A Passion For Tango by David Turner

Author:David Turner [Turner, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Dingley Press
Published: 2013-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

The gancho may be led from a whole number of different positions and it is perfectly within the traditions of tango for you to work these out for yourself. Just think of all the situations where one dancer is in the process of collection and then ask how their partner could interrupt that with a thigh.

Forward ganchos (sometimes thought of as lateral ganchos) occurring in the follower’s sidestep.

Because forward ganchos can be done within the frame of the dancers and have less potential to interfere with others on the dance foor I propose to describe them frst, although it was only after almost two years of learning tango that I was taught them. Let us consider the forward gancho to the leader’s right to begin with. The follower is invited to take a sidestep of reasonable size and slightly around the leader. Once the follower has securely placed her left foot to the leader’s right the leader intrudes his right leg. I have come to realise how important the placing of the leg is, so I want to drive home this point. If I am to intrude my thigh, my foot must end up past my follower’s leading foot but be as close to it as I can manage. This ‘leading foot’ happens to be the follower’s left foot, which is about to bear her entire weight. I fnd that, to be positioned correctly, I need to hold my right leg slightly bent at the knee, hip slightly rotated to the right, and it helps if I raise my heel off the foor. Naturally, under these conditions this leg does not bear any weight. If the leader keeps his heel raised, he offers the additional beneft of angling his thigh towards the horizontal just a little more.

As a tall man who frequently dances with smaller women, this seems to matter that much more, and I need to ensure that my foot intrudes well past her foot to get good thigh-to-thigh contact. I do have to be careful not to get thigh-to-groin contact, I must hasten to say. At one of the places in which I like to dance, a new leader arrived and was ‘test-driven’ by a few of the followers. Within an hour the word went about that he was a groin contact specialist, and he found himself sitting and watching for the rest of the evening.

The forward (or lateral) gancho

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.