The Embrace
You might not have guessed that the most revealing thing about you is your embrace. Your partner will know everything about your dance before it has even begun.
The embrace is not just a posture or a position we get into... it's something like when you go to bed at night, you get into your favorite sleeping position, but it's not just an automatic pose. You get into that place through seeking a sensation. You are looking for that familiar comfort. The pillow needs to be just right, the sheets can't be twisted, you need enough blanket, and not on the bumpy knot in the mattress. Now with that perrrfect sensation, instead of falling asleep, we need to focus to use this embrace for all it was meant to do! If we think of the embrace as something that is alive, flexible, and active, we can use it for much more than just 'feeling' our partner like a handrailing in a dark stairwell.
The embrace provides the means for connection and is the main tool for communication in the dance. It is the conduit of a two way energy cycle to include feedback, provides us with balance and stability, and it can be used as a tool to allow for more possibilities in creativity and expression by opening and closing and changing shape. But even more than this, there is something elusive that we have in the embrace.
The subjective qualities we might describe as safe, warm, comfortable, alive, responsive, sweet, soft, strong, confident or possibly not so positive qualities like absent, stiff, unresponsive, uncomfortable, restrictive, sticky, confining, suffocating, or rigid are the most revealing clues about one's entire dance before it has even begun. Our personality, or skill level, our fears, our talents, all shine through the embrace. Have you felt the embrace of an amazing partner? There was no hesitation, no rigidity, no doubt, no fear, and no discomfort in the way they took you in and shared their energy and dance.
Some things you might to do to develop a comfortable and functional embrace are to go through a checklist whenever you get into an embrace. At first this checklist will take you a few seconds, but later you will be able to do all these things instantly and subconsciously.
- feel the floor under your feet and under your partners feet, recognize what foot they are standing on and which you are standing on
- assess what you can about your partner, like energy level, confidence, their interpretation of the music, the level they might dance at
- be aware of what you are communicating to your partner, show them you have good balance, you are strong, graceful, active, you hear the music, you are with them, and you want to connect!
When you hug your partner, you too want them to feel comfortable and confident in you. Hug your partner with purpose, and respect and appreciation for all their efforts, their blood, sweat and tears over years of practice that brought them to this point so that they could be half of this dance with you. (If you don't feel awe, respect, and confidence in your partner, you are not obligated to dance with them!) Below some dancers are asked to define the tango embrace. They agree there are as many embraces as their are people!