Being a tango teacher must take a special kind of patience. Learning to dance takes so long that the only way it will ever happen is via shortcuts. Things that are good enough to work, to get people to the stage where they can dance.
Along the way, they have to turn a temporary blind eye to really fundamental technique issues that will need to be addressed further down the road. Things like learning to stand, walk and turn …
Continue reading Three years in, learning to stand, walk and turnI’ve written a few blog posts with self appraisals of my progress. The differences between six, nine, twelve and eighteen months were dramatic! For me, the real watershed point was when I could Just Dance, without having to think about figures.
Technically, I’m now 2.8 years in, though the pandemic makes such measurements less precise. But now is clearly the right time for a slightly early three-year appraisal – this time taking a somewhat different approach …
Continue reading My 3-year appraisal: Beginning a whole new levelSaturday saw a rather special event: the Argentine Ambassador’s Milonga, at the ambassador’s residence in Knightsbridge. It really did feel like being in Buenos Aires!
Admittedly the grandeur of the setting would have been more faded in BsAs, but the crowded floor, the atmosphere and even the heat made for a very convincing impression …
Continue reading The magic continues with a slice of Buenos Aires in KnightsbridgeI had to be almost bodily dragged to Negracha. I’d heard people talk about it, and seen a couple of videos, and it was clear to me that the level there was far too high for me.
But the visit was a group one – Emma, Diego, Asia, Steph and me – so the worst-case scenario was that I’d do a little dancing, and have a great time socialising. What happened instead was something I couldn’t have dared hope for …
Continue reading A truly magical experience – and a rhythmical breakthrough – at NegrachaI wrote last time about the excitement I feel, at finally feeling like I might start to enjoy rhythmical tandas as much as lyrical ones. But there’s also the other side to this, which is why I choose the above image for this post.
There are times in my tango journey where it feels circular: Oh, this again! But it’s of course really a spiral. We learn something on one level, then we return to it later and explore it on another level. And we continually get deeper into each element – like revealing the fruit beneath the peel. (Hey, this metaphor is worth what you paid for it!)
Turning my attention now to rhythmical dancing is like revisiting everything from scratch …
Continue reading Rhythmical dance is bringing me back to basics in a whole new wayI’ve long favoured lyrical tango over rhythmical – legato over staccato. While most songs of course contain elements of each, there’s a huge difference between say Fresedo’s Buscandote and D’Arienzo’s El choclo. The former has me leaping out of my seat, the latter shrinking back into it.
Partly that reflects my musical tastes. My non-tango music is dominated by singer-songwriters, so it’s natural that my tango tastes would lean heavily toward songs where the singer is the focus. But there’s a second factor …
Continue reading An unplanned, and very exciting, focus on rhythmical danceLong enough ago that I can’t find my blog post about it, I did a group class with Winston and Silvia on the back cross. Since then, my hit-rate on leading it has been somewhere around 50%, so decided it would be good to work on this during tonight’s private with Filippo.
Janet said she has no real preferences in what we do – her focus is purely on posture and technique, and she can do that whatever the topic …
Continue reading The back cross, and the power of not thinking
