Looking to add flavor to your tango dancing?
Learn about going from close to open embrace!
When you know how to switch from close to open embrace you can play with different levels of connection, various types of dynamics, with the size of your embellishments… the possibilities are limitless.
What matters then is that the feeling of connection is always there.
Close or open, your embrace should feel fluid and warm. In Argentinian, the tango embrace – abrazo – means ‘hug’: we want to convey this feeling of hugging to our partner throughout the dance.
In this blog post, we want to tell you three things about going from close to open embrace. Our goal is to help you make the transition between close and open embrace fluid, warm and soft like a hug!
Also, today for the first time… we vlogged! In the video below, we explain the three tips, and we show what it looks like when we are dancing (in the cross with parada)
1. Giving/ Receiving the Signal
When he wants to open the embrace, the leader needs to give a *signal* to the follower: he slides his right arm across her shoulder blade.
When the follower feels that, she knows something will happen with the embrace. She does the same thing with her left arm: she moves it across his shoulderblade.
2. Keeping the contact
During this signal, we keep the contact with our chests: we do not open the embrace straight away. Our arms are ‘released’ but we stay chest to chest.
Followers, we need to make sure that we only open the embrace and go back to our axis once the leader invites us to do so.
3. Do not open with both arms
The leader does not open the embrace with both arms: the left arm – the open side of the embrace does not move. Leaders, only open the close side of the embrace: bring your right arm a bit away from you. It will be clear for her than the needs to go back to her axis.
We hope this helped you make your embrace, close or open, feel as good as a hug!
Now we would love to hear from you. Do you often go from close to open in your dancing? If yes, how does it feel? Do you have any tip to share on keeping the abrazo feel in the open embrace? Let us know in the comments’ section below.
Abrazo,
Pablo and Anne
Pssst: we don’t open the embrace at any time during the dance: if you want to know more about the specific moments in the dance when to open the embrace, check out this article.
