Practice with Tango Sticks

At some point along your tango curve, you have wanted 1.) to practice a step, a pattern, or a figure. Or 2.) you have seen something that you want to try out. Or 3.) you’re imagining an idea of how something might work and want to try it. In all three of these instances, you will need a practice partner. You’ll need to schedule their time against yours. And once you’re in the same room with them, balance their issues of how they do X vs. how you engage X. And once that challenge is overcome then it’s getting into the idea of what it is you had in mind to begin with. All told, this could be several hours or days between the idea and the actual doing of it.

Sometimes that’s not enough, you need something immediately. You need to play with this stuff now. So as a result some folks will go to the next available practica, and/or class, or their local private lesson and try this stuff out, sometimes with very mixed results.

Some people go the route of actually getting that private practice time, and then videoing themselves immediately. The immediate part is insanely important. They don’t want to talk about it. They just want to see it work without talking about it. They want to see what happens and then play that response back several times without necessarily talking about it or discussing it. This is known as ‘playing with the blank response’. Blank response ? If you lead/follow something the right way, there should be a specific response, but if it’s not done the right way, they’ll respond with their training or technique. And that response is golden actually. It provides useful information in how we lead and follow something and why something happens. That’s a blank response. At the same time, later on, we want to figure out the what the possibilities are. What MAY happen. And some people video this too. They want the unvarnished responses, the one where you haven’t processed it, and practiced it. But rather just to see if both parties get hear the same things.

These processes are really great when there’s an available partner.

But what happens in the case of not having an available partner ?

That’s where we talk about Tango Sticks.

For years, when a Lead has wanted to try something out, or a Follower who has been paying attention in what they’re being led to, and there is no available partner (with no onboard ‘issues’) available one used a pair of broomsticks to substitute the dancing partner so that they could ‘practice’ these issues or map something out.

Some people have even gone the route of performing with the sticks and showing what you can do with them. And some folks use this process as teaching tool, and exercise tool for mapping things out.

There are some major minuses to this work and there are some major pluses.

The minus is that a thinking, breathing, human being will respond with their foibles, issues, and technique. The pluses to this ? A thinking, breathing, human being will respond with their foibles, issues, and technique. It’s a lose-lose, or win-win situation depending on your point of view.

Mapping something out is never a bad idea. It reinforces your own thinking about how something MIGHT be accomplished. It may not answer the question entirely until you have a live person in front of you, but it does allow you to work out all the gross details of a particular idea. So here’s a good idea, get yourself a pair of cheap broomsticks and start playing! And just in case you want an updated broom, Tango Topics suggests the venerable ‘Walking Stick‘, which does the same job, it’s generally made out of aluminum instead of wood.

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You may not realize this but you have an accent. The place that you live in, the people that you dance with, the teachers that you have studied with, and last but not least, the variation of those ideas from the original, creates a local tango ‘accent’. Every city where Tango is danced has an accent which is specific to that place and to that place alone. Boston, San Francisco, Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow, etc. They all have one, up to and including Buenos Aires, especially Buenos Aires! The difference between your local flavor of Tango and say Boston, Paris, and London, is like night and day within a spectrum of ideas.

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Giving Feedback

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.

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The Walking Debate

A good portion of Follower’s close their eyes while dancing. The Lead, obviously, can’t close their eyes, but they do cast their eyes towards the floor to watch their Follower’s feet (tsk, tsk, tsk). They close their eyes for a variety of reasons: 1.) To be able to concentrate better. 2.) To ‘feel’ their partner in a more ‘connected’ way. 3.) To not be so distracted by the rest of the room. 4.) To feel more intimate. 5.) To tune out.

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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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The Shoe Lip

Today’s Tango Thought is a bit of Tango minutiae that seems unimportant at first, but is in reality very important actually. It is an awareness that can help you to understand why certain kinesthetic instabilities (regardless of gender) exist: A fair number of street shoes, male or female, have a thick hard leather construct known as the ‘Sole of the Shoe’. The Sole serves several purposes, one of which is to protect your feet from harm, still another (which relates to today’s thought) and secondly it’s what we call the ‘Shoe Lip’.

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All Night Milonga ?

Yes you read that correctly. There are places in the world where a Milonga does (theoretically) go ‘All Night’. The idea is very romantic, that you’re dancing until the sun comes up. ’Theoretically’ ? Because ‘all night’ has different meanings in different places. If, however, we’re talking about Buenos Aires, there are 3 Milongas that do in fact go all night long 1.) La Viruta (on the weekends), 2.) Salon Canning on Monday nights (usually until about 5 am ish), and 3.) El Yeite (Pron: Shay-tay). There are others that go ‘late’ to 4 am, but not necessarily until the sun comes up.

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Tango Cities

Today’s Tango Thought covers a labor of Tantalus … where is Tango danced and in what cities ? What follows is by no means an exhaustive list of places where tango is danced, it only scratches the surface.

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A Community Tanda

What is a Community Tanda ? Put simply it’s a Tanda whereby the participants of a Milonga are invited, and then wholly encouraged, to dance with someone that they have NOT danced with before or at all.

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Talking While Dancing

Tango is a ‘Social’ dance. Meaning that the whole reason you are there is to hang out, meet new people, and to be social with each other. The dancing part is what brings us together but it’s really about being a social creature. That’s why it’s called a ‘Social’ dancing. Social in this case means talking and sharing your day or what’s been going on with you. Mostly it’s lots of talking, sharing, listening, and more talking.

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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!

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