Frequently Asked Questions
About Argentine Tango
What is
Argentine tango?
Argentine tango is
a partner dance that sprang up spontaneously from the immigrant population of Buenos Aires
in the late 19th century. What defines Argentine tango is the music and the
passion. Without the music there is no
Argentine tango. Without the passion, the
dance is not Argentine tango. The music is a
distinct mixture of rhythm, melancholy and passion. Argentine tango music stirs up all the
feelings your have inside your soul. The
dance is an expression of these deep feelings. To
do Argentine tango you must 1) dance to authentic Argentine tango music and 2) dance with
feeling. The music propels your emotions and
you allow your emotions to move your body.
To dance Argentine
tango to pop music, jazz or some other form of music is not Argentine tango because the
two elements that define the Argentine tango are missing.
In summary
Argentine tango is:
1) Tango that comes from the heart with passion.
2) Danced to authentic tango music.
2) Subjective, man and women, very personal.
3) Danced by all age groups and does not require exceptional athletic ability or training,
i.e. Ballet is not a pre-requisite.
4) Danced primarily for your partner, the music, and for the joy of the dance, with little
concern for those who are watching.
5) Danced in close embrace and the position of the body is used to lead, not the arms.
6) Taught by milongueros not professional dancers and entertainers. Some milongueros
perform, but are milongueros first.
7) Teaching is motivated by the love of the dance. Financial gain is secondary.
8) Danced socially by ordinary people in Buenos Aires.
What makes
Argentine tango different from other dances?
Any kind of dancing can be enjoyable and can make
one happy. Most partner dances are based on
patterns of steps. Each partner learns his or
her part and dances those steps in unison his or her partner. What makes Argentine tango different is that the
dancing couples are not moving from structured patterns and forms. They learn a vocabulary of movements that they can
call forth in any moment to move authentically in the moment based on what they feel from
the music, the other dancers, and their partner.
It is like acting. Good actors find an authentic emotion within them
and express the words as if they are coming spontaneously in the present moment from their
emotions. Singers do the same thing. They
create a drama with their song. Argentine
tango dancers are improvisational actors, using their bodies and the bodies of their
partners to express what they are feeling.
What makes
Argentine music different from other music?
Argentine tango music is very special. It is
written for dancers, with the intention of arousing all your emotions. Tango stirs up all
the feelings you have inside your soul. You might be happy your job is going well, but at
the same time sad because you had a fight with someone you love. You might feel hopeful
about the future but feel compassion because someone close to you is ill. Tango will make
you feel reverence for life, yearning for something more, nostalgia for the past, regret
for the present and hope for the future, all at the same time. It is music that is
specifically designed to make you feel-intimate, romantic, tender, sad, passionate, angry,
and peaceful all in one song.
Tango musicians
are different from other musicians. One milonguera said that to her the tango musicians
disappear and what is left is only the music. In other conventional forms of music it is
the musician who is visibly expressing him or herself. Tango musicians are transparent
allowing the music to flow through them in order to arouse and stimulate the dancers.
Is Argentine
tango easy to learn?
Tango
requires you to grow as a person in order to learn it.
It will challenge you! It will
stretch you! And, it will mold you! Argentine
tango will make you into another person. The
Argentine tango will show you your physical, emotional and mental weaknesses and challenge
you to overcome them in order to dance. It
is like a martial art, Tai Chi or Tae Kwon Do. It
requires physical strength in places that a lot of us are weak, feet, legs, and torso.
Argentine
tango challenges us emotionally, because we cannot do this dance if we are timid or lack
poise and composure. We become strong and
forceful and at the same time we will be poised, graceful and considerate of our partner. Argentine tango challenges us mentally. We must be alert and focused intently on our
partner and at the same time be aware of everybody on the dance floor.
To start you need
to master some basic elements of embracing, walking, pivoting, weight distribution and
cadence. These elements are challenging and require a lot of time and detailed attention.
But the movements required by this style of dance are within the capability of most
people. It can't be too hard because tens of thousands of ordinary people in Buenos Aires
do it easily and with great enjoyment.
By learning
Argentine tango you are learning how to dance, from your heart. You are not just doing
mechanical steps, which come from your head. After a while these movements become second
nature and you feel like really dancing and creating on the dance floor. That is why it is
so much fun and is so addictive!
Can I learn
Argentine tango from a book or from videos?
It
is difficult for beginners to understand what is really happening when they read a book or
watch videos. The beat way to learn Argentine
tango is to learn from someone who is an expert. Dance
with him or her. After a period of time you
will start to feel that person’s feeling for the dance, expectations, and energy. Men should learn by dancing with a trained female
Argentine tango dance instructor. Women
should learn by dancing with a trained male Argentine tango dance instructor.
Should I
learn in Argentine tango workshops or in private lessons?
It
is helpful for beginners to take some group classes to become acquainted with tango
terminology and movements, to see it performed by expert teachers, and to meet other
people who dance tango. It is fun to go to group classes. The social interaction is
exciting and you get to meet famous and exciting stage dancers. It is fun to do as long as
you don't let it confuse you and undermine your self-confidence. Go every once in a while.
You can learn some interesting new steps.
However,
there are limitations and drawbacks of learning in exclusively in groups. A steady diet of
workshops from different people who don't know you can be hard to digest. Workshops
focused on steps don't begin to give you the personal attention necessary for you to learn
all the movements that make up the molinete or any other step.
If you want to progress rapidly in tango,
concentrate your time learning one style of dance from one teacher in private lessons.
Then practice what you've learned dancing socially at milongas as much as possible.
By
taking private lessons you will learn just what you need to learn to progress and you will
get all of attention from the Argentine tango teacher. You won’t have to sit through
lengthy discussions about things you already know. You
can concentrate on things you don’t know. Any bad habits that you have developed will
be rooted out from the start. Many people who take group classes develop bad habits that
become ingrained in them. They are hard to
change.
What is the
biggest obstacle to learning Argentine tango?
The
biggest obstacle to learning Argentine tango is understanding the importance of dancing
from the heart with joy and spontaneity. If a person doesn’t know what it is to feel
things deeply in the heart, then he or she will not understand how to dance the authentic
Argentine tango. Many of us in America and
northern Europe are reluctant to experience things deeply in the heart because that is not
how we were raised. In South America it is
different. They children raised with a
warm-hearted openness toward each other. It is very apparent in South American cultures. That is why we are so attracted to Argentine
tango. But in the US and Europe we were
raised differently. We equate strength with
unfeeling.
Argentine
tango comes along and pulls on our heart. We
see Argentine people dancing from their hearts and we want to dance that way too. But instead accepting the challenge to grow in our
hearts we often retreat to what is more comfortable—the mind. The mind tells us that in order to learn Argentine
tango we need to learn steps. We take
workshop after workshop to learn more and more steps that are very difficult. But we never learn to grow in our heart. So in the long run we never experience the
freedom and spontaneity that is the essence of the true Argentine tango. We may be doing something that kind of looks like
it, but without and open hart it is not Argentine tango.
Contact
for Buenos Aires Style Argentine Tango Teachers in Gainesville Noth Central Florida
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