The Edinburgh Tango Society was run by a guy called Toby who I called Master Toby. I had learned what I called the High Tango, something he disapproved of but I didn’t mind because I enjoyed the frenetic, living, dynamic dance as did my partners. His tango by contrast was minute and precise, fitting punctuated staccato music. After enjoying my High Tango for a year, I wanted to learn how Master Toby was dancing. I observed the expression on his partners’ faces while they danced. They almost exclusively had their eyes closed, and their attention was so intense, it was exquisite. Whatever he was doing, I wanted to know so I attended his classes. His students were mostly young university students with balloons between our chests and other innovative methods, and he talked of the ‘floor below the floor’, but I didn’t get it. Only when I flicked through a tango book by Dinzil which showed two pictures did it begin to make sense. Only when I could do it with a partner, the degree of demand required in our mutual attention, did I come up with the epithet — ‘Master’ Toby, and rightly so. Astounding.

Like the High Tango, the Low Tango conforms to processual learning of simultaneously systems. I’ve drawn out the same three processes, but they possess characteristically different arrangements thus deriving a different emergent form, ie Low Tango:

• posture: mutually grounded
• contract of engagement: light, mutual, woman puts on the brakes
• music: staccato, precise, subtle, intricate

The quality of this type of tango is stop-start. Unlike the fluidity of the High Tango where one learns ‘on the job’ as it were, the Low Tango should not be continued if it does not work from the start. It is possible, and because of my history, I tried. I would enter into following the follower, even when they stepped too far away. I ended up many an evening having a torrid time chasing after my followers. When teaching this form, I will insist that the dancers bring extreme self-discipline. Unlike practiced, experienced tango dancers, or any dancers for that matter, the discipline is to ensure the contract of engagement is maintained. That is, to submit oneself to the union of both. To accept nothing else than this. So that, when the dancers fall out of synch, they stop and return to themselves, the union. Hence the stop-start quality. And so too, the initial part of a dance with a partner is a kind of test: to see what can be done such that the partner remains completely committed to being with their partner. Tricks, feints, rapid and unexpected changes in direction and speed. If the partner is committed to the union of body, movement happens immediately, like a shadow. If there is a gap, if there is a decision being made, if it is a trick of mutual choreography, so the union will break down. We are not simulating union, the union is complete from the beginning to the end. When that happens for a whole evening, with all and every partners, an experience which Master Toby said happened as rarely as once every six months, all is right in the world.

The Low Tango is for people who have co-ordination and confidence and probably some kind of training in sports or dance. The posture, contract of engagement, and speed of music, are all more demanding.

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, however most of it is in timing, in ensuring commitment to contract of engagement. There is little elasticity, no wide arcs of movement. Movements are rapid, or incredibly subtle. Literally, one begins by entering into synch with the breathing of the other. Any separation from the other should not be countenanced. Obviously, for more experienced dancers, the union may be relaxed and for a more choreographed exchange, but this is a matter of taste. The Low Tango is the ‘nuclear’ version of tango, where just stepping is enough to have a superbly satisfying dance.

The dance consists of two followers. Each dancer is following the other. There is coordination and submission to the music. Quite often tango music reaches a crescendo where the music is faster than it is possible to dance alone — which is why the combination of leader rotation adding energy to the follower can allow such a rapid footstepping that is impossible alone. It is the music which evokes the motion, 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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