The Bloody Toe

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!

To be clear, a Follower can have their toes injured in any number of different ways by a Lead who has not mastered Proprioception yet. And a fair number have not. How do you know ? Watch what the Lead is looking at! If they’re watching the floor/the follower’s feet…it’s a good bet that they’ve not mastered or even come close to thinking about mastering Proprioception! Failure to do that has real-world consequences as any Follower wearing open-toed shoes will tell you – the dreaded stubbed toe! 

The problem ? Is that when the Lead momentarily lifts their gaze/head from watching the Follower’s feet, to watch the line of dance, this is when an injury can and does happen. That instant is when their eye/foot coordination goes right out the window and it’s so unpracticed that they misjudge where they are in space and time….and well…BAM! Ouchie!

Worse than the stubbed toe is The ‘Bloody’ Toe! What’s that ? It’s when a Lead quite forcefully, and they’re completely unaware of it, steps into their follower’s foot line, and their shoe (usually hard leather) comes into hard or harsh contact with the Follower’s Toe Nail! Ouch. There are 2 possible results here depending on the force that was applied:

1.) Chipping the Toe Nail – This happens quite frequently and while painful, it does tend to ruin the Pedicure that said Follower had done. 🙁

2.) Lifting, and then either jamming the toenail backwards, or worse…up! That tiny little lift is just enough to either lift the nail completely off. And not only is wholly unpleasant, it’s painful as the day is long. Trust me at that point, the Follower doesn’t feel like dancing or completing the tanda. The only thing that they feel like doing is

a.) Getting off the floor and holding onto their foot.
b.) stopping the profuse amount of blood at that juncture. and
c.) Reminding themselves why they bought open-toed shoes to begin with.

There aren’t enough 🙁 emojis in the world to cover this one.

The Tango Topics Opinion. Is this a usage case for Closed Toe Shoes ? Yes. Absolutely. However, most Closed Toe shoes don’t have the sexy appeal that the Open-toed shoes have. So it’s trade-off between sexy comfort and not sexy and safety. The choice is as always yours. You do what you want with that one. But just be aware that at some point, you’re going to run into this, literally and figuratively. 🙁 To be fair, Closed Toe shoes have another detracting factor, and that’s the narrow tip of them. Meaning they tend towards a tapered narrowed closure. And quite honestly, it’s confining and compressive. Your toes eventually adjust to being so cramped but facts is facts…it’s not all that pleasant. It’s just another of the trade-offs — Safety and a modicum of comfort (‘modicum’!) vs. the risk of a chipped nail, or worse a bloody stump!

One way that you can avoid or minimize the ‘Bloody’ Toe issue is to keep an eye on the Leads who watch the floor…just say “No” when the cabeceo comes. 😉 Mind you, it is not the only way to minimize the Bloody Toe syndrome, but it’s definitely one way.

MORE REMINDERS

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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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Going to El Corte ?

The words "El Corte" translated to English from Spanish literally means ‘Cut, Court, or Edge’. However, in the Tango world the word has another meaning: Nijmegen, The Netherlands. What’s in/at Nijmegen ? A dance studio of certain renown: El Corte! Think of El Corte as one of your GoTo destinations. Assuming you want to experience a quality of dance in an environment that is at once fun, and at the same time entirely engaging on multiple levels. Caveat: You do need to have your sh*t together if you visit, while at the same time you must be willing and open to a whole different way of looking at the dance (again, on multiple levels).

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The Importance of Two Millimeters

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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 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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