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Choreography

You’re going to see it.

You’re not going to know that it’s choreography.

Nor how hard the couple worked to make it look so effortless.

This a series of planned steps, patterns, and figures timed (hopefully perfectly) to emphasize the music.

The part that should concern you is that this ‘performance’ will fool you into studying with them.

Let’s be clear about something: A performance is not social dancing! Not by any stretch of the imagination. And the difference between the two ideas (a performance and social dancing) could not be more stark, than in the presentation of the performance itself. Why ? Because what you’re not seeing is a representation of what actually happens in the line of dance, which is what you should be seeing. You should be seeing line of dance movement, and vocabulary, an emulation of what happens in the ronda, but instead you’re wowed by kicks, drops, drags, and movements/figures that take up ooodles of space on the dance floor, that you’ll more than likely never use, and that don’t and can not ever work in the line of dance at all.  

Understand that the ability to teach, and the ability to dance, are not the same things!

MORE REMINDERS

The Follower’s Work

February 15, 2017 No Comments

The Follower’s Work. These words may come as a surprise to you dear reader considering that this page has seemingly ‘bashed’ or disparaged the role of the Follow in any number of ways, however: The role of the Follower is work. This is by no means a complete list, but just a taste: A Follower must master in order to ‘dance’ with a particular Lead their stability, their walk backwards, and forwards to the side without wobbling.

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La Cumparsita

October 8, 2017 No Comments

At the end of nearly every Milonga in the world, that you will ever attend, while you will hear more than a few familiar songs, there are a handful that have very specific meanings. One of them is played at the end of the night to signify that the Milonga has come to end, which should be a cue to find your favorite partner and to dance with them. The song ? “La Cumparsita” or as it is translated into English, ‘The Little Carnival’.

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The Seasoned Dancer

April 8, 2017 No Comments

The dancer who has been dancing for a certain amount of time has passed through the multiple, multiple flirtations. They’ve had the flirtations that lead to attractions, and then the attractions that turn into dalliances, and some that go beyond that.

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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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Giving Feedback

November 10, 2016 No Comments

This is probably one the most important things in Argentine Tango that you can do for yourself and the people that you dance with. Giving constructive, clear, concise, clean, direct, and most of all, honest feedback. It is what is required. While feedback is subjective, it is not personal, it’s what is going on for you in the construct of the dance, the walk, the embrace, and how someone moves in relation to you.

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The Shoe Lip

March 1, 2017 No Comments

Today’s Tango Thought is a bit of Tango minutiae that seems unimportant at first, but is in reality very important actually. It is an awareness that can help you to understand why certain kinesthetic instabilities (regardless of gender) exist: A fair number of street shoes, male or female, have a thick hard leather construct known as the ‘Sole of the Shoe’. The Sole serves several purposes, one of which is to protect your feet from harm, still another (which relates to today’s thought) and secondly it’s what we call the ‘Shoe Lip’.

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Snobby People

November 18, 2016 No Comments

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.

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The ‘Connection’ Fallacy

November 17, 2016 No Comments

“Connection” is a wonderful idea. We like to believe in the romanticism of this word, and all that it implies, which is as it turns out a considerable amount. However, the word itself, from a Tango perspective, has been beat up and bruised that it more than likely has lost it’s original intent. When you say the word to someone it could mean any one of eight (8) different things as it relates to the dance. However, this is not a definition of the word, for that please see the Tango Topics Definition of the word "Connection". 


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1.) Free Users get to see 5 of the 125 Different Tango Topics on the site. Plus you get access to the entire Tango Reminders and Tango Ideas sections of the site. These are short form Topic descriptors with a little detail about the topic and the video.

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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!

The goal of YouTube videos is to get you to study with those teachers in person. The goal of Tango Topics videos allows you to work at your own pace, in the comfort of your own space, so that you can play them over and over again to improve your understanding of the vocabulary or technique being described to therefore better your dancing experience. The goal of classes and workshops is to get you to come back over and over and over again, thereby spending more money with that teacher. This website and the videos under it are here to act as a resource for you to help you to improve your dance. Pay once and you’re done.

Eventually, one way or another you’re going to pay for this lesson, either here and now, or with them. TANSTAAFL! The difference between that lesson and this ? Is that you get to play this lesson over and over and over again. Further still, there are supporting materials (other videos) that help to explain the language and the underlying technique of how and why things work, so you can easily reference those things in the corresponding articles that go with the material, and or any language in the Tango Topics Dictionary. 

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