Six weeks ago, I said I was pausing my privates while I figured out my next step. A few days after that, I mulled over the possibility of learning to follow – at least, to some degree.
Sure, I’ve taken a few lessons as a follower, but those have always been geared to helping my lead, rather than actually focusing on following. But I’ve decided it’s now time to have a real go at the opposite (and, I suspect, more challenging) role …
Continue reading A time to lead, a time to followFelipe Martinez recently talked about the difference between danceable music and music which moves you, literally and figuratively. I think that’s a good way of describing what is, to me, the difference between rhythmic and lyrical tango.
I’d expected the work I was doing on double-time to increase my enjoyment of rhythmic music. It has, but to my surprise, that wasn’t the biggest benefit …
Continue reading The only leader is the music: A joyful Feast
I know, a lesson in improvisation sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it was a private I really needed!
In trying to work toward truly improvised dance, I need a better understanding of the core elements and the possibilities. I also need to find ways of freeing myself from auto-pilot. I can kind of do that when dancing quickly, but slow dance tends to gravitate back to my core vocabulary …
Continue reading A lesson in improvisation, switching between lead and follow
The teachers – Omar Ocampo and Monica Romero, aka Los Ocampos – have an excellent reputation, and I’m of the view that I can never have too many giro lessons. Plus it was organised by Queer Tango London, so I was assured of a fun atmosphere.
The class covered a version of the giro which I’d never been taught before. At its simplest, it was:
It felt slightly confusing at first as it seemed to be three steps rather than four, but then I realised that the follower does complete a full sequence of side-forward-side-back – it’s just that the back step then becomes the first step of the walk.
The first variation was to do the same thing clockwise rather than anti-clockwise. It felt slightly trickier, but I think that would just be a matter of practice.
Next was the original version with a sacada on the follower’s second side-step. I don’t have much experience of sacadas, but this one actually felt relatively easy.
I’ve always understood intellectually that a sacada is an illusion; that you are stepping into the space the follower is leaving, though my only practical experience of a foot sacada is, I think, a sequence in the forward ocho where I then step around her into a parada. But this one made perfect sense: because the follower is pivoting around into her back-step, the illusion of taking her space and’ forcing’ the turn is quite convincing.
There was then a version with two sacadas. I ducked out at this point! I do think the two-sacada version would make sense to me once I’d had enough practice at the single-sacada sequence, but attempting it now wasn’t going to be pretty.
I’d already had enough challenge for one evening: being a Queer Tango event, everyone swapped roles, so I was learning to follow as well as lead the sequence! That was … challenging. I did have to let everyone know that they’d need to use some combination of brute force and telekinesis to lead me.
It was, though, very useful as well as comedic. In particular, I found one of Omar’s following tips for the giro made a huge difference: just follow the leader’s shoulder. Once I started doing that, it made it much more obvious which direction I needed to go, and that was really 60% of the lead. It was really helpful to get such a practical demonstration of that.
The teachers are great fun, and the QTL crowd as friendly as can be, so it was a lovely evening.
More tango tomorrow, of course, at the Tango Space milonga, where Mara Ovieda will once again be DJing. Should be good!
I’d wondered how it would feel, returning to dancing in London. Whether my familiar milongas would now feel strange. Tonight’s didn’t: lots of friends were there, and I dived straight back in.
What did feel strange was that it had been four whole days since my last milonga! Technically, three days, I suppose, since we left Yira Yira in the early hours of Saturday morning and I was at the Tango Space milonga when it started at 8pm on Tuesday. As an added bonus, there was a touch of Buenos Aires to the dance …
Continue reading A touch of BsAs in London, and dancing almost every tanda
You’ll have to excuse the blobby photos from milongas. I’m really trying not to take photos this trip. Instead, I’m shooting very short video clips with my phone, and will then edit them into maybe a 5-10 minute overview of the whole trip. This means most of my photos are in fact screengrabs from video, thus not the greatest quality.
The daytime part of the blog is rather brief: I had breakfast in bed, then lazed (apart from accidentally writing a blog post).
I made up for this laziness in the evening, managing one-and-a-bit classes and three milongas …
Continue reading Patio de Tango, La Viruta and a magical evening at Salon Canning
I decided last time that Juan Martin and Steffi’s classes are so good that I had to take full advantage of their limited time in London, despite my determination to do fewer classes and more milongas. The classes do at least double as a way to get to know followers for the Los Angelitos milonga which follows, so I can kind of claim they are in the spirit of dancing more.
Today’s classes were again advertised as technique-focused, with ‘pivots and communication’ the theme, though interestingly that turned out to be more true of the beginner/improver class than the intermediate one …
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 …
Continue reading Dropping the beginner class, and getting some bonus experience as a follower
Today was going to be more following, this time with Bridgitta, in the practica at Tango Garden. As things turned out, we switched back and forth, me leading something and then Bridgitta having me follow the same thing to illustrate how different versions feel …
Sunday’s tango-related fun kicked off with a 90-minute talk on Troilo by Michael Lavocah, author of Tango Stories, Musical Secrets.
I couldn’t even begin to do justice to the talk in a brief blog post. Lavocah clearly has an immense breadth and depth of knowledge, and boundless enthusiasm for sharing as much of it as humanly possible …
Continue reading Michael Lavocah on Troilo, and more learning about leading through following
journey of a trainee tanguero 
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