How do biological systems stabilize inherently unstable situations, as in learning to ride a bicycle, maintaining posture, or avoiding falls in the elderly? In recent investigations, we have utilized the model task of pole balancing to study the perceptual information used by participants to accurately time their actions to successfully stabilize an inverted pendulum on a cycle-by-cycle basis. One such information, the instantaneous time-to-balance, is visually available in the relative rate of constriction of the pole angle with respect to the vertical and can be used to modulate the oscillation frequency of the pole directly. We also examined how two persons or two independent hands collaborate together before producing the successful coordination between actor(s) and the pendulum. Here, haptic information about each actor's action, more than the pole behavior itself, determines the success or failure of the task. This suggests that a collaboration between the actors must first be established before they can balance the pole. Ongoing efforts include the investigation of the dynamics of informational coupling during social coordination, expert performance, and extensions to the model to encompass these effects.