In my last article I wrote about how important it is for women to have a relaxed free leg.
If the free leg is not relaxed and loose, it cannot “perform” all the beautiful, sometimes spectacular movements in which the leg actually flies without effort.
All the movements become very cramped and can be performed only with a lot of work.
Even the caminada, normal walking in tango, becomes cramped and unnecessarily exhausting with a “working” free leg.
However, the difficulty for many dancers at the beginning of their tango career (and for dancers who want to learn the lady´s role) is that it is not so easy to relax the free leg.
The problem is that we mistakenly think that we have to work with the free leg, after all it’s the free leg that makes these movements and draws the main attention.
So far so good, but why is this article now called standing leg, standing leg, standing leg?
This is where a little trick comes into play, which we use successfully in our courses.
The opposite pole to the relaxed free leg is the standing leg, which is responsible for carrying our body and keeping us on our axis.
If we pick up the marionette and quickly turn it around its vertical axis, the legs will swing with it. It is similar when dancing tango with the free leg, which actually does not have to work at all.
All the movements of our free leg do not start from that free leg, as many assume, but from the body and the standing leg, even if these perform their tasks almost invisibly and quite unspectacularly.
The free leg just hangs loosely relaxed on the hip bone and only moves when the body and/or supporting leg move, similarly to a puppet (albeit without strings :-).
A quirk of our body is that, to put it bluntly, it’s always trying to shovel energy to where our brain tells us we need it.
The corresponding body parts are put into working mode, other body parts that are not needed remain relaxed or are relaxed again.
So if our ladies are having trouble relaxing that free leg, we advise them to think only one thing: Standing leg, standing leg, standing leg.
This almost always solves the problem very quickly. All energy goes where it is needed, namely in the supporting standing leg,
The brain forgets the free leg and this can finally swing happily, relaxed and freely.
Another post that might interest you.
Important for all ladies who dance tango: the relaxed free leg
