While leading and following are two very different mindsets, the technique is the same – just that followers need more of it at any given level.
I knew from past experience that following is a very powerful tool for improving my lead, but I really couldn’t believe the extent to which this paid off after just two (new) following lessons …
Continue reading An amazing leading dividend from just two lessons as a followerBeing 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’m currently awaiting a hospital referral for recurring abdominal pain which has left me largely out of action for the past month or so. The unpredictability of when the pain will strike, coupled to tiredness from broken sleep, has made it difficult to commit to anything in advance.
However, when a friend suggested an on-the-day decision to attend the Tango Amistoso class and practica, I decided to give it a go. By the time I got there, I was already questioning the wisdom of this decision …
Continue reading The healing power of tango, and musical hilarity
The resumption of milongas still feels a way off yet, but there are definite signs that the tango world is beginning to ready itself. Some group classes are resuming, albeit for solo technique or with fixed partners, and privates are resuming on the same basis.
But lessons are of limited value without practice, so Wai Fong and I did a practice session, trying out the things we’d been learning in our privates with David – managing to choose one of the hottest days of the year to do it …
It was on 28th October 2018 that I first ‘danced’ in a milonga at Tango Garden, after a grand total of five lessons, with the courage fostered by not knowing what I didn’t know.
Some fifteen months later, I figured the various broken limbs would have healed, and the building been repaired, so decided to pay a return visit for the 7th anniversary of the popular Saturday afternoon milonga …
Continue reading Returning to the scene of the crime, at Tango Garden
This weekend was going to be pretty tango-centric, with a practica and private on the Saturday, and a milonga on the Sunday.
Saturday got the weekend off to an excellent start …
It wasn’t my plan to have a fortnight-long tango fast, but two lazy evenings, one rain-sodden day and one milonga I’d expected to happen that didn’t all conspired against me.
I was glad, therefore, that my reintroduction to tango was a practica before the milongas resume tomorrow …
Continue reading A fortnight’s tango fast broken with an excellent practica
Only a tango couple could spend their third anniversary at a tango workshop …
Continue reading Giros, contra-giros and following with Los Ocampos
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
I got as far as the hotel lobby then had to go back upstairs for my sunglasses; seems I’d forgotten what it was like to leave the hotel in daylight.
I’d originally planned to go to La Maria Rolera to see how it compared to its sister milonga on Tuesday, but Diego was insistent I had to go to the DNI practica, and I’m certainly not going to argue with his recommendations.
I did, though, manage to go to both …
Continue reading A relaxed afternoon at the DNI Practica and La Maria Rolera milonga
journey of a trainee tanguero 
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