Subscribe
Login

Blind Leading & Following

Tango really is the-blind-leading-(&-following)-the-blind.

How ?

The obvious…Beginner and Intermediate Classes, and even Advanced ones!

Extending a bit further…the issues of hanging, pulling, pushing, tension, resistance, compression, and force, combined with posture, walking, stability and equilibrium, turning, crossing, and a lack of coming anywhere near something that closely resembles a beat (pauses and phrases) are common to 90% of you reading this. 

So the question is why is it The-Blind-Leading-And-Following-The-Blind ? It’s impossible to learn desirable technique, & dancing habits from less than desirable dancers. The issue on the table is that you don’t know and they don’t know that it’s not desirable, you only know what’s comfortable for you, and most of that time that comfort is not desirable visually, and from a movement perspective. It’s generally a physiological contortion. 

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. 

Read More »

Discomfort

April 30, 2017 No Comments

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.

Read More »

The ‘High Season’ in Buenos Aires

February 14, 2019 No Comments

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 ?

Read More »

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!

Read More »

On My Balance

April 17, 2017 No Comments

Frequently with Argentine Tango we use language that we think is descriptive of what we’re doing but in actual fact is either not that or so far from the mark it is more confusing than anything else. Before we go any further, it is possible that in reading this that you may not see the issue at all. That you know what the speaker meant, and that’s the important part, right. Wrong. That’s the problem right there. The inference. If you have to infer that X or Y is occurring then there’s far too much ‘wiggle’ room for errors in understanding to crop up.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

Discipline

October 24, 2016 No Comments

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.

Read More »

5 Reasons

January 22, 2017 No Comments

Why does someone enter the Tango world ? What drives them to engage in Argentine Tango ? Not what makes them stay but why do they get involved with Argentine Tango ? There are commonalities to why someone walks this pathway, no pun intended. These are distilled down to about Five Common Reasons why someone enters Tango. These are the reasons why and not the reasons why someone stays in Tango. Those are very different reasons, but rather why they started dancing in the first place.

Read More »

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! 

Click Here 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 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 MSG HERE