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Argentine Tango School

Argentine Tango dance with Mimi at Enchanted Tango Home

Argentine Tango dance with Mimi at Enchanted Tango Home

Why dancing? What for? 

I made this thought experiment about it: 

Let’s imagine that before being born, you are given the choice to live or not. 

You know nothing about life since you haven’t experienced it; and no one can explain it to you for the same reason, since in your non-existent state you are not able to grasp anything about what existing means, you wouldn’t understand comparisons nor metaphors because there is nothing you can compare to or metaphorize. 

The only experience you have at this point is nothingness. 

However, you can watch the lives of people. Like on a big-screen television or at the movie theater, you can watch life happening for the billions of people that are alive, without plot, argument, chapters, or selection of location. You watch it all going on together, and your attention drifts here and there, to anything or anyone that calls your attention. 

Like being a child and being taken to a dance party for the first time and watching the crowd dancing. Some dancers catch your attention and that is what you see and will remember. 

You won’t be able to give a rational answer in your response to the offer of being born or not, since to be rational you need some data, information, some knowledge, but that is impossible. You have only the emotions that those images of seeing the lives of people triggered in you to formulate your answer. 

Your answer would be based solely on your emotions. 

You may be afraid, in which case you’ll reject the offer. 

You may be curious, in which case you’ll accept the offer. 

You could be cautious, in which case you’ll reject the offer. 

You could be reckless, in which case you’ll accept it. 

How about having someone explaining to you what life is like? You would be educated on the matter, but now your decision would very much be influenced by your teacher. If your teacher loves life, most likely you’ll choose to live. Your teacher will encourage you to have confidence in life. All the facts and information that your educator presents to you will condition your choice since those facts and pieces of information gathered for you by your teacher are surely justifications of your teacher’s preference for life. Education is mainly an emotional affair. 

It is the same in the case of dancing. 

You watch people dancing, and your sensitivity guides your attention. 

No one can explain the meaning of dancing to you, but someone can encourage or discourage you from dancing. 

Dancing, or the idea of dancing, awakens emotions in you, which you may accept or reject. 

Then, if you decide that your answer is to accept, once you are fully into it, you cannot go back. 

To stop dancing would be suicidal. 

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Ricardo Viqueira & María Darritchon dancing vals

Ricardo Viqueira & María Darritchon dancing vals

Ricardo Viqueira & María Darritchon dancing vals.

Ricardo Viqueira

Being a milonguero, Ricardo does not beat around the bush.

His teaching is all about dancing in the milonga. 

He is one of the most respected and sought-after teachers in Buenos Aires where he regularly teaches and in the rest of the world he is a well-known exponent of the “milonguero” culture.

Ricardo is renowned for dancing Milonga with Traspié and Canyengue. He was the man behind the revival of the historic and well known Club Sin Rumbo in the neighbourhood of Villa Urquiza. He also organized the Cristal Tango in Avenida San Martin in Buenos Aires.

He has been invited to teach in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland, Brazil, the United States, Korea and China and the UK!

Watch Ricardo Viqueira & María Darritchon dancing milonga

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El Flaco Dani and Luna Palacios dancing milonga

El Flaco Dani and Luna Palacios dancing milonga

El Flaco Dani, Argentine Tango dancer milonguero.

El Flaco Dani

(8 May 1936 – 10 December 2019)

His real name is Daniel García, but we all know him as El Flaco Dany, a milonga icon that has stumbled around the world.

A prototype of the porteño, he was born in the neighborhood of La Paternal.

He used to divide his life between Europe and Argentina, more precisely between Bucharest and Buenos Aires.

His many years as a habitué of the milonga gave him a great advantage in the tango salón teaching field.

His style has been polished by his uninterrupted fifty years of dancing. 

More about El Flaco Dani at www.todotango.com

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Ricardo Viqueira and Maria Darritchon dancing milonga

Ricardo Viqueira and Maria Darritchon dancing milonga

Ricardo Viqueira, Argentine Tango maestro milonguero

Ricardo Viqueira

Ricardo Viqueira is known for his ease, elegance, musicality, and masterful footwork.

Dancing in the milonguero style, he emphasizes keeping one’s own axis and the feet on the floor. As a social dance, it is necessary to adjust one’s steps to fit the space. He teaches his students to dance many steps and formations and to adapt their steps to the environment, be it around a room or the same steps in a circle without progressing forward.

While milongueros dance with cadence and pauses, they are not stopped by a crowded room. Ricardo teaches his students to recognize opportunities to change direction, alter their movements, and to create their own dance. As tango is a partner dance, Ricardo emphasizes the connection. Without connection, with whom are you dancing? He has developed simple techniques that help the leader mark the step and the follower to understand the lead.

People are often impressed with steps and choreography. But are they listening to music? Have they developed their personal style? Ricardo helps his students to move with musicality and rhythm, emphasizing pauses and simple rhythmical phrasing.

Ricardo takes one into the milongas of the tango world. While many of his students are teachers or performers, Ricardo is a milonguero teaching by day and dancing nightly at the local milongas. He openly shares antidotes and codes of behavior throwing in saucy tales of the how’s and why’s of the milonga scene. As a sensual dance, Ricardo feels one must go into the milonga with an attitude of success, remembering that it’s a game, and to enjoy – enjoy it all: the music, the dancing, and the social interactions.

Watch Ricardo Viqueira dancing Tango

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Pepito Avellaneda y Suzuki de Souza

Pepito Avellaneda y Suzuki de Souza

Pepito Avellaneda & Susuki de Sousa, Argentine Tango dancers and milongueros.

Pepito Avellaneda

(30 November 1930 – 29 April 1996)

“Dancing is everything for me, I feed on it.”

“I dance and I am nurtured.

I signed many contracts, for example in the provinces: Salta, Córdoba, Tucumán.

And I, even though I was not paid, I danced because I felt it.

That is to say, I did what I felt like to and I was also paid. That is wonderful. It means that I feed on tango, I enjoy teaching.

I spend all day long teaching. In Europe, they love me very much. So much so that I receive letters, they send me invitations, it’s very nice.

And I learned by myself. It was a question of trying, to make a step, another step. And then I dared.

Later the practice in clubs came, among men. That is to say, I led you, you led me: in other words, you learned to lead a woman. That to dance on Sunday, on Saturday.

We practiced creating some steps. There were no women at the practices. It was only with men. We practiced it to dance with our girlfriend, with our wife. It’s easier to dance with a woman.”

More about Pepito Avellaneda at www.todotango.com

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