The 22 techniques rubric

The 22 techniques rubric is an approach to identifying the techniques of social tango and describing verbally what it skill looks like at four different levels of mastery.

In this framework, the concept of "technique" also includes interpersonal skills. The techniques are grouped under four clusters: Somatics, Interaction, Unity, and Musicality.

The purpose is to support self-assessment, peer-assessment, teacher training, and curriculum development. It was developed by Mitra Martin.

	Unskilled	Awakening	Proficient	Integrated
SOMATICS	This is a journey of increasing awareness of the different parts of the body and how they relate to one another.
Alignment	Dancer cannot stand balanced on one foot. Arching or collapsing through spine or leaning backward or forward; hips sway beyond standing leg; defaults to a wide stance; slackness through core.	Able to stand straight with spine organized above base, often with some extraneous tension. Able to share weight in close embrace. Core engagement is present but inconsistent. Can stand on one foot, but exaggerated distinction between standing leg and free leg may create off-balance tilt in hips.	Able to maintain a consistent relationship between base, center of gravity, and ribcage through a continuous gentle lift in the core, through all parts of pivot and weight transfer (including the back step in the molinete or back sacada), and through transitions into and out of off-axis elements. Negotiates subtle changes in weight sharing.	Sustains body's alignment with minimum effort, even when partner's work creates conditions that challenge or disturb easeful balance. Takes balance through choosing where will be the most supportive place to be. Able to balance on different parts of the foot, and use both feet as needed. Can play with asymmetries in body without disturbing either person’s balance.
Extension	The free leg and the torso move at the same time when taking a step, instead of the leg extending first. The leg’s movements are not related to the partner’s invitations and responses. Back steps are too small with feet breaking contact with the ground.	In either role, consistently dances with extension (uses a grounded standing leg to extend the free leg before transferring the body's weight onto it) and can vary step sizes in forward, open and back steps in relation the partner’s invitations and responses. In back steps, can keep feet lightly touching the floor.	Subtle changes of tone in the embrace invite the follower's free leg to extend to different radii, at different angles and speeds, with and without accelerations or decelerations in all steps and embraces.	Dance energy from a toned embrace extends through both partners’ free legs which are able to explore the space around the couple freely without interfering with alignment, with harmonious gestures that have an economy of movement and fit with the music.
The Pivot Before the Step	Incomplete pivots, unnecessary overpivots, stepping before pivot is completed, pivoting without balance (on an unstable part of the foot), pivoting with legs apart.	A balanced pivot with legs together that prepares lower body for step. Able to consistently manage 180-degree pivots without interfering with couple’s unity. “Collects” feet together too early and stays attached to collected shape in a way that can interfere with what’s next.	Able to manage all pivots, including up to 360-degree pivots, while staying focused and aligned. Able to dance pivots with subtle micro-accelerations and -decelerations while accomplishing the pivot in tune with harmonious outcome for partner and music. Creative uses of free leg during pivot.	An economical pivot is integrated, when necessary, within the whole movement from one step to the next. Dancers can adapt to unexpected amounts of pivot. Free leg dances in a way that relates to the nuance of the pivot.
Spiral	Very little articulation of the spine. Stiffness in the middle of the body interferes with spine's free movement.	Dancer has the ability to organize the aligned spine so that the ribcage and pelvis face different directions, and to use this dynamic to generate pivots. Occasional experience of release of the free leg resulting from spiralling action.	Lower body’s dancing follows, and sometimes leads, upper body via spiral. Dancer can direct his or her spine's articulation at several different points, and can offer different amounts of spiral, in response to tone in the embrace. Follower is able to tune spiral to different degrees depending on leaders' use of tone.	Both dancers' attention is focused on the limits and possibilities of the followers' spiral as a meditative point of focus from which the dance's possibilities emerge and are released.
