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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 ‘Right’ Shoes

February 4, 2017 No Comments

Some day soon, you’re going to want the perfect pair of shoes. These shoes in your mind, completes the Tango image you have for yourself dancing socially. They make you look elegant. They make you feel like you can do anything. Mind you that image is an illusion in your head, but let’s not quibble about reality. These shoes are either handmade in Italy, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, or somewhere and/or something in between. They’re the shoes you always dreamed of. They’ve got all the features that you believe will allow you to become, finally, the dancer that you’ve always wanted.

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The Bloody Toe

March 6, 2017 No Comments

The fact is that while open toed shoes can be lovely to look at, they have a practical downside that no one likes to talk about – one wrong move and you’re lookin’ at a serious injury!

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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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Tango Reputation

February 1, 2017 No Comments

No matter how hard you try (positively or negatively) you’re going to acquire a ‘Tango Reputation’. Meaning ? How you engage socially, how you dance, who you dance with, how ‘good’ you are, how often you dance, if you teach, where you teach, who you teach with, whether or not (if you teach) you dance only with your students or with others, if you teach others while dancing (tsk, tsk, tsk), whether or not you dance milonga, how good your milonga skills are, whether or not you lead and follow or not.

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Practice with Tango Sticks

June 9, 2017 No Comments

At some point along your tango curve, you have wanted 1.) to practice a step, a pattern, or a figure. Or 2.) you have seen something that you want to try out. Or 3.) you’re imagining an idea of how something might work and want to try it. In all three of these instances, you will need a practice partner. You’ll need to schedule their time against yours. And once you’re in the same room with them, balance their issues of how they do X vs. how you engage X. And once that challenge is overcome then it’s getting into the idea of what it is you had in mind to begin with. All told, this could be several hours or days between the idea and the actual doing of it.

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Body Contortion

December 14, 2016 No Comments

A good portion of people come into the embrace, Lead or Follow, and in one way, shape, or form, contort their bodies to make the dance work while dancing, rather than employ proper technique.

Contort ? Yes. For example: As a Lead or Follow they might dance with a ‘head tilt‘ towards (buried into) or away from their partner, or as a Lead they’ll employ ‘waiter arm and hand’, or as a Follower they’ll dance in their Lead’s armpit, twisting their body to the side, and un-leveling their shoulders. This is contortion. 

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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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The Unseen

November 5, 2016 No Comments

There is an unspoken, unwritten rule with regards to Argentine Tango. Actually there are a few of them. However, one of them is that once you are acknowledged you are now persona grata. However, if you are NOT acknowledged….then you are Persona Non-Grata. You don’t exist. They don’t see you. And the more that you stand in front of them, the less that they’ll see you. You are the ‘Unseen’.

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Variation

November 6, 2016 No Comments

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.

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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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