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Tango with a Twist |
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ABOUT ARGENTINE
TANGO
Tango is
a dance of the heart and what makes it beat is the connection between
two people, regardless of their gender preference. It can be flirtatious, fun, nostalgic, raunchy, surprisingly poignant and as delicate as a butterfly’s wings.
You never
know where it's going to lead you because tango is based on a vocabulary
of steps that are danced freestyle and that's what’s makes it exciting
and at times so intense! Unlike the salsa or
the merengue, the success of a well-executed tango relies on an
extremely focused connection between the dancers’ upper bodies rather
than any hip-grinding action. The jaw-dropping legwork that first-class tango dancers execute is directly linked to the leader’s chest as these subtle movements give the follower the cues he or she needs to respond to. The better the connection, the more intuitively a pair of dancers will interact & play with each other.
Each
dancer has their own style and every dance is different so the challenge
for a beginner is to learn to tune into their partner’s energy and to
flow with the outcome, whatever that may be! “Becoming one” with your
partner is the holy grail of tango and many students fall by the wayside
on their search for it. In traditional tango, the man always leads and the woman dutifully follows but things are changing and many women are now learning to lead. Learning to mix and
match roles means that a woman’s chances of getting a dance are doubled
because a woman who can lead is a woman who doesn’t have to wait to be
asked for a dance… The advent of “queer
tango” where two people of the same sex dance together has also opened
up new possibilities within the dance such as the concept of exchanging
the lead. This creates a lovely dialogue and sense of flow as the
dancers swap roles at times imperceptibly over the course of a song. There are now queer
tango festivals in Germany, San Francisco, Sweden and Buenos Aires and
other cities are planning to join them soon. Three other factors
are central to this wonderful dance: The walk, the embrace and the
music. Anyone who can walk
to a beat without bobbing up and down has the potential to dance the
tango. The embrace falls
into two categories: close and open. The close embrace is used in
traditional tango and gives the dance its romantic intimate reputation
as the follower leans up right against the leader creating the
impression that they are desperately in love. The open embrace has
become popular with the development of the more recent “Nuevo tango”
style of dancing and allows the couple to make bigger, flashier leg
movements because there is more space between them. The Nuevo style has
developed in tandem with Nuevo tango music, best exemplified by the
famous Argentine composer & performer, Astor Piazzolla. Good dancers move
seamlessly between the open and close embrace, creating their own unique
conversation without words. Hard to master but
fascinating to learn, this tango whispers seductively of possibility and
offers you a magic carpet to fly away on for at least the length of a
song or two. As Queer Tango teacher, Mariana Docampo Falcon says, “Tango cannot change the world but it can change you, and you can change the world” |
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© Copyright Tango with a Twist 2009 |
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