Flow	Focus is on accomplishing one thing at a time (e.g., a step or figure) and the dance appears to halt  in between elements and during pauses, or jerk from one to the next.	Leader endeavors to connect follower's present movement to the coming invitation and sometimes is able to. In pauses or unexpected interpretations, the connection between elements  is sometimes interrupted.	Leader keeps continuous focus on supporting follower's continuous flow including her particular quirks, and together the couple sustains dancing energy across transitions (musical transitions and changes in proximity). Follower can flow and is able to bring leader’s attention to it.	Leader and follower are unattached to habitual mental or physical responses, and maintain a levity that allows the unexpected to be seamlessly incorporated into the dancing moment.
The Whole Foot	Feet are alternately frozen or slack/imprecise in shape. Very little articulation of the foot through the step and weight transfer. Weight often lands on sides or heel of foot. Toes are gripping.	Articulation through the metatarsal allows for a more controlled and balanced weight transfer. Weight kept mostly in center of grounded foot with high heel on the ground in pivots. Toes are sometimes pointed when off the ground, and feet are more energized with shapings carried out by rote.	Able to use the full articulation of the weighted leg’s foot, including the toes, to support a powerful, aligned step. Keeps weight distributed appropriately across whole foot and toes of base leg. Able to stretch through the ball of the foot with toes relaxed when foot is off or partially off the ground.	Surprising and harmonious articulations, inflections, and gestures of all the parts of the free leg and foot emerge apparently without precedent or planning, supported by awareness through the whole foot of the standing leg.
INTERACTION	This is a process of learning to improvise, to notice more and more about the other person’s mind and movement.
Leader's Invitation	There is an attempt to move together without an delivering invitation first. Sometimes, leader uses extremities (hands, arms, legs), often working without connection to the torso, to attempt the invitation. Frequent disconnect between what leader invites and what follower reads. Availability for connecting via invitation not always simultaneous.	Growing availability to connect accurately through the full variety of leader's where/when/go invitations, including those motivated after or before obvious musical features.	Growing availability for micro-invitations that occur between weight transfers and within pivots, and in anticipation of subtle rhythmic changes.	Full availability for incorporating impulses that come from any locus of inspiration at any time. Who or what is the leader?
Follower's Power	Lack of energy arising from timid, passive, habitual movement from follower. Leader cannot accurately and quickly read where follower is.	Some friction arising from leader's aim to control follower's movement combined with follower's efforts to find freedom of movement. Power seen through the lens of extensive embellishment, often without reference to music or moment.	Follower contributes micro-content that fits within available time and space that is sometimes related to musical features that both partners are aware of. Leader reads and creates opportunities for followers' particular power.	Follower and leader maintain focus on the follower's full, precise and authentic self-expression within the constraints of each moment. Familiar with her ways, leader sculpts followers' free movement. Whatever her body does, it does beautifully.
Following vs Guessing	Low level of connection and flow as follower mentally guesses what to do instead of finding stillness to kinaesthetically feel sources of invitations.	Follower dances to each new location without guessing. Guessing happens when leader's invitation is incomplete or follower lacks familiarity with element.	Follower dances between weight transfers and within pivots without guessing completions, staying open to micro-invitations for the free leg's extension. Both are available to be surprised by how music lands.	Both partners fully follow the music within constraints of the ronda; sensation that the music dances the couple, with neither partner guessing and both partners' focus on the expanded present moment as a beginning on an ever more fine-grained scale.
Follow the Follower	Leader often does not notice the follower's location or movements. Occasionally can with effort adapt to situations where invitation did not land as expected.	Able to notice and adapt to precise location and tilt of follower arrivals. Can adapt to novel or surprising situations when they occur, often without making follower aware of accommodation.	The couple follows the follower into musically connected moods and emotions offered via quality of movement (in the lower body) and the tone/quality of embrace (in the upper body). Both partners incorporate miscommunications with maximum efficiency; follower notices when leader has misread where her weight is, and adjusts, usually without making him aware of accommodation.	Interplay of movement, emotion and interpretation of one another’s responses creates dance in which time slows and each micro-moment holds many possible outcomes all of equal value. Who is the follower?
Choose Confidence	Dancers distracted by self-concern. While moving, follower seeks external validation that her movement is correct.	Dancers increasingly able to exhibit a confidence through surer choices and habits that usually hold unnecessary tensions.	Lack of self-concern expressed in fine-grained physical and mental curiosity from one micro-moment to the next in most dance and social situations.	Consistent self-acceptance in diverse situations. Uses variables, surprises or challenges such as partners' level/mood; social obstacles or "stakes;" musical situation to enable inspiration to flow.
