Argentine Tango School

Argentine Tango dance classes for beginners, intermediate and advanced level. Argentine Tango dance Private lessons. one to one Argentine dance lessons. Argentine Tango dance lessons for couples. Argentine Tango Milongas and workshops. San Francisco, Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Orinda, Danville, San Jose, Cupertino, Campbell, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Milpitas. With Marcelo Solis at Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires.

What can we do to contribute to the health and continued development of Bay Area Tango community?

Marcelo Solis with Myriam Pincen and Blas Catrenau in a milonga in Buenos AiresTango is fun.

It makes us happy.

But Tango is also responsibility.

What can we do to contribute to the health and continued development of Bay Area Tango community?

Here are my answers:

Milongueros and milongueras: 1- Dance better. 2- Behave better. 3- Dress better.

Milonga organizers:
1- Choose good DJs. 2- Give milongueros the necessary set up a milonga should have. 3- Pay attention to what actually happens on the dance floor. 4- Get to know, greet at the entrance, and say goodbye at the exit, to everyone coming to the milonga. 5- Introduce new people at the milonga to the regulars. 6- Travel to Buenos Aires and go to traditional milongas with high level of dancing to see how things are organized and run there.


DJs:
1- Go to Buenos Aires and visit milongas to learn how to do their job, not one time, but several times a year.

Teachers: 1- Stop trying to attract customers by showing them steps inappropriate to the milonga, and therefore, to Tango itself. 2- Go to the milongas, and show their students and the community that the way they teach is the way they dance at the milongas. 3- Go to Buenos Aires not one, but several times a year, study there with the milongueros, meaning: the ones that dance Tango. Prove themselves to have their place in the wide Tango community, and not to be mere local instructors without any connection to Buenos Aires, and therefore, to Tango.

To follow these guidelines, we will get together and put them in practice in all my classes and events through the Bay Area.
I am looking forward to seeing you and dancing with you.

Join our classes!!!

 

Marcelo Solis and Nestor La Vitola at Argentine Tango Tour to Buenos Aires

Tango and Buenos Aires

Marcelo Solis and Nestor La Vitola at Argentine Tango Tour to Buenos AiresBuenos Aires is the world capital of Tango, and its birthplace.

There, I wish to share with you the friendship and appreciation of the milongueros that I am lucky to enjoy.

We all feel Tango in our bodies. In each move, each new milonga we go to, each partner we dance with, each new learning experience it reveals, Tango belongs to us, and we belong to Tango. It is a wonderful feeling, and one of the key reasons why Tango is so appealing, why its rhythm is so haunting.

However, Tango also belongs to others, to people we share it with. If we do not pay attention to that, we may fall in a very egotistic, self-centered, selfish approach to tango. That would leave us with nothing, or with something we may call tango, but it is not.

Among the others we share Tango with are those who have danced it before us. Most of them are not with us anymore, but a bunch of them are still alive, and dancing in the milongas of Buenos Aires. Would you miss the opportunity of meeting them, seeing them dance, chatting with them, and dancing with them? If you let it pass you by, it will be a big loss for Tango, especially for “your” Tango, the one in your turn you will share with those who come after you.

The Argentine Tango Journey: metaphoric image of the hardness of this enterprise. You also find joy.

The Tango Journey

The Tango Journey

The Argentine Tango Journey: metaphoric image of the hardness of this enterprise. You also find joy.

These elements are essential to your Tango journey:

Work on them and you will become a great dancer.

1. Posture is essential.

When we dance Tango we engage in a multiple faceted experience.

It is like a diamond. Furthermore: it is like a “string” in the “string theory” of physics, with outside and inside dimensions.

One of these facets is purely mechanical: a couple dancing Tango makes a mechanical system.

Our posture is, in essence, the way we place a fundamental piece of that mechanical system (our body) in it.

If a part of your car is not well placed or not well shaped, your car won’t run well or won’t run at all.

2. You can learn to dance Tango!

With guidance, exercise and practice.

We share with you our exercises in class, helping to improve your posture and making any necessary corrections.

3. That takes us to an important realization you need to make at the very beginning of your Tango journey:

You will need to make changes in yourself, many kind of changes, many self-explorations, many plain acceptances of corrections, many learning curves.

It will require your patience and courage.

Tango is not about satisfying your ego.

It is about Tango itself.

It is very important to take a minute and think about what is our goal with Tango.

Be aware that you are about to be part of a community.

The natural habitat of this community is the milonga, not the class.

The class is a school to prepare you to be at the milongas.

It is not the festivals: they make only exceptional moments in the life of a milonguero.

It is not the stage, where Tango is as real as a Hollywood movie or a Broadway production is real life.

The life of a milonguero consists of everyday milongas.

