Are you doing the right dance? (Tango vs. Zouk)
Argentine Tango vs. Zouk: What part of your body do you want to move? What do you want to show off? What shoes do you want to wear? And do you really want to surrender?
Walking yoga
Yoga enables us to feel fulfilled in solitude. Tango enables us to make a silent connection with almost anyone. Both depend on intense physical rigour and body-experience and both offer us serenity, but yoga can be lonely, and tango can be needy. Combining these two silent practices enriches both.
Geeks make good dancers
Geeks tend to believe that they can’t dance. They’re dead wrong. The geeks I’ve trained have big advantages and learn tango much faster than other students.
Guide to Argentine Tango for Ballroom Dancers
Are you ready to try Argentine Tango? You’ll use all your ballroom dancing skills, but every step is improvised, so it will be an exciting new challenge. This guide will help you understand the key differences between Argentine Tango and Ballroom.
A step-by-step guide from here to your first tango
Guide to tango for Ballet Dancers
Tango will use all your ballet skills for concentration and muscle control, but requires less strength and flexibility, so it’s kinder to your body.
Choosing a partner dance for social dancing
Swing, Salsa, Ballroom, Argentine Tango … Each of the popular social partner dances offers a different experience. The music! • The social atmosphere • What people wear • The dance’s own mood • The structure of the dance…
Argentine Tango out of the clichés
We’re scheming to get tango out of the clichés. To show that it’s athletic…that its romance will take you by surprise…that it’s drop-dead sexy in whatever shoes you are already wearing… and that you can dance tango to the music you already love.
Tango as relationship therapy (The Atlantic)
I, You, and ‘the Embrace’: Tango as Relationship Therapy By Amelia Rachel Hokule’a Borofsky The Atlantic, Oct 23 2012 Taking a test on healthcare provider burnout, I met every criterion. It lists the familiar recommendations that no one has time for: “self-care,” “exercise,” “sleep,” “eat.” The same ones I make to my patients. At home, between my […]
Expressing masculinity in tango
Tango is a chance to embody masculinity in a satisfying way, and in a way that fulfils women’s desire for certain romantic gender relations. We don’t want you to boss us around, but we do want to be admired and desired, to feel your masculine attention.
Medical report: Tango alleviates symptoms of depression
In the last few years, health and medicine journalists have seized on the idea that dancing is good for you, not only physically, but emotionally. The Sydney Morning Herald published a short report on recent Australian research regarding tango and depression. Researchers compared tango with cross training and meditation, practices already thought to be good […]
Do you kinda wish you could dance?
You know that girls love to dance, and they especially like partner dancing, because it’s “romantic”. For guys, it feels undignified, and sometimes it seems like everybody else hears the music differently than you do. What if you could make women swoon while more or less just walking around, slowly, listening to whatever part of […]
Are you an engineer?
If you’re a computer programmer, an IT guy, or any kind of engineer, it’s likely you will excel at tango. … even if you have never been any good at any other kind of dance. ….even if your friends have laughed at you and said “you have no rhythm” ….even if you went to salsa […]
How tango enhances masculinity
Tango has allowed me to be very close to hundreds of men. To feel their mojo working, or not. It’s much more pleasurable to dance with a man whose mojo is working, so I’ve tried to figure out what it is that works, so I can teach my students. Here’s the shortest possible version: Tenderness […]
Shhh! A secret for men!
Men who don’t turn heads on the street are hot stuff in the tango world, and will have a large selection of women to choose from if they want to date or find a girlfriend.
What are the different tango styles?
Unlike dances with formal international congresses and officiating bodies, tango is a happy chaos of meanings and pleasures. You’ll hear names like “salon tango”, “nuevo tango”, “milonguero style”, “Villa Urquiza style” and on and on. But on real dance floors all over the world you’ll be hard pressed to categorize a dancer or a teacher, and there’s no need to categorize yourself.
Getting started
Don’t waste a minute! Soon you’ll have a rich social life, and a place to wear fancy-dress whenever you feel like it. Dig through your closet and find some shoes that don’t grip the floor, because that’s all you need. You do not need a partner to start learning tango.
Where do people go to dance tango? (milongas and practicas)
Social dances are called “milongas”. It’s like a party or dance night. Usually it is at the same place every week (some are once a month). Every city has a website announcing the milongas. Usually there is a fee at the door (around $10) for 4 or 5 hours of dancing. “Practicas” are also social events, but they are supposed to be for practice. Unfortunately many people treat practicas as
What’s “social tango”?
Argentine Tango is not about flying legs and melodramatic performances of emotion. It is a social dance that anyone of any age can do, to any music or no music, to create an extraordinary level of connection with another person. It does not require previous dance experience or rhythm. (In fact one tango musician claims that tango dancers are often “atemporal”)
How do I ask someone to dance? (the cabeceo)
The Argentine style of asking for a dance is that the leaders ask. They ask in a particular way, often from across the room, by seeking eye contact with followers. If eye contact is held, the leader nods toward the dance floor (or raises one or both eyebrows). This is the cabeceo.
I’m learning tango with my sweetheart, do I need to change partners?
There is no requirement to change partners, but it is recommended that you dance with lots of different people, even if you have a main partner.
How long do you dance with one person? (the tanda)
We dance three or four songs with one person – this is called a “tanda”, sometimes separated with 15-30 seconds of contrasting music, called a cortina (curtain). If there is no cortina, you can just count four songs.
It’s rude to leave your partner before the end of the tanda.
How do dancers manage the intimacy of tango? (the codigos)
The codigos of tango are a set of “codes” that make some structure around the intimacy of tango.