Floorcraft	Little or no awareness of other people in the room unless couple physically touches them. Follower feels unsafe and anxious, anticipating possible collisions.	Both dancers are aware of the way other dancing couples organize themselves and are able to keep their place in the line of dance, usually without disturbing others, sometimes with effort. Collisions create emotional stress.	Couple actively participates in the ronda, contributing to its pace and flow. Occasional contact with other dancers is briefly acknowledged and moved past.	The constraints emerging from speed of the ronda and the movement or stillness of other couples within it becomes an exciting source of inspiration. Follower feels safe and protected regardless of density of crowd, and can focus on free and wide-randing musical expression.
Purity of Focus	Focus on the present moment is incomplete resulting from mental occupation with comparing (looks at mirror, at other dancers, at seated onlookers). Flashes of pure focus, often while dancing with more experienced dancer.	Focus on present moment is becoming more solidly anchored through each dancer’s attentiveness to techniques. Sometimes, too many points of focus results in overwhelm and distraction. Comparing is subtler, but still problematic.	Stretches of pure focus often anchored by both dancers close attentiveness to music. Focus becoming contagious: there is an ability to inspire a more undivided focus from partner.	Pure focus on being present in the moment extends beyond the moment of dancing into social situations of all kinds, bringing out the potential of each interaction to become an attentive improvisational dance.
UNITY	This is a journey of increasing subtlety and sensitivity in how the couple physically relates to each other through two bodies embracing.
Proximity	Dancers are not aware when the distance between the bodies changes, or, distance between bodies is rigidly fixed. Dancers bodies are often more than one arms’ length distance from each other.	Maintains consistent close distance between bodies (around one tennis ball's diameter) before, during, and after extension, pivot, weight transfer. Able also to dance with continuous flat frontal contact, and to negotiate invitations to change to and from frontal contact to an embrace with some space between the bodies, sometimes with hesitation. Frequent disconnect between the location of the standing leg, compared with the distance afforded by the embrace,  creates misalignments.	Moves seamlessly between at least three different degrees of proximity. Use angles, increasing or reducing proximity on either side of the embrace.	Negotiates fine gradations of proximity, including angle, to allow just enough room for whatever movements emerge from improvisation, including those with high degrees of spiral such as back sacadas or fourth sacadas, while keeping an intimate and focused emotional tone. The couples' changing proximity is expressive of the feeling in the music.
Tone	The use of the arms and hands is not connected to the use of the core muscles. Core muscles are often not engaged, and not utilized as a means of communication.	There is an information circuit between the leader's core muscles and the follower's lower body mediated through the engaged embrace. Invitations may be dull or noisy, expressions may be dampened or exaggerated.	Dancers use just enough engagement of the core and its extensions to send and receive information immediately. Dancers quickly match changes in degree of engagement.	Bodies operate functionally as a single continuous nervous system. Musical thoughts are instantaneously realized in the form of the lightly dancing couple.
Frontality	Dancers' bodies are often offset from one another, and dancers may not notice this. Front and open steps are too large and often unrelated to partner’s invitation or step size.	Dancer's hips are in directly front of partner's hips, returning to this orientation after any pivots and spirals that change the relationship between the hips.	Each dancer stays focused on how the changing relationship between the hips from frontal to lateral can generate a range of balanced, contrasting dynamics.	The whole range of relationships between the hips are freely explored including the spectrum of transitions into and out of tango "al reves."
Matching	Each dancer's focus is on his or her own movement.	There is effort to get my partner to move the way I like to move.	There is interest in noticing my partner's peculiarities of movement and discovering how he or she enjoys dancing, and some effort made to inhabit that way of moving.	There is single-minded focus on moving as one, readily able to discard any idea or movement quality that interferes with the emergent fabric of the partnership. Free leg expressiveness is complementary and one's movements complete the other's movements. Where there is a disparity of levels it is invisible because there is total calibration as the more skillful partner adapts.
