Social
The elephant in the room
A few weeks ago, a video went viral in the Greek Tango community. Two women, both dancers, were repeating phrases they’ve heard over the years. Comments full of gender stereotypes, casual misogyny, and the kind of phrases that, when unpacked, reveal more than just ignorance. They reveal a culture that sometimes looks the other way.…
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Kindness, Rituals and Values
Some weeks ago, we had a meaningful conversation in the community about the custom of walking your partner back to their seat after a tanda. One member challenged the gesture, suggesting it might symbolise outdated gender roles. Others, including myself, offered a different view. I don’t see this as a “ladies first” gesture. I see…
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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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Self exploration
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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Tango and men in today’s world
I started those posts with one analyzing the power of men based on numbers. I continued on the theme of men possibly feeling disconnected and unnecessary in Tango communities, and I finished by discussing the names of roles and the idea of authenticity concerning dancing the opposite gender role. In my latest post, I tried…
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A ridiculously biased, toxic man. Me!
What I consider normal is not necessarily normal for you and vice versa. Normal is just a construct of our minds. Actually there is not just one “normal”, there are many “normals”. Yours, mine, the guy who just found the post by accident, the lady’s who is looking for a cheesecake recipe and found this…
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Musicality
Silence is golden
Sometimes, people are dancing on a role and never even realized that they can do what the opposite role does. I was always baffled by this. I still am… but a bit less than before. How could my partner talk to me?
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Is musicality female?
Somehow there is a common misconception that the woman needs to just be good at understanding and executing the “commands” of the man. Musicality seems to come a bit later as an interest for ladies/followers. That maybe explains the phenomenon but then… isn’t this maybe the mirror of the leaders’ trap of wanting to learn…
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The butterfly effect
So here you go… the same song… the same melody… and just a tiny detail of a few milliseconds and you get a totally different piece altogether. A few milliseconds on your step and an enormous amount of satisfaction and joy when you make it plus a whole new sensation from the song.
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