Our first tango workshop - Working with the Embrace. Class objective:
A class designed to develop a flexible and adapting embrace to accommodate all moves using close, open & broken embrace.
Teacher:
Pablo Di giorgio, an alleged Buenos Aires tango master.
Lory and i decided to engage on this embrace workshop for three reasons:
- To enable us some success in the closer embraced holds.
- Our curiosity to see the authentic tango masters method of teaching
- To save poor Lorys toes which I keep treading on.
We arrived a few minutes early as the last class was dispersing. They looked lively and refreshed by their new found knowledge and I could hear the crossfire from new arrivals questioning if the Pablo legends were true.
We entered the class to see a portly man in his fifties resembling a cross between Inspector Clouseau and Hercule Poirot. Ladies were instructed to remove their shoes by Liz, his assistant, so they could feel the earth. I could already hear the faint girlish giggles from Lory who was hiding behind me.
Pablo English was a little broken but perfectly understandable. We immediately engaged in the warm up. A whole array of body isolations ensued. As we progressed with the warm up the exercises became more and more tricky. (very similar to patting your head and rubbing your tummy) Both Lory and I were told off for doing it wrong and I resisted the temptation to look around incase she started laughing.
One hour later and after about sixty warm ups we were apparently ready for learning. Without going into minute detail the objective was to lead your partner by intention. We led our partners from a distance of up to fifteen feet (yes fifteen feet) and gradually closed the gap. The close embace was developed then fine tuned and we used the intention to lead with varying combinations of contact from just chest contact to full hold. The opening out of the chest and the closeness our our two hearts assisted with the close embrace posture
This was a rotating class so it was interesting to try it with other people.
In summary, I initially thought Pablo was a bit cuckoo. But his method of teaching did achieve the objective by the end. Lory danced three tangos with Pablo and he obviously led very well. She said he was very easy to dance with and that he was focused on centerings her and balancing her through every second of the dance. He was not a big flashy tango dancer and the subtleties were very interesting. It was just about treating the follower as if she were made of glass and maintaining her every position with a real delicacy of dance to avoid her breaking.
I must admit that Pablo didn't exactly excite me to watch nor did he make the women gasp with excitement, but what he gave was totally devotion and care to her every step and i believe this is what makes a good tango dancer.