Dancing around the Man

Tango masters Alberto Pas and Valorie Hart discussed this important concept back in 1998: the man dances around the dance floor and the woman dances around the man. But many students today still don't know what that means. Simply put, it means that in his responsibility to follow traffic the man may need to step away from the woman, and it's the woman's job to stay close to him.

Many women think they dance close enough to their partner but in fact they do not. Women who are shy about intimacy often use an open dance hold to replace the embrace, or lean back to distance themselves from their partner. Many women influenced by feminism tried to preserve their independence and refused to surrender to men. Women who see tango as a fancy performance tend to dance with great strides, which take them away from their partner. Many have never learned to dance in close embrace and don't know how to move around the man in a compact way.

Tango is an intimate dance. To truly enjoy tango the woman needs to dance really close to the man. Close does not mean within an arm's length. It means integrating into his body and being one with him. The man who dances around the dance floor has to follow traffic, the woman who dances around the man has to stay close to him and not separate from him.

To do that the woman needs to keep her torso connected to the man's torso and swivel her hips sideways so that she can step on the side of the man or around him. This technique is known as dissociation. A woman who cannot dissociate her lower body from her upper body tends to turn her whole body instead, causing the rupture of the embrace and the incoherence of the dance. Which is why dancing with a novice woman often feels uncomfortable.

Here is a good example of how a woman should dance around the man.

Dancing around the man also involves molinete, a routine in which the woman revolves around the man who serves as the anchor for her rotation. Since their torsos are connected in the embrace, the woman has to swivel her hips side to side to make a front step, a side step, a back step and a side step, circling the man. Every tanguera knows this figure but executing it flawlessly so that it feels smooth, comfortable and musical is not easy. In fact most women can't do molinete well because of the lack of training in dissociation.

Where she places her foot is also crucial. A common problem is that she places her foot too far away from his foot to avoid touching his leg. In fact, touching is what she should do to make the movement compact. The woman must not be afraid of touching the man's leg when dancing around him. However, she needs to imagine a circle around his foothold with a radius of about one foot and always place her foot on that imaginary circle when she rovelves around him, because while stepping too far apart from his foot will take her away from him (see 6:20-8:00 in the following video), stepping too close to his foot will cause her to lose the leaning position when the turn is completed.

In short, four things are critically important regarding to dancing around the man. First, understanding that the woman's job is not to dance around the floor but to dance around the man. Second, maintaining a good embrace in a slightly leaning posture to secure the torso connection and mutual support while dancing. Third, spending a lot of time to practice dissociation in the molinete sequence until you are versed in swiveling your hips side to side in that leaning position. Finally, focusing on being one with the man instead of your own performance, and being careful about how to keep the movement compact and where to place your foot so that the two of you may always remain a coherent one in the dance, as shown in the first example above. For a woman, learning tango is not primarily learning steps but learning to be one with the man. Tango is an intimate dance. How you dance it can make a big difference.