Technique, creativity and self-expression

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To return at last to that comment about technique, creativity and self expression: I've said I think technique is best picked up ideally wordlessly, from dancing with good, experienced dancers, people who have and do things you enjoy - their posture, their sense of intention, their flow, their smoothness, how relaxed and comfortable they feel.  And it's best if you don't even name these things, but just as we copy good role models, why should it be different in dance? In fact, there are great reasons why it shouldn't be different. 

We sense it too in the way those good dancers contrast with others who are stiff and tense or slouched or who don't share their chest, who lean on us too much or headbutt us or press imaginary buttons on our arms or backs to make us do things.  It is the same when we contrast dancers who can invite discreetly, even humorously by look compared to dancers who walk up for dances - we know their different reputations and how differently they tend to dance.

A friend just commented privately we really ought to be very specific about what we mean by "technique", which is why I always try to give examples of what I mean.  But I think how you acquire "technique" very much influences what happens next.  If you acquired it in a thinking, mechanistic way, this will inhibit your dance and particularly its creativity.  Acquire technique by thinking about it and you will likely learn moves by thinking about them and trying to make them muscle memory.  Undoing that thinking in most men, in my experience takes upwards of twelve years, and nearer twenty. 

No, I think creativity and self-expression comes through a kind of courage.  A courage to connect, a courage to explore, a courage to slow down and see what happens.  

And actually I think creativity and self expression are slightly different things.  I can express myself through the music in improvised musical ways which are creative, musically, yet stay within the familiar moves that have emerged through my dance.  I say emerged because I didn't learn my limited "leading" moves through class - they emerged or trusted social dancers showed me. But creativity in movement and self expression in music happens through exploration.  You don't know what is going to happen next.  

I remember that from when I started dancing in the traditional guy's role. I had no moves at all, just walking and musicality.  So I would try things out, or rather, my partner and I would suddenly find ourselves doing things I had not planned or anticipated and it felt exciting and dangerous, sometimes like being on a cliff edge but my partners seemed to like it.  It was thrilling. Gradually, I developed my own style, things became familiar and "safer",  

Now, I often want to explore more because I have seen traditional tango moves "emerge" from that exploration in people who have no concept of what those moves are - when the conditions are right. 

But usually I am dancing with beginners who need to feel safe right at the start, or with who women who want you to "llevar" and not to explore, so I don't often get that opportunity at the moment. 

Sometimes I try it with women where there is no "leader".  That I love, and while we share a constant back and forth of change in "who decides" what happens next, it rarely evolves into the deeper kind of exploration needed for those traditional moves to emerge by themselves. 

But then in most practicas, if they are practicing at all, rather than just dancing (which is fine, if that's what they want), then most people I find are just practicing rote-learned moves  - and very seriously at at that.   So I don't find people who want to do that kind of exploration, much.