Quality of Touch	There is little awareness of how and where the bodies' surfaces are in physical contact with one another or with the floor. Contact points tend to offer alternately incomplete, superficial pressure, or more pressure than comfortable. Hands, fingers, and toes are alternately frozen/gripping, or slack.	Dancers can include in their attention those surfaces where bodies are in contact, offering enough light pressure to activate skin’s pressure receptors, calming the body. Hands sometimes mould to the shape of the surface they hold. Soft lower body joints allow the dancer to feel and use the floor.	Dancers may explore different intensities of touch always with consideration of partner's comfort. When a surface of contact becomes stuck, dancers change it. Modulates amount of pressure offered through the ribcage when in close embrace. Able to soften into contact and work with touch from unexpected places, including lower body contact points.	Each sensitive and responsive touch or increment of touch carries the quality of newness, discovery, and care. Touch supports the dance and may be called for at unexpected points of contact.
Stillness	Bounciness as hips move noticeably up and down through the step. Forward and side steps may have exaggerated lunge. “Noisy” embrace: moves parts of embrace in ways that don’t relate to communication and comfort.	Uses soft lower body joints to keep hips the same distance from the floor throughout the extension and weight transfer. A stiller embrace is sometimes stuck in fixed shapes and sometimes too mobile.	Step has power while creating experience of flotation for partner. Still, breathable embrace takes precedence over movement ideas, from the very first moments of the dance. Active pauses with small dance internal to embrace may span whole phrases.	Both partners experience the ground of the dance as a deep stillness from which micro and macro possibilities arise and transform. Couple's each step has a quality of stillness in the joined upper bodies that is stable regardless of what the lower bodies are doing, including between steps; when dancing at high speeds; or with great contrast such as in a traditional variacion. Extremely subtle relaxed rise-and-fall in walk, "cadencia."
MUSICALITY	This is about becoming aware of more and more in the music, even before or as it happens, and choosing movements in reference to that.
Rhythms	Footfalls land at times when the downbeat is not sounding, without the dancer's awareness or control.	Steps land on the downbeat. Able to land weight changes on regular accelerations and decelerations (double time and half time), although often without exact reference to these rhythms in the music. Able to land weight changes on a regular traspie (double time) when dancing Milonga, and 123,1 in Vals with occasional 1, 31.	Able to inflect the downbeat arriving late or early while still meeting the downbeat. Able to express regular rhythms with movement elements other than weight changes (e.g., boléos.) Able to land weight changes on irregular syncopations in all genres: Tango's sincopa and quattrune; Vals' 12, 1 as well as 1, 31; Milonga's irregular traspie. Able to land on some musically highlighted offbeats.	Able to highlight any rhythm through any body part or movement element, manifesting this only when called forth from poetic or connecting necessity.
Phrasing	Sometimes able to stop moving when the song ends.	Occasionally, movement choices mirror the song's internal micro-endings and micro-beginnings, and dancer notices when this happens. Dancer may notice breaks and pauses after they sound, distinguish them by ear, and echo them with a step or weight change.	Draws partner's attention to major breaks and section transitions which are shared together in a mutually satisfying way. Phrases of movement relate with phrases of music, with movement ideas initiating at phrase beginnings; sharing some aspects of the accent patterning of the phrase; and suspending, flourishing or transforming at phrase endings. Movement may change when vocals enter.	Deep structure of the dance has resonance with deep structure of the music, though may not share its formal features literally. When there is a narrative structure to the music, the dancing embodies this with some manifestation of opening, tension, climax, denouement. When there is a folk or ballad-like structure, the dancing may incorporate elements of repetition or refrain.
Blending	Dances the same way on every orchestra and in every subgenre of Tango music.	Dances Vals with amplitude and horizontality; Milonga with compactness and verticality. Dances more rhythmic music with more double times; more lyrical music with more half times, although these are often not in sync with music’s actual rhythmic patterning.	Finds different ways of dancing (variations of tone and quality) that are appropriate to the different musical families (orchestras, eras, groups, subgenres).	Couple experiences its whole improvisation as emerging from the fabric of the music as if the unit is a functioning instrument sounding within the ensemble and governed by its logic.