I’ve long said what I really wanted from intermediate classes was not additional vocabulary, but work on technique within my existing vocabulary. Quality, not quantity, of movement.
Tonight’s* Tango Space class seemed to be promising exactly that …
Continue reading Feeling at home in the Thursday intermediate class
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 …
Continue reading When dancing in a pub is an achievement rather than an embarrassment
Tuesday was the second improver class of the week, with more calesitas. I really like the balance of the Monday and Tuesday classes: the Monday one is always more complex but introduces me to new things, while the Tuesday one is simpler and focuses more on technique.
Tonight, we both entered and exited the calesita via ochos. You could exit with either a front or back ocho. The back seemed to work best when I had enough momentum, while the front was plan B for when things were slower …
After the Hyde Park bandstand milonga, Sunday provided another opportunity to dance outdoors. Rene and Hiba from Tango Fever organise Tango@Spitalfields, held in the Amphitheatre Canopy outside Patisserie Valerie.
It felt strange to be going there to dance: I’d passed several of these milongas in my pre-tango days, and always thought of them as a really fun idea. I never imagined I would one day be participating!
Continue reading Venturing once more into the great outdoors
I’ve mentioned before the ‘endless ocho’ issue I’ve encountered, where I either fail to lead an exit, or followers go onto auto-pilot, or some combination of the two.
I think Diego gave me a solution that should work regardless of the cause, but tonight I got to enjoy endless ochos of the useful variety …
Continue reading Endless ochos of the useful kind, and the social in social dancing
I’ve never drunk alcohol at a milonga, partly because wine-breath doesn’t seem a great idea in a tango embrace, and partly because I have a finite quantity of coordination available even when stone cold sober.
But we had dinner with a couple of good friends last night, one of whom was a follower who hadn’t danced for a long time. So after way more wine than is reasonable between four people, she and I danced …
