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CHAPTER 13. Concepts of linear and circular movements.

Excerpt....."Just as a language has a vocabulary, so does tango. When we talk we can use stock phrases and even complete sentences ‘off the peg’, for our convenience. We use clichés from time to time because we feel lazy or we want to free our minds for more interesting things to come. These common patterns of language permit us to speak about one thing while actually thinking ahead and planning the next topic. So it is with tango. If we continue this analogy, we can think of ochos, sacadas and ganchos as phrases, even as clichés. We might consider a complete giro as a sentence. So, what are the most basic building blocks, the words? However complex tango looks, most of what we do breaks down into two hugely significant ‘words’. They are the step and the pivot.

The step is a way to move the body mass from place to place without necessarily changing the way we face.

The pivot is a change of directional facing without any shift of mass away from the point of balance. The mass is rotated. Almost everything we do in tango is a planned mixture of steps and pivots to attempt to travel around a dance floor in a way that entertains us while staying connected, chest to chest, with each other."

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