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The Tango Haus

What’s below is a small snippet of 13m:06s audio ‘podcast’ of Today’s Topic on the benefits and detractors of building community through the use of a Tango House. The podcast is free. 😉 Enjoy. Click on the picture above to ‘hear’ the podcast.

Tango Topics Podcast Excerpt:

“What I refer to as the tango ‘Haus’ idea. In this case this is the German spelling of ‘HAUS’. I just like the way it sounds. But we can use the American spelling of ‘House’. So a few years back and I may be bastardizing some history here. There was a tango house, and I’m not going to name the city, that grew up out of a U.S. based city. This community, at the time had a number of teachers in its area, and they were all using the typical model of how they wanted their students to learn to dance.

One dancer in particular decided “I’m just going to open up my house and have people come over and hang out and we’ll do our thing”. And it wasn’t a “I’ll set this up and do this to piss people off”. It became an outgrowth of them hanging out a lot, it just so happened that this particular person had a house all to themselves, they had all this space and they just moved all the furniture out, and ended up dancing in the available space. What essentially grew out of that was a small group of dedicated people that started to follow this one particular person. It was maybe five or six people at the beginning and then it slowly grew out to like 8 or 9, and then 10, and then 12 and then it started to grow exponentially. So much so that it quite literally outgrew that house and they needed to go look for a practica space. And that started weekly classes and then group classes and workshops and so on and so forth.”

Related Terms:

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Tango Accents

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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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Posture

January 9, 2017 No Comments

As has been said, many times, which is exceptionally important, and is frequently mentioned by many dancers almost immediately is: Posture.

Posture for most people boils down to the following two lines:

“Head up!”.

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This is a ‘good’ posture for most people.

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The Importance of Two Millimeters

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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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Talking While Dancing

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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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Fear of Milonga

March 20, 2017 No Comments

The fact is that some folks have a justifiable fear of Milonga! No not the dance party, nor the music at the milonga, no…this fear refers to the abject fear that is expressed by some people when Milonga music is played because now they must dance ‘Milonga’ moves to milonga music. The reason ? Either it’s the speed at which it is seemingly danced, or the music that is perceived to be ‘fast’, movements/steps/patterns/figures that are associated and specific to Milonga. Some people just freak right out when it comes to milonga. Some people actually break out in a cold sweat at the very thought of it, Lead or Follow.

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The ‘Right’ Shoes

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Some day soon, you’re going to want the perfect pair of shoes. These shoes in your mind, completes the Tango image you have for yourself dancing socially. They make you look elegant. They make you feel like you can do anything. Mind you that image is an illusion in your head, but let’s not quibble about reality. These shoes are either handmade in Italy, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, or somewhere and/or something in between. They’re the shoes you always dreamed of. They’ve got all the features that you believe will allow you to become, finally, the dancer that you’ve always wanted.

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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. 

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