We have to make milongas a wonderful experience for us if we want to become milongueros.

Tango is waiting for you…

Learn to dance Argentine Tango

More about Argentine Tango:

Dance Argentine Tango in Buenos Aires with Marcelo Solis at escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires

Tango is education

Perhaps you were asking yourself: Why a Tango School?

When I receive a new student in my class I know that he or she wants to learn to dance. But teaching involves not only showing the moves, but also giving the student a sense of placement, making him or her aware that you cannot just do any move at any time.
So, I must give the new students a sense of Tango as a whole, make them understand that they are learning a culture.
I heard someone calling Tango a “sub-culture”. I do not agree. All the elements I have learned while studying Tango are substantial in the general society, and the broader world culture. I learned the importance of my body as the root of my existence. I learned a lot about my interaction with others, how my happiness or unhappiness affects everybody around me. In sum, I learned that everything I do affects everybody in this world.
I have realized the importance of teaching the beauty of Tango.
In my classes I teach all the elements you may have in your checklist, that every Tango instructor claims to teach. Name your favorite element, I do teach it.
However, more important than the element itself is the meaning that the move carries within.
A week ago, I attended an event related to Tango. I was chatting with a couple. They told me they took some tango classes. They asked me if in my classes I made my student change partners. I replied that, yes, but that it was not obligatory, as I knew many couples liked to remain together during the class.
Then they said they were learning “ganchos” in one class, and that they found uncomfortable doing “ganchos” with other people.
Well, I told them that, anyway, learning “ganchos” did not make much sense because if they went to Buenos Aires’ milongas, they would find out that you were not supposed to perform “ganchos” there.
They were surprised, and, I think, a little incredulous of my assertion. Since they never went to Buenos Aires, they could not tell for sure. But I do.
In my 15 years of teaching Tango in the Bay Area (and 19 years teaching Tango in Argentina and worldwide), I have discovered that the main obstacles in teaching a new student is to overcome all the previous ideas about Tango he or she brings to the class, and change them into what Tango really is.
Now, you are probably asking: What Tango is in reality?
My answer is: Tango is what happens in the milonga. And when I say milonga, my image is that of the very best of the most authentic milongas in Buenos Aires.

This is what guides my instruction, and that is why, along with others who are after the same goal, I created the Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires.

Milonga at El Beso. Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires trip.

What I get when I pay the entrance fee of the milonga?

Milonga at El Beso. Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires trip.When I go to the supermarket, I buy groceries, take them home, and then do with them pretty much whatever I want. 

The same happens with any merchandise I purchase.

If I decide to become a member of a Club, I only take home my membership card and the pride of belonging to my beloved Club. The Club stays where it is, and I come to the Club for whatever activity (social, sports, etc.) it is for.

When I come to the Club I belong to, I have to observe behavior  For example: taking a shower before getting into the swimming pool, no diving, no smoking…

If I do not follow these guidelines, I will first receive a call, and eventually will be expelled from the Club if I keep ignoring these warnings.
When I come to the milonga, I first pay at the entrance. What am I getting for my money? A dance? A glass of wine? A snack?

I may get all that, but I am also receiving something more important. All these are elements that the organizers of the milonga provide you with the intention of enhancing the experience of attending.

The money I pay at the entrance is used to organize it: pay the rent, arrange the chairs and tables, clear and clean the dance floor; the lighting, the ventilation of the room, the DJ, the sound system, the personnel that takes care of everything, and for all the freebies organizers give you to make you and all the milongueros and milongueras feel more than welcome to the home of Tango. 

The milonga is where Tango lives, where Tango is kept alive.

When you are at the milonga, whether a well-known milonguero/a or a new good student, you are making it possible that Tango lives. You bring Tango to life, in your body, in everything you do with your body, not by dancing only, but by everything you do.

Once we start dancing, we realize that everything we do is dancing. Dancing feels so natural, It makes us feel so at home in our bodies that it makes sense to see all aspects of our life from the point of view of being at the milonga.

The fee we pay at the entrance of the milonga is not the price of what we are getting for that money. The $10 does not make a milonga a profitable business. The true organizers of true milongas do it for the passion of Tango, not as a business. With that $10 you just contribute to the necessary setup of the milonga. But in reality, the milonga is pretty much made by you.

Since it is you who actually makes the milonga, the milonga will be the way you are: the quality of the dance, the behavior, the outfits of the dancers, the ambiance, all these characteristics of the milonga are what you bring with you.

Not liking the milonga you attend is comparable with living in a neighborhood that you do not like.

Everyone at the milonga is essential. So everyone must be aware of having the responsibility of making the milonga a good place, even and especially, for having fun, as we are responsible for the world we live in, and particularly, for being happy.