What draws us to Tango at the beginning...

Post date: Dec 2, 2014 9:48:15 AM

What drew you to tango in the beginning? Was it seeing some flashy show dancing, a love for the music of the Golden Era, Piazzola, Gotan Project...? Was it seeing Al Pacino tango in Scent of a Woman or Sally Potter and Pablo Veron tangoing in the Tango Lesson or...???

The following post from Miles Tango Truisms suggests it's the 'flash' of tango that most attracts newbies to tango.

( I have taken the liberty of re-paragraphing this a bit for easier reading)

sydney tango lessons

Truism # 824: 

AT THE BEGINNING - It is the 'flash' of tango which draws us in, which enthrals us. We are easily amazed by flashy movements, ideas, and later on 'technique' how you do X, Y, and Z. They're exciting, thrilling, seemingly impossible, and at the same time some of it seems just this side of crazy (think: extreme forms of volcadas). That 'walking' business that every teacher whines on and on and on about is absolutely useless as far as we can see. 

With time, and quite deliberately, we invest most of our time and money in the education of 'flash' and soon we realize that we can (sort of) do those things too, maybe not as precisely as those that we see on youtube, at festivals, and the occasional visiting instructor that passes through, but we can do those things. Time passes. It's only later on, much later on that we realize that those 'flashy' things that we were once amazed by are not Tango at all. 

To be certain they have their place, every now and then, but these things are not the dance. More time passes, years in fact. And we grow, we change, and our abilities change as well. In short, with time we all grow out of the phase of 'flash' and move into the phase of seeking 'substance' in our dance. 

It is one reason why close embrace dancing is the predominant form of the dance because 'crazy' and 'flashy' have a really hard time being done well in cozy, warm and fuzzy, close embrace. Which is not to say that 'flashy' can't be done in close embrace. It can. It's just a lot smaller, and there's less of it in close embrace!"