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| YOU CAN DANCE STUDIO |
| The True Tango and the New Tango - Ted Bartek |
| Many people are attracted to Tango because of the passion of the dance. Tango promises a way of expressing feelings, which are locked deep inside and which have few avenues of expressions in modern life. But often this promise is elusive and difficult to attain. How can this dance be danced? How does it work? How can two people glide so effortlessly around the floor executing complex movements in perfect harmony with each other, with the music and with all the other dancers? A parade of instructors from Argentina go from town to town promising to help the novice quench his or her thirst for the real thing-the essence, the utter joy of true tango. But often these novices find that their efforts are fruitless. Upon the dance floor all the complicated patterns they worked so hard to learn in class are utterly forgotten. In the moment of action all these theories are useless. The body just doesn't know what to do. So the quest continues. Maybe the next workshop with a more renowned and advanced dancer will be the answer. But still no results. After a period of time frustration sets in and the person quits tango. "It's too hard to learn. It is too difficult to do." Does that scenario sound familiar? Many of us have either had that experience ourselves or know somebody who has experienced this when trying to learn tango. It is very common. This article is to help the novice Milonguero understand the different types of tango that are being offered in the tango marketplace today. This is a tango "buyers guide" for getting what you want from tango. To understand what you want you must know what the choices are. 1. The Milonguero and the True Tango. Many people want to dance the tango at the many milongas in North America, South America and Europe. They dream of immersing themselves in the music and with their partner experiencing the feeling of losing themselves in the flow of all that is around them. They want to be a milongueros-the kind of people who dance tango in the clubs and salons in Buenos Aires today. Are you a milonguero? Do you feel the music? Do you dance for the personal enjoyment of dancing spontaneously, not doing mechanical steps? Has the music and the feeling of tango affected you so deeply that you consider tango to be not a dance but a way of living? Do you want your steps to come from the feelings that arise in you because of the music? Do you want to be able to go to a milonga and dance socially with many different partners easily and effortlessly? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions you have the potential to become a milonguero. The tango practiced by the milonguero is an art. It is not just a hobby. It is not another dance where you learn the steps and dance them mechanically with someone who knows the same steps. Tango music is very special to the milonguero. 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 milongero 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 himself, not allowing the music to flow through him like the tango musician. |
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