Social
But they dance…
I was in a milonga the other night, which wasn’t very full. The mood was flat. Adnd then came the first song of a Tanda—Cascabelito by Pugliese, with Maciel on vocals. Under different circumstances, my head would be spinning like a cartoon scanning the room to find a partner. This time, though, I wasn’t quite…
/
Caveman mode ON!
“I feel that if I will ever dance with her, I need to be at my best.” A friend of mine told me in a milonga some time ago. I’ve heard that thought before. Actually, I used to think that way too. In my first couple of years, whenever I was dancing with a better…
/
Nobody’s crazy… and alone
TLDR: Today, I’m launching a new initiative: anonymous community surveys. The first one is about how we experience rejection in Tango. If you’ve ever felt confused, hurt, or unsure about being refused a dance, this is your chance to share your perspective.
/
Self exploration
The Ring, the Gollum and… your Tango!
You’ve probably seen the “My Taaaango” T-shirts with Gollum clutching the Ring like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Did you find it funny? I hope so. But have you ever wondered what message it hides about how Tango, like the Ring in The Lord of the Rings, can take over your identity…
/
Dance like there is no… tomorrow
“It’s such a pity that no one took a photo of me dancing with her.” A friend told me about a memorable tanda he had. Just a few days ago, another friend posted a video of dancing with a well-known dancer that many consider a myth. Looking at photos and videos from events we joined…
/
Unknown or unseen?
If you read this blog, you might think I am some kind of super-famous dancer. You might think I am known in milongas. You know… the kind of person who immediately attracts attention when he enters the space. The truth is that I am quite the opposite. Maybe, I became a little “famous” in the…
/
Musicality
Do I have it in me?
A few days ago Dimitris posted a text that was arguing that musicality is not something that you have intuitively but rather a skill that you learn. A friend of mine commented below that she believed that there is something in some people that makes them more musical than others. I argued that it is…
/
Designers and DJs who want to stand out
Designers who want to differentiate themselves try to deviate from these patterns and often fall victim to what is called familiarity bias. If you put for example the contact information of a website on the bottom but in the middle left area people will take more time to find that information. If you do so…
/
Precision, recall and musicality
Frequently, in discussions with friends, they tell me that they like such and such dancers because they find them very musical. When I ask for more details on why they think so, they have a very hard time explaining what exactly it is that they do. The answer is usually quite vague… Something like… They…
/
Connection
Poor looking rich dancers
In Greece, there is a saying that goes like this “You can’t hide money, love and coughing!” The meaning is that like cough someone who is rich or in love cannot hide either of them with their behaviour. Although I agree on love and cough lately I realized that money can be hidden. Actually, there…
/
Presence: The key to get connected
You can easily understand when your partner is distracted. Even worse when they are totally absent. If they intentionally choose not to follow something and suggest something else they would immediately follow up with their idea and I would try to tune in. You understand that they are there and make choices. But if there…
/
Opening sequence
The common pattern in all the previous stories is that the mood and emotion of the tanda is set right from the first moments of it. If the Mirada is a teaser trailer of a movie then the first few seconds of the embrace, the way it is formed, the time it takes, the shape…
/
Language
The tango vocabulary illusion
On all this analysis I was struggling to figure out, how on earth can you get away with a limited vocabulary and still manage to have interesting if not mind and soul-blowing conversations. I mean… I manage to have dances that blow my mind and my soul without the knowledge of the whole vocabulary. Is…
/
The limited vocabulary problem
Linguists support that a person needs about 800 words for a basic conversation and 8000 in order to reach a native speaker level. In addition, Albert Mechrabian who was a psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles suggested in his research that around 7% of our communication happens based on the actual language…
/
Are there mistakes in Tango?
So this is why Al Pacino’s phrase actually makes sense. It is a matter of perspective. Once you change it, you realize how different can your and your partner’s experience become.
/
Story telling
Inspiring stories
“You look so passionate when you talk about Tango!” a colleague of mine told me at a recent dinner with my team from work. Indeed, when I start speaking about Tango with a group of people who are not dancers I light up! You can see in my body language that I am excited about…
/
Is it a party or a war?
I had a discussion the other day with a relative of mine who just finished a school for tattoo artists. The discussion evolved around the meaning of having a tattoo and what if you don’t like something after some time. In between other things, he mentioned something that struck me as quite interesting. A tattoo…
/
What can Pugliese’s music teach you about life
In the case of the dialog and fight communities, the dialog communities have found the tool to find the way out of it. They discovered their “god from the machine” but they did not let him solve the problem alone. They moved their hand too… they took action… talked… discussed… compromised and reached the necessary…
/
