- 03:05
- You know, so for example, here's a very bad way to walk,
- 03:08
- extend the leg, step back, collect, right?
- 03:12
- Because that breaks it into pieces.
- 03:13
- And instead you wanna say, well, the leg extends
- 03:15
- because I'm going back and my body's moving and it collects
- 03:19
- because my body's moving through space, right?
- 03:23
- So this is about mapping as well,
- 03:30
- really big idea.
- 03:31
- But once again, it will make you both a profoundly better
- 03:33
- tango dancer, but also a better dancer.
- 03:35
- Sorry.
