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Variation

Repetition is only good in horseshoes and hand grenades.

Which is to say, that no one, absolutely no one, likes being led to the same thing over and over and over again. Variation is the key to success!

Small variation, large variations that open doors to other ideas, other thoughts. But in the end, variation. Taking an idea and then reversing it, or slowing it down, speeding it up, speeding up a part of it (musically), slowing down a piece of it, taking off the beginning or the end and reversing their positions. This is variation.

The same idea can be expressed in different ways, but not the exact same way, over and over again. It’s annoying. It’s a little like fingernails on a chalkboard.

There’s a way around the problem of Repetition: Listen to the music, not your ego, and not what you ‘like’ to do. The music will tell you where, when, why, and most of all what to do, and then here comes the hard part – how to vary your ideas.

And so that we’re clear, ‘variation’ in this case is not new vocabulary, but rather a small change the order something is led, or when, or how. 

MORE REMINDERS

Getting To Buenos Aires

September 11, 2017 No Comments

You’ve been dancing for a while, and you keep seeing these posts about Buenos Aires. Your dream has slowly developed to go to Buenos Aires, to experience for yourself what all the fuss is about. First there’s the dancing, you’ve heard it’s the best. There’s the shoes! OMG the shoes. Then there are friends that have been and rave about teacher X or Milonga Y. You’ve see the videos of performances at Salon Canning (but didn’t know it was Salon Canning), the pictures from Milongas, and thought to yourself that it didn’t look all that challenging than your local milonga there are just more people. You’ve heard that Spanish isn’t necessarily a requirement because there’s a lot of foreigners that speak English, and a good portion of the teachers speak it too. So you if you went, you wouldn’t really need to learn Spanish. 

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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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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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Tango Frustration

May 20, 2017 No Comments

Contrary to what you may have heard, the reality of Tango for some people is, as a Lead as well as a Follow, is not all happy and lovely. The fact is that some of those dancers go to the Milonga knowing that they are going to sit, a lot. And that sitting leads a winding path through a host of emotions that ultimately lands them on the door step of Tango Frustration.

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Physiological Control

January 31, 2017 No Comments

Control is a really hard thing to get. It takes a while to have precise, or precision, control over exact foot placement, which is insanely important. It takes time to build up the necessary minute control that one needs to have over one’s body. A millimeter here, a millimeter there, cumulatively, can make all the difference between a dance that sucks (for both parties) and one that is absolutely fabulous. Precision control is where all the toys are at.

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Learning Castellano

April 28, 2017 No Comments

Learning to speak and write in Spanish can be lots of fun. Doing so can really force you to understand that your own language is really wacky, that it is fully of colloquial phrases that when translated is a literal mess of confusion, and furthermore forces you to really start looking at your own culture and choices. However when it comes to Argentine Tango, and ultimately going to Buenos Aires, the question comes up … “Do you really need to learn to speak Spanish ?”

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Tango Cities

February 18, 2017 No Comments

Today’s Tango Thought covers a labor of Tantalus … where is Tango danced and in what cities ? What follows is by no means an exhaustive list of places where tango is danced, it only scratches the surface.

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Follower’s Left Arm

January 17, 2017 No Comments

You’re going to see this, and quite honestly, from a whole swath of Followers from your run of the mill local social dancer to professional doing this. Is this desirable ? No. Why ? Several reasons. Two of the more common reasons:

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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!

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