Zenie's Tango
Zenie’s Tango
Tango & pre-tango History
I came to tango many years ago after a lifetime of other mindful bodywork, powerlifter, body builder, swimmer, cyclist, Tai Chi, Baa gua, Kung-Fu, and unicyclist, among other things. I was also an accomplished public speaker and a teacher of other subjects.
I have been dancing Argentine tango for many years and began teaching in
- I had the good fortune of learning both roles at the same time in a
community where everyone danced both roles.
I also had the good fortune of travelling a lot at the time. I was a frequently invited public speaker and was always going to different cities. I took lessons wherever I went. I often settled in a place just to take advantage of being in a good tango community for a month or two. The experience of so many communities and teachers was very eye opening.
Finding my Pedagogy
With all my experience with teachers, I felt that it was necessary that I teach from within myself. To teach my truth.
I feel that as a teacher I am here to share and guide, my rewards come with time not with immediate responses and consequences. I am careful and sparing with my words and my teachings. Patience is key.
I spent a lot of time researching my notes, thinking about outcomes I had seen in classes and workshops. I was especially concerned with the power of words, which words to use, which ones to avoid.
I wanted to understand what I had been taught and how. All the good teachers and all the bad ones. One result was that I simply do not teach many things which are commonly taught. The pedagogy I arrived at was very different from anything I had ever seen although having some parallels to teachers that I continue to respect to this day.
During this time, I met Susannah, who was a complete beginner. As our relationship grew, we explored this emerging pedagogy together. A year later she was my partner in life, tango, and teaching.
Our methods were a hit with many people, and a miss with others. It is a demanding course. In little time, it proved it’s effectiveness, and addictiveness. The best part for me was how transformitive it was for the students. Both in tango and life.
Influences
Mindfulness and meditation are at the core of my way of sharing tango with others. Visualization is another skill that I drew heavily upon. I initially drew inspiration from Irene Dowd, Martha Graham, and Eric Franklin. The way we taught attracted students from other disciplines, our classes were often compared to Alexander technique and Feldenkrais. Although those disciplines were not initially a part of my studies.
This led to collaborations with teachers in other disciplines, as a result more refine aspects of Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais have crept in. I love using visualizations, the right words, and patience to allow dancers to find their way to awareness of their own body and movement such that they can discover their expression of the dance.
Invading Daily Life
One of the biggest problems with teaching tango is that many people have a need to find a good posture, body awareness, and proprioception. These are, in reality unrelated to tango, but related to all disciplines of movement. These things do not happen without practice, but are absolutely necessary in order for a person to become a good tango dancer.
A new dancer that comes with these skills to start always learns quickly if their ego and their thinking does not get in their way.
To solve this, I would give weekly challenges to be triggered by some common action that would happen multiple times a day. Like standing up, getting out of a car, going outside, standing in line. Student’s choice, pick a trigger you like, and do this weekly challenge when it happens.
The triggered weekly challenge would be something from class. Some exercise in self awareness, posture and alignment, or a small movement. Over time as they became easier, the challenges would become more complex.
This kept everyone thinking, imagining, and doing their tango exercises all during the week.
Their tango, mindfulness, posture and movement invaded their daily lives and the results were apparent when they walked in the door each week.
How it all went.
The result is that a dancer may not only learn tango, but how to be in the world physically, mindfully and intentionally during their days. I witnessed a few people go through amazing self transformations.
The beginners class was always open to those who had done it. Many came every week just for the enjoyment of it.
The mindful movement class was addictive for everyone. The class often created the kind of spatial vibration that I have only ever felt in an advanced class of Tai Chi or Baa Gua.
The intermediary movement exchange classes taught everyone to lead and follow without question of roles, or naming of movements which could then have power over their learning. At the end of the entire series I would take everyone through all that they had learned and give them the common names that another teacher would use. But only after they had learned them as part of the whole of tango movement. Because, those named things are not special, they are just pieces of other movements which contribute to the whole of tango movement.
With such a strong understanding of tango movement, the advanced tango classes became a rich exchange of ideas and possibities to be more expressive in your own personal embodiement of the music with your partner in the dance.
A la fin
I guided students every week for many years in my local community and for tango weekends in the surrounding region. During that time my partner and I wrote many articles for our tango blog which was popular all over the world.
I was very fond of writing weekly challenges to bring practice and awareness into our daily lives. A challeng was a simple, quick thing to do anytime a certain event happened in your day. I would like to start writing those again.
Susannah and I lasted just to the end of 2016. She had been completely consumed the year beore by the boulangerie that we had created, it was in her heart, I was merely a colaborator, supporter, aide and a bystander. Not by my choice, I was not truly a part of it. I know far too much about making croissants to not make them myself.
I continued my weekly classes and practica until 2018 just before covid. I’ve taught sporadically on request since.
Epilogue
TangoBreath was the website for our Tango classes, workshops and events. In 2017 I had deleted all but the articles that we had written and turned it into an archive of sorts. I let that site disappear during Covid. For me it was a healing detachment from my past. It was beautiful and successful while it lasted, but carried a lot of happy memories that brought me only sadness.
I have not felt compelled to express this history such that I could continue this story in order to give my gifts to any accepting tango community.
I believe it is time to start a new story, and perhaps, knowing this story will better enable those doors to open.
A lot has changed, including me. My facebook was hacked at the best and worst of times, as a result, I lost 1000’s of tango connections who might know me, but do not know Erica or Zenie. Some have even blocked me because I made a friend request. Erica is afterall a different person. I miss some of those people. The past is full of people we used to know.
I do believe that there is value in revealing my history a little. It would bring me great joy to give and share what I have to give. I was recently encouraged to reveal these things and more than one person has asked me to revive the TangoBreath articles.
I will be adding them on this site, as a separate collection when I get a chance.
What will appear here is uncertain. It is a place for my Tango, for me to write, and create and share when I find the time and the inspiration. What will my candle illuminate as I step into the future?
