About Tango

Everything you want to know if you are thinking about learning tango...

If you are just starting tango, here are a few points that will be helpful to know about tango and tango dancers!

1. Tango is improvised. 

Stage tango with the marching and the rose and the head swivelling was invented because authentic social tango is not much to look at.  The tango you will learn in class is the opposite of spectacle. It's about the sensation the couple creates and what they share in their embrace. Inspired by the music, they create together to express the mood, the melody, the rhythm, the voice, lyrics, or whatever moves them. Each dance is an improvised, collaborative work of art that will dissipate with the final note of the music, never to be repeated by anyone, ever. ...But it looks like two people just hugging and walking around! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVV7cnyO_-8

2. Tango is walking around

Which sounds easy because you have been doing that for a long time, except you will have another person attached to you. Like REALLY attached. And you need to make your partner feel every bit of your walk, constantly. Every change in density, speed, height, size - so that you can stay together. And then of course you need to do that with grace, beauty, style, comfort, ease and elegance, all while you are expressing the music, because after all, this IS a dance.

3. Tango has only 3 steps. ...4 steps?

When dancing tango, relative to your hips, you will only step front, back, or sideways. Precisely. And you may pivot. That is all. Because it's an improvised dance, we don't have time to distinguish such things as stepping back and to the left at 50 degrees etc. It's sort of a binary code - you can move on the x axis or y axis. There are arguments about this by tango aficionados of course, that a cross step is an exception to the rule since it's not a clear back or side step, and it shouldn't be overlooked because the cross step (not the kicks [boleos] and hooks [ganchos] and flying legs of tango) is the quintessential tango step. If you don't know what dance you are watching, and you see walking cross steps, you are watching tango. So perhaps we will say, there is a front, back, side, cross, and pivot. (nervous laugh...)

4. Tango is all about "connection".

Understanding and finding connection is a long road. There's much debate about whether this involves some kind of emotional connection with your partner, or a passion for tango, immersion in the music, from the embrace, from being grounded, from proper posture, from using the correct muscles, etc. So now that you're here, welcome to this agonizing discussion. Ultimately, no one can give you the answer, you will have to find it within. Just like Shifu said.

 5. Tango is a philosophy.

Tango is a practice that changes your life. It teaches you about yourself, like a mirror ...under a magnifying glass. This is going to be a karate kid moment for you, tango will change your life, let's leave it at that.

6. Tango Music

The typical music we hear in the media (Por Una Cabeza, La Cumparsita) is not the music we ever dance to. Some of the most popular composers from the 30's and 40's in Argentina were Canaro, DiSarli, Darienzo, and Pugliese. There are many more but these have the most distinctive sounds we can begin to recognize as new tango dancers. (That's not to say you can't dance tango to anything. Dance to Lady Gaga and it's called alternative tango.) "Musicality" is an important concept in tango, with months-long classes titled as such. The movement in tango, the dance, is all about showing to your partner what the music brings out in you. Hopefully those watching are also to see this expression of the music.  It's one of our biggest challenges and greatest joys as a dancer!

7. Tango Styles

Tango is typically danced in a close embrace, chest to chest, with faces touching at the brow and cheek. This milonguero style was said to have developed in small spaces, especially under dictatorships when tango was banned and taken underground into cramped wines cellars and such. Some however prefer to dance in an open embrace for more freedom of movement, with a bit of space between them. They can take larger steps and pivot to greater degrees. This style was said to have developed where people had more money and space than crowded city dance halls. Tango salon is  seen as more elegant and formal than the close embrace style.  Just like with everything, those youngins had to put a crazy spin on it, totally breaking the embrace, borrowing styles from dances outside of tango to make it more elastic and include spins, creating tango neuvo. These days everyone dances a hybrid of these, though you might be able to recognize the style they lean towards when you watch them dance. Here's an example of Maestros Chicho and Juana dancing a newer version of tango! https://youtu.be/X2Wb9cpx1uo8. Tango vocab

8. Tango Tips

Think of learning tango as a lifelong journey. You will always see something new or better than what you know, so just enjoy the process and don't think about arriving anywhere.  It's literally a dance, the point is to enjoy it all and not look forward to the end! Some advice to help you on this journey - do some exercise! Work on balance and work on core! This will help you to get things much faster! Review and relearn the basics again and again. You can always refine them and these fundamentals are really the building blocks that make your dance and their quality is everything!

In the 5 minute video below, dancers in Argentina are asked to define tango, and the have a hard time summing it up! Notice no one says it is a dance!

The Secret Fancy Tango Organization
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