Monthly Archives: June 2019

Private lesson, Tango

Finally feeling able to re-introduce giros to my dance

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giro

Having called in Julia and Federico to bump my ochos up to a whole new level, and sort out my cross, it was time to tackle my nemesis: the giro.

With ochos, I had a workable open embrace version. They were clear, and I felt I could easily lead them to the music. Things were trickier in close embrace, and there was plenty of scope to improve my technique, but it was a decent starting-point.

With giros, I didn’t really feel like I had that much …

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Not Tango, Tango

My trainee tanguero clothing tips for men

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wardrobe

A recent wardrobe re-organisation reveals that a full 25% of my shirts and trousers are Designated Tango Clothing.

Not actual tango clothing – that would feel a bit pretentious at my stage of the game – but clothing almost exclusively used for tango. This includes an unlikely mix of expensive shirts and cheap trousers …

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Not Tango

Mild facial aphasia, or why you have to introduce yourself to me multiple times

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mild facial aphasia

As some of you will know, I suffer from mild facial aphasia, also known as partial prosopagnosia. Since tango people are often curious about it when I mention it, I thought I’d write a brief primer …

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Socialising, Tango

When dancing in a pub is an achievement rather than an embarrassment

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Dancing in a pub

Tonight was the monthly Tango Space drinks, when students and teachers get together to drink wine, talk tango and– Well, ok, we pretty much just drink wine and talk tango.

The pub plays a pretty eclectic selection of music, but I’d never before heard any tango music. On this occasion, however, it was playing something that sounded like a pretty convincing impression of a milonga …

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Group class, Tango

Musicality workshop #3 of 4: The delightfully mundane secret to a collaborative dance!

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collaborative dance

Tonight’s musicality class was all about collaborative dance: Response to our partner. To agree, to change, to add.

To me, the transition from me leading everything to a collaborative dance is one of the most exciting prospects. I’d previously seen this as a very advanced skill, one where I’d have to develop my own dance skills to a high level first, but Diego Bado had given me a different perspective on it. Paraphrasing him from a conversation we had …

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Group class, Milonga, Tango

Actitude, Pugliese and following the follower

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following the follower

I realised today there’s quite a difference in musicality between what I do in solo practice at home with Mrs Mop, and what I do in milongas. Part of that is entirely understandable: at home, there are few demands on my attention dollar. I normally decide in advance what types of movement I’ll be practicing, so I can spend 50 cents each on technique and musical interpretation.

In a milonga, of course, my partner and the navigation need a lot of my attention, and usually I’m deciding on the fly what movements to lead, but there’s another factor …

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Following, Group class, Practica, Tango

Dropping the beginner class, and getting some bonus experience as a follower

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levels

Many years ago, I did an introductory scuba diving course. Known as the PADI Open Water Diver course, it took four days, and comprised about a day’s theory, some swimming pool exercises and then a couple of days of diving. Do that, and you emerge as a certified diver.

Want to become an Advanced Open Water Diver? Certainly: go on to do one deep dive (30m), one navigation dive (following a compass to swim in a triangle) and three other ‘adventure’ dives (eg. a night dive), and suddenly I’m an ‘advanced’ diver – with all of eight days in the water.

Tango gradings aren’t quite that bad, but schools definitely use inflated levels designed to flatter the student …

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Group class, Tango

One small step for man and woman, one giant leap for their tango

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one small step

I love technique workshops, because the changes you make as a result of them are often tiny, but the payoff can be huge.

The seemingly infinite amount of refinement possible with the tango fundamentals is really quite astonishing. The walk is the obvious example, but as today’s workshop demonstrated, the same is true of the embrace …

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Group class, Milonga, Tango

Three workshops in a day – or not winding down quite yet …

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speed

As I mentioned last time, my plan to tone things down doesn’t kick in quite yet. Today had two afternoon Tango Better workshops with visiting teachers Fausto Carpino & Stephanie Fesneau, followed by an evening Tango Space one on the milonga rhythym.

The first workshop was on Connection and lead, which sounded like it could be relied on to be exploring fundamentals rather then requiring me to learn new steps. The same wasn’t going to be true of Milonguero Turns, but they did make learning the steps very easy …

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Group class, Tango

Musicality workshop #2 of 4: Melody and counter-melody

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musicality-2

Although I’ve vowed to rein-in my tango schedule, there is a slight lag as I complete my booked workshops – including the remaining three musicality workshops. Last week was about switching between dancing the beat and the melody, and this week took things to the next level: switching between the melody and the counter-melody …

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