Marcelo Solis & Mimi dancing milonga at a their Argentine Tango class.

Argentine Tango class on milonga: fundamentals

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Everything that is good in Tango dancing is the result of practice.

Regular exercise of walking, change of weight, pauses, pivots, turns, paradas (stops) and embellishments creates the foundation of your freedom while dancing.

Another aspect of practice is musicality.

The way to improve your musicality is to engage in active listening of tango music, knowing what you are listening to.

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Learn to dance Argentine Tango in the San Francisco Bay Area:

Marcelo Solis dancing Argentine Tango with Mimi

Looking for tips about learning Argentine Tango dance?

From absolute beginner to a great milonguero/a Tango dancer.

Because you have realized the value of Tango, we are offering here a guide into your Tango journey.

You’ll become more yourself within a community.

Our human nature makes us social beings: we cannot survive in isolation, hence, success is possible for an individual only with the support of one’s peers.

That is to say: you learn to dance Tango not only because of your personal taste and choice. There is also a group of people who share your affinity for Tango, and even you will not agree (and you do not need to agree) with everyone in matters of taste and choices, your success regarding Tango will be always tied to how you relate to those other dancers.

Even if you never dance with most of them, you will still be sharing the same dance floor and seats around it at the same milonga.

Not everybody has the same sensitivity.

If you are willing to take the challenge, as a great milonguero/a does: aim for the highest, most beautiful, most poetic, and most sublime.

For me, that is Tango.

With such people, I feel at home, and that is my environment.

That is what I would like to share with you.

My reason for doing so is that my goal is always to become a better dancer, and by inviting and challenging you to have the same goal, I count on you to challenge me in the same way.

We mutually challenge each other to become better dancers.

This is not going to make us rivals or enemies. On the contrary: we will develop a deep friendship.

I won’t be distant (like on a stage). I will be approachable. I will dance with you or next to you on the same dance floor. I may have more experience than you, but it may turn out that you are more talented. However, on the dance floor of a milonga, we are equals in essence.

The goal of becaming better dancers cannot be quantified.

How do you quantitatively express a good example of a human being?

How do you quantify excellence or the admiration that someone awakens in you?

It is easy to get confused in a world that values quantification the way our civilization does.

For instance, does the number of members in my Facebook group express the level of my dance?

I could set a goal to end the year with over 2,000 members.

That is really easy to do. By the end of this year, I will achieve this goal. Will that make me a better human being?

Let’s make a thought experiment (you now know I like them):

An alien comes to our planet and meets with several people. He meets an industrialist called Henry Rearden, a writer and poet called Oliverio Girondo, Gordon Gekko (a banker), Doug McKenzie (a garbage collector), a nurse called Ratched… etc. and a milonguero called Blas Catrenau…

What this alien will immediately perceive is the egalitarianism and spontaneity of the milonguero, who approaches him the same way he approaches everyone.

He will be surprised he even hugs him as a greeting.

Another aspect is the way the milonguero moves, his expressions, the way he walks: he seems easily in control of himself.

His words are sometimes a little cryptic. He speaks assuming that the alien understands what he is talking about.

However, he speaks with such comfortable self-confidence that the alien cannot avoid agreeing with Blas, even he does not know what Blas is talking about.

For Blas, and for any milonguero in general, it does not matter the way you look, your degrees, your wealth, or your job. If he has something to say about you, he would say it only if you ask his opinion, and only in regard to your dance.

Now you can continue on your own with this experiment.

Imagine any other characters (anyone you want to include) and let me know how you see the alien’s experience meeting them. You can write it here:

Back on Earth, once you’ve made up your mind and accepted that there is no better way to spend your time in life than making it a work of art and that in this endeavor you won’t find anything that makes more sense than dancing Tango, hence, becoming a great dancer (a realization that can take you a period of time ranging from one day to many years), then, the following advice may help you:

1. Be disciplined, regular, and committed to your study of Tango. While dancing Tango is amusing, it is also different from other ways to amuse yourself. Choose these unique characteristics of Tango to be the main core of your dedication to learning it. Steps, choreographic patterns, socializing, close proximity to partners, are all aspects that Tango has in common with other dances and other kinds of activities. On the other hand, its music is unique; and, also, unique is the approach that milongueros have in relation to Tango: for them, Tango is not a “way of life”, but “Life” itself.
2. If Tango is life, then your Tango teacher is a life-coach. He or she is teaching you how to live Tango. Your relationship between you and your teacher is based on trust, mutual understanding, sympathy, and patience. Tango makes both of you meet at a very humane level, where both need to accept their own limitations and flaws, as well as good qualities. The potential for improvement of Tango is infinite. In the face of such a wide-open horizon, both student and teacher are students of Tango. Your teacher is your guide through Tango, but also your road companion. Choose carefully.
3. Tango is a world. Your Tango teacher is a bridge to it. Allow yourself to know that world, its inhabitants, its culture. A Tango teacher who is doing a good job will have different levels of approximation to your definitive contact with Tango and, eventually, living-breathing-existing-embodying Tango. The first pool in your “decanting” to Tango will be your teacher’s inner group of students. Not anyone who shows up to class, but those who show up in class regularly, and are noticeably there to learn about Tango. Be perceptive of this difference. Then, your teacher with or without this inner group will take you to your first local milongas. New questions will arise there, that you will need to discuss with your teacher. Eventually, you will visit Buenos Aires. You must trust your teacher with this. He or she, if authentic, is your most reliable connection to Tango in Buenos Aires.

