I learned this from a guy called Steve, the dancers of the Edinburgh Tango Society run by Master Toby, and especially Anne who patiently allowed me to learn. Steve tried to show me at two dinner parties by leading me across a living room floor, and then finally the penny dropped during a happening in snowbound Glen Elg in the Scottish Highlands. Because it conforms to processual learning of simultaneously systems, I’ve drawn out three processes:

• posture: high, fixed, unbalanced
• contract of engagement: the man holds the woman’s balance, falling into one another’s arms
• music: rise and fall with the music, ecstatic high points, large, wide, waltz

The quality of this type of tango is fluid. I was able to learn and enjoy myself for two years before I ‘cracked’ Master Toby’s form which I have called ‘low’ tango. I remember attending a rare formal lesson and the teachers asked what we were hoping to learn. My answer stood out — how to stop! Because of the nature of High Tango, the feeling is very much falling into one another’s arms. It is fluid, dynamic, and a lot of fun. The trick is to let oneself enter into it.

This is how I learned tango and thus I am happy to share it with others who may be able to learn in this way. Although suited for complete beginners, it does require a certain degree of body sense for it to work. This is suitable for people who do not need or even want lots of lesson. Folks who are blessed with a degree of co-ordination, physical confidence, who might be good at sports or dancing freeform. It helps if you have some sense of ‘funk’, a confidence in your physical movement. For experienced dancers, even tango dancers, the High Tango might be rather challenging. It makes use of imbalance, rather than demanding that the participants hold their own balance. If you can walk, you can do the High Tango.

All three processes are covered in the first lesson. Repeat lessons are to ascertain what works, how your body moves, etc, and providing hints on how to maintain the form. Specific exercises may be recommended to provide a little more form, eg ‘the cross’ to reorientate the contract of engagement, the ‘breaking logs’ to encourage walking backwards without knocking knees with one’s partner, only allowing the ‘leader’ to hear the music to ensure that the follower is responding to the motion of their partner.

In this form of tango, I am interested in a non-leading dance form. There is no leader. The dance consists of two followers. Each dancer is following the other. Obviously there is coordination or perhaps even submission to the music. It is the music which evokes the music, and the dancers are impelled to respond. Although there is no ‘leader’, it helps to initiate the dance with a ‘leader’, and the other follows until the proximity of following is so close that the partner can then follow; thus the leader follows the follower. The two partners are not identical, with one focussed on external conditions and the other on internal limits. It is not about two people dancing, but the union of two people such that one ‘organism’ exists, stepping from foot to foot as if they shared the same body.

The High Tango and the Low Tango are similar in that they enable a complex dynamic which involves both partners as a single unit. It takes two to tango. The objective of the lesson is to get a taste of this. And once this is tasted, you simply enjoy going to social dances attempting to rediscover this taste. It is not a taste one can have alone. It is not practiced alone. It does not consist of specific named moves, eg ‘otchos’ etc. It is about achieving union with another person.

Lessons are ideally done in person, but videos might enable the learning to occur.

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