Tango Touch: Breath and Connection

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Breath and Connection - with your partner.

The first time I was invited to breathe in a tango embrace, and then to breathe in unison with my partner, was during a private lesson with Gwen Spinks, (check link), a dance instructor from Nanaimo/ Gabriola Island.
My first thought: Now this feels like connection.
My gut reaction: Yikes!
So what is it about breathing in embrace that makes it feel riske’?
It intensifies the chest to chest connection, certainly. Depending on one’s comfort level with close embrace this might be intimidating, or exhilarating.
But more than this. There is something intensely human and personal about the rise and fall of one’s breath. Ancient traditions would define this primal motion as the drawing in and releasing of Spirit. It is as basic to life as we get. Nothing is more tender and endearing than watching the stomach of a baby fill and fall with that life-sustaining nurturance.
As we age we become embarrassed by our bellies. We restrict the in and out with tight clothing and practice holding it in. Then we layer stress on top of self-consciousness, which further constricts our breathing.
To invite someone into the rhythm of one’s breath is to share one’s humanity at a vulnerable and intimate level. But then, is that not what the tango is intended to  do - to stretch one’s comfort level, to expand one’s boundaries, to challenge one’s inhibitions.
Lately as we enter into the embrace, my dance partner and I give attention to our first breaths. At least occasionally during the dance, we synchronize our breathing at those exquisite pause moments.
Does this improve my dancing? Perhaps not in terms of technical execution (presumably it doesn`t, as breathing seldom if ever gets referenced - let alone taught - in tango classes). But it does in deepen my experience of the dance as intimate connection.
Is that important? I am just off the phone a cherished friend and artful tangera. Her response: “ That is all I care about. What else is there?”

Blog #3 with Jean-Sebastien, Studio Ten.

Houdini as my tango mentor?

Apparently. By all counts, he was a remarkable man accomplishing incredibly complicated maneuvers without breathing for three plus minutes. Not tango exactly (he was wrapped up in 30' of chain at the bottom of a water tank) but his antics bear uncanny resemblance to my efforts on the dance floor.

“Breathe, for God’s sake," Jean-Sebastien exhorts. Apparently I am so focused on executing complicated maneuvers, I have stopped breathing: the Houdini effect.

This is helpful. I seldom get attention drawn to my breathing by a tango teacher. Breathing is important; unlike Houdini I can’t go an entire 3.5 minutes without stopping to catch my breath. (He only did it once and vowed never again.)

Which is what has appealed to me about tango from the beginning. Unlike milonga, it invites those pauses - the fluctuating tempo, the mood shifts, the steps and sequences which start and stop, begin and end.

So why is it that , in tango I have to continually relearn what I have been doing quite competently and unconsciously my entire life? Like walking. Like breathing.

Here is a possible explanation: In tango, my unconscious being-in-self becomes translated into conscious self-awareness. I start to think about things that up to now, I have been doing instinctively.

This is a good thing as the primary process of developing character  is to initiate communication between the conscious and the unconscious.

Which explains the emergence of the Houdini effect in the middle of my dance. Not that I forget to breathe exactly, but that my breathing is shallow, tense, constricted.

Which is not a good thing. It separates me from the dance, from myself and from my partner.

I suggest that deep breathing is more critical to tango than balanced walking. In fact, if I remember to breathe deeply throughout my dancing I instinctively correct most of my balance problems.

There are reasons for this. Stay tuned. Subscribe.