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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

La Viruta

March 3, 2017 No Comments

Let’s get the details out of the way. The sight lines are awful. It’s dark, pitch dark in certain parts of the room. It’s crowded, and hot even with the A.C on in the ‘summer’. The drinks are expensive. The tables are small, assuming you can find one or have reserved one (which is recommended). The ‘hot’ area, meaning a place to ‘get’ dances, in the room is in front of the bar at the back left side of the room, and the entrance fee is on par with everywhere else (see end). There’s a restaurant upstairs, and on Mondays and Tuesday nights there is Salsa there. The rest of the week, it’s all Tango baby. There are classes nearly every night of the week, for different levels.

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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.

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The ‘D’ Word

August 23, 2017 No Comments

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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The Importance of Two Millimeters

June 17, 2017 No Comments

Contrary to what you might believe or think, distance, space, and rightfully precision absolutely matters when it comes to Argentine Tango. Let’s back up a bit and define a few things before we delve too deeply into today’s Tango Thought. Precision as defined by Webster’s Dictionary (2017) is a noun as derived from the English word ‘precise’ which is itself an adjective meaning “definitely or strictly stated, defined, or fixed”. Clear ? Not. In short, ‘Precision’ means that there is an area of exactitude, and/accuracy, finite accuracy, finely tuned acute and tight accuracy. And that just about sums up what has to happen with regards to Argentine Tango.

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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.

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Where’s The Fun ?

February 12, 2017 No Comments

Believe it or not, the ‘fun’ part is everywhere. You are focused on just the outcome of the dancing part. The immediate hit that you get from dancing. But what if you found out that you’re only scratching the surface with Tango. What if you discovered that you’re missing a very important aspect that not only can change the dance from what it is today for you but for it to go far deeper than you ever imagined. What if you found out that the drive to be better is not only a requirement, but it’s the gateway to dancing with better and better partners that you only dream of dancing with but can do because you changed your perspective a bit ?

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Good Lead ?

December 30, 2016 No Comments

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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Physiological Contact

January 2, 2017 No Comments

There is one aspect of The ‘Connection‘ Fallacy that comes up a lot and that’s the idea that there is some mystical/spiritual/magical way in which we communicate in the dance. That communication is stated as how our ‘connection’ is to someone and them to us and how well we ‘connected’ with each other. Rubbish! Not to piss in someone’s Cheerios but that’s just magical thinking.

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Follower Bashing

January 24, 2017 No Comments

All too often a good portion of Followers get the short end of the stick as it were. They’re blamed for missing this or that, not having enough resistance (a major no-no), not pushing, not leaning enough (false apilodo another major no-no), not stepping in the right place, not keeping up with the lead, etc. They’re blamed for a host of things from walking, to musical interpretation. After a while they develop a complex of just taking responsibility for almost everything that happens that isn’t desirable in the dance, instead of the Lead taking rightful responsibility for what’s been led! This is known as ‘Bashing The Follower’.

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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.

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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. 

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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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