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Snobby People

The fact is that there are snobby people everywhere.

There are always going to be the ‘holier than thou’ among your local group, and really anywhere you travel.

The fact is that you can’t get around them, you have to deal with them, and there is a way to do that. Ok, truthfully you could avoid them all night long if you wanted to but that doesn’t help you very much.

Is there a way to deal with the snobby, holier than thou ? Yes. Smile. Say ‘Hello’, and ‘Good bye’. Be as polite as peaches really. Deferential almost to the point of pain. Why ? Because the more deferential you are with them, the more of a high road you take with them, the more it makes you look like the better person and in reality you are.

So how do you deal with snobby people in tango ? Be nicer!

MORE REMINDERS

The Female Lead

July 8, 2017 No Comments

This post isn’t about the benefits of learning to lead for the woman that dances, of which there are many. No. Nor is it about the hyper awareness of all the things you do not want to do as a Follower, which is going to happen by default. Nor is this post about the supposition that women of a certain age swap shoes and end up leading because no one wants to lead them anymore. Not. Nor is it about the fact the simple fact that some women do enjoy leading quite a bit and are actually (contrary to what you might believe) pretty good at it. No. Today’s Tango Thought is all about Women that WANT to Lead! (Just as a side note, most of this stuff also applies to the male lead too, you need the reminders).

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The Importance of Two Millimeters

June 17, 2017 No Comments

Contrary to what you might believe or think, distance, space, and rightfully precision absolutely matters when it comes to Argentine Tango. Let’s back up a bit and define a few things before we delve too deeply into today’s Tango Thought. Precision as defined by Webster’s Dictionary (2017) is a noun as derived from the English word ‘precise’ which is itself an adjective meaning “definitely or strictly stated, defined, or fixed”. Clear ? Not. In short, ‘Precision’ means that there is an area of exactitude, and/accuracy, finite accuracy, finely tuned acute and tight accuracy. And that just about sums up what has to happen with regards to Argentine Tango.

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The ‘D’ Word

August 23, 2017 No Comments

At the beginning of our Tango lives, most of us who start out taking a weekly series to get our feet wet, just so that we can say we ‘learned’ to tango. If only that were the end of it. It’s not. The classes never stop really. If you want to improve. If you want to get better and better dances with better partners, then you need to improve.

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Tango Improvement

March 7, 2017 No Comments

You say the words, “I want to get better”. You mouth them as you watch the latest performance tango video on youtube. While at the same time, the thought flashes in your mind that you should schedule a private or two with X. ‘X’ being the local variant that teaches what you ‘believe in’. This teacher is also the one that you have gone to before and from your perspective has ‘helped’ you.

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Being Criticized

January 8, 2017 No Comments

The truth is that this is critical feedback, about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Hopefully that critical feedback or criticism is done with exacting detail, which is needed for analysis, breakdown, and then reconstruction or rebuilding your posture, walk, embrace, vocabulary, and/or musical interpretation. Without that critical feedback, you will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again thinking that everything is happy and lovely when in fact it’s not.

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Getting Into The Encuentro

November 3, 2018 No Comments

This is a FIVE step process, that you will want to follow religiously, which does not necessarily depend on where you live. If you’re an American dancer and want to break into the scene in Europe, then this is a post for you. If you’re already living in Europe then you have a slightly different pathway, but the suggestions are exactly the same.

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The Blame Game

March 17, 2017 No Comments

The dance starts out on an even footing. It’s quite clear two steps later that one of you is clearly better than the other. Usually the Lead believes that they’re all that, and the Follower is just trying to survive the compressive embrace, let alone actually dance. In reality…well let’s just say that no one is perfect and leave it at that, shall we ?

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It’s Too Late

March 15, 2017 No Comments

Frequently most dancers after they ‘learn’ something will fail to solo practice it, as well as use it at a social practica, which as a result fails to deepen their fluidity when dancing so that when X, Y, and Z is led or followed they ‘miss’ it and hesitate. Thereby creating the impression that they’re inept dancers.

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Low Heels

December 11, 2016 No Comments

This isn’t rocket science. It’s pure fact. Lower heels for the Follower aren’t exactly the sexiest things in the world. All the attention is on the High Heel and the shape of the foot, calf, and thigh that the high heel generates as a result. The Low heel ? Not so much with that. It’s like the poor cousin, ne’er do-well that comes close but not quite. Uuuugh. 

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Keep something in the back of your mind: What you’re seeing in a youtube video is a couple that is performing for the 15th row for a room full of people. They’re not social dancing! Whereas this website is all about ‘Social Tango’  or how to make things function on a social dance floor. Social Dance floor ? Your local milonga! They are showing you flashy moves as a presentation, to show off! But not stopping and talking about how this works which is what you need to see. This website and all of it’s content show you the how and  why you’d want to put that piece of vocabulary there, or how to make things work. This website is all about those things and more!

You could watch Tango YouTube videos and thereby spend your time, trying to infer, and figure out how things may work in that particular situation. Bend your body this way or that, twist and force this position or that. Place your foot here or there and figure it out. This is known as Tango Twister.  Which can be a lot of fun, but more than likely it won’t help you, because you’re missing something: The explanation from an experienced teacher showing you how to properly excute this stuff from a Leading Perspective as well as from a Following Perspective!

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