Social
It’s not the dancers you see
“We have a policy in our events,” he told me. “No stars. It creates the wrong dynamic.” I smiled happily, not because it was funny, but because I had written about exactly this years ago. And here it was: an organiser proudly standing by it.
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The broken pebble jar
Tango is all about trust. We all know it. We open our embraces and let strangers in, expecting that they will not harm us physically or emotionally. This requires a great deal of trust. And the more we dance, the more we learn to trust… or distrust some partners.
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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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Self exploration
It’s not the milongas you go to
In my previous post, I talked about how absence creates or highlights presence. That was about three weeks ago. Yes. I took a break from writing (or at least from posting) for a while. But the idea behind this post has been waiting patiently for three years to take shape. So… what’s three more weeks,…
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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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Musicality
The beauty and the beast
They aim also to make us look nice when we dance. Improve the aesthetics of our dance. You probably admire those dancers on the floor with nice posture and clean, straight lines when they move. So the question that always bothered me is how much of this technique is functionally necessary and how much is…
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Emotional technique
There is often an impression that technique is kind of the opposite of emotions, or that it hinders you from expressing emotions. Some weeks ago I saw a question about it on a Facebook group. Many people agree that technique is a tool to dance better, therefore communicate better and consequently express emotions. So the…
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Metaphorically dancing…
I have never really thought about the connection that metaphors can have with dancing. You can actually dance a melody literally or metaphorically. It dawned on me the other day. I was on a musicality workshop about counter melodies with Horacio Godoy and at some point he told the phrase… “you can do something metaphorical”…
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Connection
Dopamine and oxytocin
if you go into this, dancing the emotion, the risk of getting oxytocin instead of dopamin, is quite high. Enjoy it, but be aware you will fall in love, with your dance partner: the tango-love. Just enjoy it but don’t confuse it with real love.
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Counting the uncountable
Expressing emotions is a purely subjective thing. Let’s take for example love as an emotion and music as a medium/language to express it. To some people expressing their love with a tango song, might feel fitting but to others, it might be more fitting to express it with a rock ballad or a jazz song,…
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If it’s not messy… it’s not worth it!
Expressing emotions in dancing is a difficulty we have because as I also wrote there is a tendency from society to undervalue it and maybe sometimes see it as a weakness. However, it’s the only way (IMHO) to enjoy your dance.
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Language
Story telling
Dancers or story tellers?
Dancers with basic musicality can understand and express the music they hear at any given moment. However, if you really want to go a step further you need to see the song as a complete entity, as a story that tells you something, that has a key message.
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