bennie bartels

THE BODY, THE BRAIN, AND THE PARTNER
PART I -Technique, Technicalities, High Tech and the Living

I am highly exited about Spring being ready to burst out in the open again.
The heat of the sun, the light that smiles, and dormant life coming into motion.
Hope everyone of you feels that within yourself as well.
Again I say, as every time again the wonder, this burst of new life, despite of all that goes on in our human world, some of which heavily disturbs me.
Nature walks its walk.

Movement always brings you back to sanity, might it be your morning routine, a walk in nature, sport or dance, it’s a direct way to a sense of harmony.
Just sitting outside in the early morning sun, enjoying the silence filled up with bird sounds, the rustling of some leaves, a squirrel, me fiddling about, or the far away sounds of the city, it all brings back that non-verbal answer to the question, who are we? …as a species, as in how we understand ourselves.

Earth’s body, like our own, has a natural order, a rhythm and understanding to it that when experienced and listened to, moves us towards harmony and wonder.
We can think about the world, theorise, analyse, try to control it, have opinions, but in the end it has its own course, walks its walk and only through partaking, us emerging into it, do we truly understand.
Not control, or placing ourselves outside of it, as our modern world likes to do, something reflected in the tango as well. No, you have to become part of its living expression, turn your hearts to it, which in return brings the authentic expression. To be yourself, find yourself, realise yourself and your potential, is such a focus in our modern times. Though the more we look for it, shout it out, the further we seem to get removed, and the authenticity of people, cities, cultures or urban landscapes seem more and more alike.

What I found out in all these years of dancing, teaching, choreographing, writing, thinking, is that we are human beings first, guided by a search for harmony with values like truth, beauty, and the good. This comes before being dancers, leaders or followers, woman or man, dutch or belgium, experienced or beginner, musical or a-rhythmic, a thief or a saint, all the categories we tend to divide ourselves into, and which can be ‘helpful’ in their own right, but not as final judgements and a thinking in division.

Technique is big word here. Are our technical skills there for mastering, to find deep understanding of the things around us and ourselves? Or is technique a means to control, manipulate and exploit the world and others? To what gain?
Is spring a technical and organisational phenomenon that we can copy, reproduce, or even make better in ‘mechanical’ and controlled ways; or is its ‘value’ and ‘meaning’ not solely in the product it produces (food, air, water, energy) but equally in its unfolding process?
In what Ian McGilChrist (writer, psychiatrist and researcher) calls the “Betweenness” of things. This not defined as a space between, but what comes out of the coming together of two things, two people, something new, which takes up into itself.

When technique is not directly connected to ourselves as living, feeling, sensing, acting and thinking human beings, technique starts to distort and de-harmonise us I have come to notice. We then get stuck into (what the Buddhists call) the wheel of samsara. What follows is a forever greater need for more technique that one day will be enough (we think) to bring us our so longed for harmony and maybe freedom. (sounds familiar? You could replace it by money as well)

Skill does not solely lie in the mastering of the isolated, controllable technical and lineair actions. Technique is part of the living body, has to be connected to our emotions, our history, our dreams, our love, and there will find its true and balanced place within that whole interdependence everything has in the world at large. To me that is the real, functional and true technique. A technique that creates beauty, gracefulness, wholeness, a technique that is in touch with. This is a technique that comes forth from.., which as a result (not as an aim) then becomes light and true. A technique that is always enough and never too little.
It is the technique of getting to know ourselves, knowing our place, a technique that has no goal other than allowing us to unfold amidst all else, like stories of spring. It is to be part of- and taking part in- life’s cycle, bringing awareness to this unfolding, and help it unfold even further, to an even higher degree of complexity and diversity.

It is the paradox (as many things in life are) of what the martial artist strives towards, when having come to maturity and mastering, which is to forget everything he or she has ever learned, also the technique, and just respond in the moment, to simply live.

So there lies my attention, in helping others to find this for themselves.
Within that context we can speak of neo, old-style, milonguero, open or close embrace, musical styles, etc. In the end every one of them is an expression to me of the whole through a different form. So as a foundation anything you need to master for one style, the same you need to master for another, though it branches off and specialises in different ways, in different forms (though the thing is not in its form). To cook a good meal in the end is not all that different from a good dance, or building a nice house, all three of them ask the question; “Who are you?” How do you understand yourself?

Working with and through the body in dance or other ways of movement, brings you to an understanding that control might not be in our hands and also not totally out of it when we can understand it in a much more complex and integrated way. The same counts for all these other phenomena as; embrace, lead or follow, connection, etc. Control in dance does not mean to demand the other (or yourself) to do what you want. It is to understand that the centre of our being is not the head, even how smart.
It is coming back to the “Heart” of the matter. A place where we all can be great, complete and filled with wonder.

The root of INTENTION, ATTENTION and EXTENSION are all derived from the Latin word ‘Tendere’, meaning to stretch out a hand.
A movement outwards towards another thing or being.
Things are extended in time and space, reach out, beyond themselves.
In tango we reach out beyond ourselves ‘into’ the other person, into the music, into space, into meaning and therefor back into ourselves.
This is how every step, every embrace, every musical note wants to be expressed.

what tango students say: