Dancing Friends

Dancing Friends are lovely to have. One should acquire as many as you possibly can, and as often as you can. There’s a good reason for this. Look, Tango is a Social dance experience, not a performance, contrary to what you see happening in the Tango world today. As such that means that ideally want to be as social with our tango communities as is humanly possible, and then some. The more social you make it, the welcoming it becomes. Which, strangely enough make it a more inclusive experience for everyone, and that means the more fun everyone has. Tango can be very, very isolating on multiple levels. From the technique work that has to occur, to the solo practice that you need to do on your own to improve, to the constant upkeep of your skill set. These are isolating on their own.

At the same time, there will always be those people that don’t feel accepted or wanted for whatever reason, and there is not much you can do about that except to be as friendly and open as you possibly can with them. So here’s quite possibly the best piece of advice this page has ever given, ‘Smile’ and say ‘hello’ to everyone. No, really, smile. Be friendly and say ‘hello’ to everyone. Trust me, it goes a long, long way to smoothing over things to creating a welcoming atmosphere in your own tango environment.

MORE REMINDERS

Discipline

Ballet dancers know all too well that a good dance teacher is strict, hard as a nails, and won’t let you get away with anything. While it may be hard on the body, and hard on the ego, the fact is that dance teachers like that are a godsend. However, the teacher is only one component to the educational process.

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Good Lead ?

There are many things to look for in a ‘Good’ Lead. Like for instance, the ability to keep time within the beat structure meaning that they’re placing their Follower’s on beat and not necessarily themselves. Still another is their posture which is reflected in the Follower’s posture as well. Still one more is the ‘cleanliness’ by which they execute a particular piece of vocabulary. That said ‘execution’ is done sharply, with snap and polish, and shows off their Follower, and in doing so, themselves. 😉 Those are some good signs of what qualifies as a ‘good’ lead (the action, not the person).

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Discomfort

Far too often we experience ‘discomfort’ when dancing. Most of the time we discard it and just accept it as the price we have to pay in order to dance with X, or so that we don’t have to sit through yet another milonga tanda, etc. Sometimes we feel that discomfort, and sometimes we don’t but in general it’s there, most of the time.

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Facility

Facility can be, but is not limited to, Familiarity with Vocabulary, Execution of the Vocabulary, also it’s about Balance, Equilibrium, Kinesthetic Awareness, Kinesthetic Listening, The Neurology of Leading, The Neurology of Following (which is how you respond to something from a follower’s perspective), Proprioception, and last but not least Extending Your Capabilities. We’ll get to that last one in just a bit. Two of the more common aspects of Facility are Execution and Proprioception. So let’s quickly review what Tango Topics means when it refers to these ideas…“

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The Unseen

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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Wood Floors

The toy of choice for most dancers is a ‘Sprung’ floor! That’s a work of art, science, and pure magic. Sprung floors are to dancers, what honey is to bees.  A ‘Sprung’ floor ? What’s that ? A Sprung floor is a dance floor that easily absorbs shocks, giving it a softer feel. Such floors are considered the best available for dance and indoor sports and physical education. They enhance performance and greatly reduce injuries.

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The Non-Gender Cabeceo

What is a ’Non-Gender Cabeceo’ ? A Non-Gender Cabeceo works exactly the same way that a Gendered Cabeceo works. There’s nothing special or different about it. The practice is exactly the same regardless of Gender, or at least it should be. If same sex dancing, or role fluidity, is permitted at Milongas, Marathons, and Encuentros, then the same rules apply in a Gendered Cabeceo.

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Body Contortion

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 ‘D’ Word

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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Follower’s Left Arm

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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10 REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE

There are 4 Levels of Access: Free, Basic, Premium, and Premium+. Free pays nothing but gets a perk just for signing up. 

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.

2.) 
Basic and Premium users Save A BOATLOAD of MONEY! Buying this stuff outright is expensive.

3.) Basic, Premium, and Premium+ users get access to the ALL ARTICLES and THE FULL ARTICLE which you can’t see right now.

4.) Basic, Premium, and Premium+ users have way better video resolution: Free = 420p, Basic = 720p, Premium = 1080p and 4K. 

5.) Basic, Premium, and Premium+ users get the ‘Dancing Perspectives’ & ‘The Soup’ sections of the document you just read (Lead, Follow, and Dancing) which are open to you. And that’s where all the good stuff is at. 

6.) Video Downloads! 

7.) Access to the Tango Topics Music Library (22 Curated Golden Age Orchestras)

8.) Access to ‘Tango Del Dia’ – Our Music Education System with access to 14 Days of Music, 30 Days of Music Education, and 30 More Days of Tango Del Dia. 

9.) We explain things, break the vocabulary down in a visual way, from multiple angles, showing feet, hands, and close ups! Yes there’s a lot of talking but we want you to understand what it is that you’re doing and why, not just steps, patterns, and figure

and #10:
No more annoying ads at the bottom of the page, begging you to subscribe! 

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 dancingWhereas 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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