Themes
- all
- addiction
- Advanced Dancers
- altertango
- arch
- Art
- authenticity
- Berlin
- body
- Buenos Aires
- cabeceo
- co-contraction
- codigos
- community
- confidence
- Considering Tango?
- curated shopping
- development
- embrace
- emotions
- ethics
- etiquette
- fashion
- ForgeProductions
- frustrated?
- Fundamentalism
- gear
- gender
- Getting Started
- GirlLeaders
- hip-hop
- history
- improvisation
- industry
- interviews
- milonga
- music
- New Dancers
- nuevo
- organizer
- other dances
- partners
- peak
- pedagogy
- philosophy
- power
- projection
- queer
- Secrets for Men
- sex
- shoes
- style
- Style Guide
- teaching
- technique
- the Berlin interviews
- transfer
- travel
- trust
- underthings
- work
- zouk
Life on Spec
“On spec” is an abbreviation of “on speculation”. It’s a business term referring to production in hope of success. Artists are afraid to demand too much, or settle for too little, so we silently collaborate in the “contract of hope”.
Back Sacadas in Lesson 10: What I’m learning from teaching tango in 30 days
Today is day 11 of a stunt, to teach tango to a stuntman in 30 days. Stunt-work requires precision. Each day’s lesson is exactly 15 minutes (with a timer).
From the gift of Cochabamba to the genius of El Pulpo
The dancers of the Cochabamba Group and El Pulpo are misunderstood as innovators, people who distorted and departed from tango. Genius is to find something new inside of what we think we already know.
Liberté
This graphic has been on our home page for six years. For several of those years I have been aware that our students rarely, if ever, use the word ‘creativity’. They use the word ‘freedom’. The gap between those two words is a crucial failure to understand our own biographies and to articulate what it means to be artists.
Despair and Imagination
I was overwhelmed with despair, surely multi-valent. I was inconsolable, untouchable, reactive, helpless. I watched joy pass but could not reach to touch it.
Risk
But would I accept the right invitations if I felt cautious of everyone? Would I be able to relax my body, to trust and enjoy while also maintaining vigilance?
Territorialism
I always invite my students to share their confusion when teachers are telling them different things. Likewise I now feel a responsibility to explain why teachers are almost always covertly hostile to one another.
First world problems
I discover there are far more than two aesthetics for a voleo and they are all for me. I wonder what else about tango did I defer to others’ guardrails? Are there more joys and pleasure that I never claimed?
by the Sword
I am here to pick grapes. I continue to train every day, alone, but not to that music. I dance alone to the teenagers’ band practice, a medley of American pop songs.
Showing off?
Showing off is an accusation leveled at people perceived to be doing either “stage” tango or “nuevo” tango in contexts where only “social” or “traditional” tango is authorized. The vilification rests on a concept entirely external to tango: that showing off is shameful.
To evolve or not?
In the era of Fundamentalism, modernism is in decline. Although we can ill-afford it, the modernists are now drawing battle-lines.
The New Normal is All Pleasure
It’s time to manifest my resolutions: to increase the parts of tango that make me happy and transform or abandon the parts that make me unhappy.
Thoughts on the Alfa bandoneon by Pez Pearson
“I selected the Alfa because of its distinctive Art-Deco sound openings and also because the first example I came across was keyed in the Peguri system. This would give me the opportunity to show a different keyboard layout than the 142s I had drawn so far.”
Fabián Salas, interviewed by Keith Elshaw 2001
So we went out and we started dancing, and looking for what we didn’t know … we were looking for: how many voleos were possible in Tango dancing; how many different ganchos there are; things like that. To come to a total knowledge of what’s available.
Gustavo Naveira, interviewed by Brian Dunn 2005-8
“Gustavo, what are we going to do with this!? This is such an amazing way of making art, we must do something really great with this, something HUGE!!!” –Chicho
Andrew Chiw interviews Vio 2020
We talk about intentions, the development of TangoForge pedagogy, online tango education, marketing for the tango industry, and possible uses of Blockchain.
Making Tango Your Own
–Auch auf DE– Mario and Andrea were competitive ballroom dancers for some years. Eventually they tired of the rigid priorities and circumstances of competition. They resolved to continue dancing in a way that was more sustainable and directed by their own values. Finding traditional milongas uptight and unsatisfying, they renovated part of their house to make a dancing room and built their own community.
The Good Girl
As I’m sure you are, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about – well, everything.
My life, decisions I made, mostly the bad ones.
Wine, the difference between Barbera and Ruché.
Tango: was it all a dream?
Internal Audit Technique
This cycle prevents us from ever reckoning with the costs of either. We can’t seem to finalize a cost-benefit analysis. The phone beeps, we are packing our shoes.
