Claudia y Esteban was in Taipei the past weekend. Had the opportunity to see them perform live at New York New York. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention last year to their performance at the Taipei Tango Festival but this year I found their performance very intriguing.
One movement that especially caught my attention was what I called the 'slow motion', or the 'matrix move' as one of my Tango teachers in New York has referred it. Remember the scene when Neo was dodging bullets. Time seems to slow down and everything seems to be in slow motion to him.
It was basically taking a 'step' but completing it in 'slow motion' across several beats. Sometimes it looks like a long pause. It gives tension to the dance and creates a strong sensation of anticipation that something is going to happen. It is a state of balance before it goes to the next state - a short stop to accumulate energy. It is a way to get your partner attention.
Dancing slow is much harder than dancing fast. It requires more concentration, more balance, more strength and more sensitive to your partner. You need to put more emotion and quality into the step. From 0 and 1. You have to express the 0.15, 0.23, 0.65 and 0.99. And you are waiting for that 1 to come.
