We’ve decided to make the lessons with David a weekly fixture during the tango famine, working on that same mix of technique, and variations on things I already know how to do.
We worked this week on the planeo …
Category Archives: Progress update
Deliberately taking one step back to get two steps forward
There’s a Catch-22 with my plan to expand my core vocabulary. The stuff I’m now adding in to milongas feels less fluid, so I’m reluctant to interrupt the flow of the dance by using them too often – but unless I use them more often, they won’t feel more fluid.
That feels like a particular dilemma when I feel like smoothness and musicality are what I’ve got going for me right now as a tango dancer; if I put those at risk, I have nothing …
Continue reading Deliberately taking one step back to get two steps forward
A systematic plan for expanding my core vocabulary
While my longer-term goal is truly improvised dance, I am of course mostly dependent on figures for now.
But the two are in any case very closely linked: the more of my existing figures I can call upon in dance, the more experience I’m getting of different movement possibilities …
Continue reading A systematic plan for expanding my core vocabulary
Successful improvisation in a milonga!
Ever since I started considering dropping the Tuesday Tango Space milonga from my weekly schedule, just to calm things down a bit, it has been conspiring to prevent me from doing so …
My parallel learning tracks: a particularly diary-like post
I’ve often said that my primary audience for my blog is me. It’s a way of reminding myself of what I’ve learned in particular lessons, so I can revisit them from time to time, and of tracking my progress. Anyone else finding the posts interesting is a bonus.
More so than most, this post is a memo to myself …
Continue reading My parallel learning tracks: a particularly diary-like post
Time for a new approach to my privates
Scheduling challenges meant I didn’t have any private lessons last month, but now have three arranged for this month: two with Maeve while she’s in London, and resuming my regular privates with Fede and Julia toward the end of the month.
A lot changed for me in BsAs, so I realised I needed to take a fresh look at what I wanted to get out of my privates. Two elements are easy …
They make long hours at this time of the year
Why does no-one ever believe me when I say I’m only staying for the first hour of a milonga?
Today was the final Tango Space workshop of the year, a one-hour one billed as lessons Pablo and Anne had learned from their students, followed by Prosecco and mince pies – then the monthly Browns milonga …
Continue reading They make long hours at this time of the year
Fourteen months in, I’m in a good place
Tonight was my type of music, my type of followers, my type of dance.
Mara Ovieda was again DJing. There were a lot of lyrical tandas, and the more rhythmical ones still had depth to them. I only sat out a few tandas, and that was mostly because I was busy chatting …
Twenty-five milongas in twelve days: lessons from Buenos Aires
It feels like we arrived only yesterday; it feels like we’ve been here forever. It feels like milongas are the real world, and London is some kind of vague dream.
Forever is also about the time it will take me to integrate everything I’ve learned here, both in lessons and from dancing in all those milongas – but let’s at least make a start …
Continue reading Twenty-five milongas in twelve days: lessons from Buenos Aires
Some reflections, some wanderings and an ‘entertaining’ milonga
My sartorial standards in milongas are respectable, but I’ve now given up on mornings. We just made it to the hotel breakfast room before it closed, and I was unshaven, with uncombed hair and wearing my Virgin sleep suit.
Breakfast was spent sorting out some more of our tango schedule. With up to 20 or so milongas from which to choose every day, it’s no easy task …
Continue reading Some reflections, some wanderings and an ‘entertaining’ milonga
