Social
Old and new shadows
In this post, I want to discuss… Shadows. Not the ones created by light hitting an object, but the ones we keep inside us. But before we go there, let’s start with a short quiz: What if a person is aggressive? Would you say aggressiveness is a good or a bad trait? Think about it…
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Causation, Correlation, and the Dance Between Them
In the first part of this little rabbit hole, we looked at how Tango has (thankfully) moved on from the days when your gender automatically decided your role. Back then, it was simple: man = leader, woman = follower. No questions asked. Today, that rulebook is gone, and we get to choose. And yet… the…
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Causation, correlation and the thing between your legs.
Whenever I post something that even remotely touches on gender and roles, there will always be at least one comment about how we should get rid of gender stereotypes in Tango and how it would be better if dance roles were not linked to gender at all. One of the most popular arguments is: “You…
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Self exploration
Leaving home
I still remember the feeling of leaving my parents’ house and living alone at 18. Do you? I had spent time away from my parents before, but in most of those cases, I wasn’t truly on my own. There were always other people around in case I needed help. Living alone for the first time…
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Frodo, Sam and the power of Tango
In the last post, I described how the Ring from The Lord of the Rings can symbolise Tango’s power and how it amplifies what’s already inside us. I used the relationship between Gollum and the Ring to show how Tango (The Ring) can twist us when we dance to escape ourselves (like Gollum used the…
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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…
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Musicality
It’s not the notes you dance
It’s not the notes you play… it’s the notes you don’t play. At first glance, it sounds like a riddle. What could he mean? What are the notes you don’t play, and why should they matter?
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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