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

The ‘Connection’ Fallacy

“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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Getting Into The Encuentro

This is a FIVE step process, that you will want to follow religiously, which does not necessarily depend on where you live. If you’re an American dancer and want to break into the scene in Europe, then this is a post for you. If you’re already living in Europe then you have a slightly different pathway, but the suggestions are exactly the same.

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Couple Exercises

There are lots of really good tango exercises for your feet, your balance, your stability, but there aren’t so many for the couple to practice. Or so you would think. The really obvious ones are 1.) The Molinete Together Exercise. 2.) The No Arms Exercise. and  3.) The Walk Together Exercise.

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Being Criticized

The truth is that this is critical feedback, about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Hopefully that critical feedback or criticism is done with exacting detail, which is needed for analysis, breakdown, and then reconstruction or rebuilding your posture, walk, embrace, vocabulary, and/or musical interpretation. Without that critical feedback, you will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again thinking that everything is happy and lovely when in fact it’s not.

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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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Practice (part 1)

For most people the idea of practice is about practicing the dancing part. Not about the actual "practicing" part. Practice really wants to take apart what one does, how one does it, while asking for feedback & input. Then asking questions, and then figuring out where things aren’t working and why, to smooth out the rough edges of something, and then continually refine, and refine, and refine it so that it becomes effortless.

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The ‘High Season’ in Buenos Aires

What is the "High Season" in Buenos Aires ? It’s the period of time between December 15th and March 15th when several things happen all at once. 1.) It’s INSANELY HOT. It should be noted that sometimes this is called the ‘hot’ season. 2.) The traveling teachers return home to practice, and to build new routines. 3.) There’s a lot of tango touristas (you). 4.) There’s a lot of seminarios that happen. 5.) Did we mention there’s a lot of people ?

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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:
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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. 

DROP ME A MSG HERE

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