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Is there a ‘Dark Side’ to Tango ?

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a.) This is not mine.

b.) FB won’t allow a long poll question.

I have my thoughts on the matter but let’s have a healthy discussion on this one.

Choose one:

c.) MY HEART BLEEDS THIS REALITY ? All True ? Mostly True ? Perspective ? Hyperbole ? Mostly False ? All False ? OMG SO FALSE, How do you sleep at night with such falseness ?

The Dark Side of Tango 🚩🚩🚩

Tango is addictive. Not on the first try, but reliably. You will need more hugs, deeper emotions from music, more warmth and intimacy to maintain dopamine and oxytocin levels. Tango withdrawal is not a joke.

Tango is a challenge and a frustration. Your inability to perform simple steps and turns will amaze you. You will spend lots of time and money to learn how to perform them more or less satisfactorily. This will not help.

Tango is a trauma. You will need the courage to present and open yourself and face rejection. No one will dance with you, and no matter how young and beautiful you are, few will invite you, since you still do not know how to dance. And if you are not young and not beautiful… Better to find yourself a good therapist in advance.

Tango will take all your time. You’ll “try” lessons. But over time, you will need technique, practice, individual lessons, workshops with maestros, milongas, festivals, and marathons. And you’ll still feel that you are missing a lot.

Tango will take all your money. In addition to expensive festivals and seminars, you will need countless shoes (your future fetish), dresses, new travel bags, tickets to Buenos Aires and much more.

Tango is a dissatisfaction. Your ability to feel music will develop faster than your body’s ability to dance it. As a result, you’ll feel that you dance worse and worse.

Tango is a fraud. Someday you will confuse your popularity at milongas with relationships in real life. Someday you will confuse a feeling of contact, unity with a partner, and tango emotions shared with them, with true intimacy. And this warning will not help. And you will do it more than once.

Tango is a loss. You will lose most of your friends, acquaintances and partners, there will be no time for them and there will be less and less in common between you. New ones are not granted. Your lifestyle will change (mainly to nightlife). You yourself will change: you will surely lose the ability to live the life you don’t want and do things you don’t want.

Tango is a regret. No matter how early you start, you will regret not starting earlier. And it will not pass.

Entering the tango world will destroy the beautiful dream of learning to dance tango someday. A dream will come true, and it will not be like what you imagined.

Igor Zabuta & Emma Kologrivova

dancing psychotherapists. With a little help from me here and there because it’s clear this was translated into English but missed a few euphemisms and colloquialisms.

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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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