About the personal space
Igor Sitchuk, journal PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, December 2017, original text is here
Every one of us has probably encountered the term “personal space”. People behave differently at various distances. This obviously has to do with feeling safe and their sense of self-preservation. Not many people experiment with their personal space in such a way so as to reveal its characteristics. There are some activities, however, that directly call for active use of personal space. One such activity is Argentine tango. It’s a moving partner improvisation, which is impossible without mutual understanding. This isn’t possible without reliable physical contact and this contact isn’t possible without entering the personal space of your partner. All of this has its challenges of course, especially in the beginning.
Dancing as a Fear for Your Life
When beginners come to dance they enter a pleasant environment, hear beautiful music and are surrounded by pleasant people. Physical contact (or an embrace), however, makes them feel surprisingly stressed. It is as though physical contact was something painful or life-threatening. This results in a loss of the ability to move freely. In tango, movement is natural and there’s no need to force anything. It often happens, however, that people who are capable of fairly complex activities on their own (tennis, skating or bike riding) completely freeze up and are incapable of taking a simple step when in close proximity to a partner. They begin to resemble broken wind-up toys. Another paradoxical outcome is that they lose their ability to pay attention to several things at once and they focus on one point. This has a fairly comical effect.
I ask my student to lift his right foot and he lifts his left. “No, you have to stand on your left foot and lift your right.” The student puts his left foot on the dance floor and immediately lifts it back up. “You lifted your left foot again but you’re supposed to lift your right.” And so it continues…. It sounds funny but it’s a very real and fairly frequent occurrence. Perhaps that’s why many people claim that they hate dancing and that they have no talent for it. In reality they’re only afraid of feeling foolish and incapable of fulfilling the simplest of tasks.
Apart from these main stressful effects there are also many secondary issues. Many students have dilated pupils caused by excess adrenaline. Some women deal with this problem by hanging on to their partner – they are the ones whose response to a stressful situation is passivity. Others are hyperactive, constantly moving from place to place and can’t be calmed. Men react by acting as if they’re the only person in the world and simplify the situation by pushing their partners in front of them like bulldozers. Others act as though they do not exist at all and shrink down to indecisive figures.
What’s interesting is that the effects of stress are felt not as a result entering the personal space of another person but rather as a result of attempting to initiate something in this state. Most people have no trouble embracing someone when saying hello or goodbye. Problems begin when one attempts to move in this embrace and questions of coordination, balance, dependency on the partner, stepping on their foot etc. arise. These are quite simple and easily managed tasks if only fears and ancient instincts didn’t come into play here.
Connecting Bodies
When examining one’s personal space, one often uncovers something interesting. Everyone should be happy to find out that one needs very little to overcome the negative effects of someone entering their personal space as long as they go about it the right way. Psychological problems are dealt with using psychological methods. This makes Argentine tango a unique activity that is different from other dances. The teacher must first and foremost act as a psychologist: they will spend 80% of the time dealing with subconscious fears and psychological blocks of their students. The teacher is left with only 20% of time for teaching how to read your partner’s signals and reacting correctly.
The most interesting part comes after the subconscious fears dissipate. People, connected to one another in a firm embrace, are able to feel even the slightest movement of their partner as well as their intent with their entire body. The conscious mind shifts and if you lose yourself in the music, the boundary between you and your partner disappears. Personal space slowly envelops both partners. Everyone feels their partner’s body as their own and movements become intuitive as if controlled by one brain instead of two. This effect can seem unbelievable to those who have never experienced it but it’s a standard occurrence at milongas. A milonga is an organized dancing evening event where everyone dances the Argentine tango. It’s an important part of Argentine culture and includes a large a large number of dancers in a small space. These couples can move freely across the entire crowded dance floor without bumping into each other. Personal spaces intertwine and dancers feel their own partner as well as the other couples. This blending of personal spaces leads to strings of dancers being formed called “a train” where every pair is connected in a line.
Tango Is for Everyone
If it just so happens that all the couples are mature enough to connect with other couples, a resonance of personal spaces is created and the entire milonga blends into one unit where everyone is connected to everyone – and not in an abstract sense since this connection can be felt. It is the most elevated form of a dancing experience brought by Argentine culture. Entering a trance during rhythmic drumming circles is a well-known phenomenon in many cultures. A contactless connection of several couples where everyone is in close physical contact with music without a constant background rhythm is an absolutely unique phenomenon. What is interesting is that no special talent or excessive effort is required to partake in this interconnection. It’s a social dance that is very popular and accessible to all regardless of talent, age or location.
Don’t be afraid to explore your personal space. You may discover something quite precious.