
Anatomical Terminology: We seek to provide instruction in objective, scientific terms. This will be unfamiliar at first, but our students catch on quickly. At any point, you can visit the Exercise Center to review the 10 key tango muscles and their control exercises.
Tango Language: Before creating the MasterCourse, we spent years documenting tango concepts and disaggregating terminology. If you are confused about what something means, or why we use the term we do, you can visit the KnowledgeBase for reference.
The Structure: The MasterCourse is a comprehensive tour of the entire Lexicon of Tango inherited from the 1940s. It is organized balancing three goals:
- We draw on 8 years of teaching to create the most effective revelation of technique and systems by linking elements together based on their functional/biomechanical relationships.
- We use traditional terms as much as possible to synchronize with what you learn elsewhere.
- We distill to make tango graspable without losing any detail.
The MasterCourse is a complete documentation of TangoForge Pedagogy, covering every Element in the Tango Lexicon.
The Lexicon of Tango is the repertoire of 25 Elements and their variations inherited from the 1940s. Until the mid-1990s, tango was understood in groups of steps, or sequences. The Cochabamba Investigation Group analyzed tango and identified the basic elements, from which dancers can compose. Dancing from the elements empowers dancers to to express every music, challenge partners to maintain intense concentration, and use space skillfully for better floorcraft.
We use the term ‘Mark’ for Leader and ‘Revel’ for Follower. Here’s why…
I acknowledge my teachers, Pablo Villarraza and Dana Frígoli, Chicho, El Pulpo, Sebastián Arrua, Makela Brizuela, Pablo Rojas, and Eugenia Parrilla.
I am grateful to dancers Armin Kyros, Iwan Harlan, and Germain Cascales for inspiring me to understand how far we can go with pure tango elements and technique.
The 2017 TangoForge Apprentices, Yoko, Stefan, and Swan, contributed to refining this pedagogy.
My students’ questions throughout my career have challenged and inspired new articulations.
Thank you so much for your patience with us. The new 2018 MasterCourse is now complete and live! The 2017 version will remain available.
Announcement
We want to do the maximum in our power to bring our students together and to support the process of learning the MasterCourse. Therefore we are now making all our live workshops and Seminars FREE to MasterCourse students. Details.