Start learning Argentine Tango:

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Virtual classes

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Marcelo Solis with Mimi teaching Argentine Tango virtual classes.

How to practice and improve your Tango: Lesson 7

Dancing Tango requires the training and improvement of your whole self, developing your ability to be fully engaged and ready to give good answers to your present moment anytime, all the time.

Thrive and keep improving!

1-Basic salida cruzada slow

2-The embrace

3-Corrida americana

4-Walking on the closed side of the embrace

5-Walking on the closed side of the embrace variation

6-Counter-clockwise direction turn from basic salida cruzada

7-Chair exercise for counter-clockwise direction turn from basic salida cruzada

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Learn to dance Argentine Tango

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How to dance Argentine Tango

An introduction to the most important details

Find the answer

Argentine Tango music

Music to learn to dance

Listen and dance!

History of Argentine Tango

Tango is a culture

Learn more about Tango

Private lessons for couples, single students, and with two maestros. What to choose?

Private lessons are the best way to learn to dance Tango and the subtleties of this art.

What is the most efficient way to take your private lessons?

With a partner?

Alone?

With a teacher of the opposite role?

With a teacher of the same role?

With a master couple?

All the options are good.

Let’s see the pros and cons of each approach:

1.1 Taking private lessons with a partner with one teacher:

The main advantage is that you and your partner can practice together. Both of you receive consistent advice because you are learning from the same teacher, and he or she is able to watch you both dancing together.

The disadvantage, in this case, is that you are dancing with another student and not with a knowledgeable and experienced dancer.

1.2 Taking private lessons with a partner and with teachers in both roles (a master couple):

The advantage here is that you both receive expert advice from an experienced leader and a experienced follower, and that in addition to each of the teachers working individually with both of you and dancing with you and watching you dance, both teachers can demonstrate elements that you’re working on by dancing together.

This set up is ideal; no cons.

2.1 Taking private lessons alone with a teacher in the opposite role:

You will be dancing with an expert. Your teacher can sense the internal mechanics of your dance and demonstrate the nuances of the dance by transmitting them directly to you via sensations.

It would be good for your teacher to have a chance to see you dance from the outside too.

In this case, you can take private lessons with a partner once in a while, take your teacher’s group classes, or ideally come to Buenos Aires with us, where we will be able to assess your understanding of Argentine Tango by dancing with you in the context of Buenos Aires’ milongas, watching you dancing with great local dancers, introducing you to our Maestros and getting their feedback on the state of your Tango.

2.2 Taking private lessons alone with a teacher in the same role:

You will be able to focus on the specifics of your role while receiving expert advice from an experienced dancer.

You will be able to dance with your teacher, but it is overall not exactly the same as dancing with a partner of your opposite role.

2.3 Taking private lessons alone with teachers in both roles (a master couple):

This set up is ideal because you can dance with both of them, receive feedback from dancing with them, and from what they can see watching you dance.

Your best option is to set up a combination of all of these kinds of private lessons, including taking group classes and going to Buenos Aires with your teachers, since they are the ones who, being part of the Buenos Aires Tango scene, should introduce you to it.

See your options for private lessons

Neither group classes nor private lessons alone will make you a good dancer.

You need both.

If you take only private lessons, you make Tango a private relationship with your maestro, which is not enough to understand what is Tango.
If you only take group classes, you are not going to get deep enough into the fine details of Tango to make you a good dancer.

To dance Tango, you need to be a good dancer.

Learn more about Argentine Tango:

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Marcelo Solis virtual Argentine Tango classes

Argentine Tango group classes

Argentine Tango is a social dance.

It makes sense to practice it in the context of a like-minded community, in which individuals share the common goal of highly aesthetic experience on a dance floor populated by couples dancing to the same song, producing different interpretations that comfortably fit in the same shared space and time.

It is an artistic expression combining individual freedom, smart adaptability, good taste, politeness, wittiness, passion, and care.

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Let’s describe each of these aspects:

Individual freedom: Your dance is what only you can do. None can dance for you, nor tell you what to do in the moment of dancing. Your dance is the product of your free choices.
Smart adaptability: Even though you are free to do whatever you want, there are factors that require your attention, to which you need to adapt in a way that does not contradict your freedom, without being imposing.
Good taste: The limit of your decisions is nothing other than aesthetics.
Politeness: Because you are not alone on the dance floor, kindness and politeness are virtues that make you a good dancer.
Wittiness: In any social situation, but particularly in the context of a milonga, your spark adds flavor to a shared experience.
Passion: It fuels your dance, makes it come alive. Without it you run the risk of moving mechanically, which will never be dancing.
Care: Your partner so close to you, and other couples around you on the dance floor, are human beings. Being considerate is part of what makes you a good dancer.

To develop these aspects of your dance you need to practice Tango with other people, who are not strangers, although there will always be someone new coming to Tango, to whom you will be a link to the community of milongueros.

In group classes we focus on:

Social aspects of Tango:
- Line of dance.
- Cabeceo (invitation to dance making eye contact).
- How the music is played in the milongas.
- What to do after your dance ends.
Tango technique exercises.
Tango patterns and footwork: from basic to complex.

Eventually, we will organize milongas where you will be able to put into practice what you’ve learned.

We are committed to favor the development of a community of likeminded individuals who see Tango as a way to become better examples of human beings.

Neither group classes nor private lessons alone will make you a good dancer. You need both.

If you take only private lessons, you make Tango a private relationship with your maestro, which is not enough to understand what is Tango, and make you a milonguero/a.

If you only take group classes, you are not going to get deep enough into the fine details and the profundity of Tango to make you a good dancer.