Week 2 - Tango: The Walk

    Tango is an improvisational social dance whose foundation rests in a simple walk. There are ten thousand steps to learn in tango, but they are all the same, walk and stop. A walking hug is delicious and delightful, but can be tricky at first. The walk and the stop are the two steps in tango you cannot avoid nor practice enough.

 

Week 3 - Vals: Taking Turns

    Tango Vals is a sub-genere of tango music characterized by a 3/4 time, just like a traditional Waltz. The feeling in the dance is characterized by walking up to a point and turning one partner around the other.

 

Week 4 - Milonga: Double Time

    Tango Milonga is another sub-genere of music characterized by a variation of 2/4 timing. It is a faster paced dance that is also very tight and grounded. The milonga rhythm is very old and came over from an african folk dance called canyengue. It’s feeling is characterized by small and quick double time steps, or suggestive check steps.

 

Week 5 - Tango Essentials 1 : Attitude

    Tango Attitude is the most difficult part of dancing tango, and the most important. Tango is a body language, and our attitude is expressed most directly by the way we hold ourselves. The physical presence we man muster in our machines determines whether we are speaking clearly to our partner, or just mumbling.

 

Week 6 - Tango Essentials 2 : Musicality

    Tango Musicality is the richest aspect of dancing tango. Tango music was written for dancers and is so deep in it’s variety, it was actually one of the inspirations for early looney toons soundtracks. All tango music has a basic structure that once you learn, is easy to play around within.

 

Week 7 - The Culture of Argentine Tango

    Tango Culture then spanned some 30 years in it’s main first wave. It started as street music and spread to the finest dance halls from Paris to Moscow. What started as a bunch of migrant workers dancing around in circles came to become the model of sophistication and what was once scorned became a cultural icon.

 

Week 8 - The Milonga: Social Dancing

The Milonga is the end goal of tango dancing. It means mixer-upper. There are several codes of social dancing that have been developed to facilitate things like who dances with who, how to get in line, and how to navigate the flow of traffic on the floor.