Tag: philosophy

Marcelo Solis dancing Argentine Tango with Mimi on a colorful chrome light background

Unlock the Rhythmic Magic: Dive into Milonga Traspié with Our Beginner Tutorial

🎥 Welcome to our “Learn to Dance Milonga Traspié” tutorial! Dive into the captivating world of Milonga Traspié, a style cherished by the finest milonguero maestros of Buenos Aires.

💃 Whether you’re new to the dance floor or seeking to refine your skills, these six video clips are crafted to guide beginners through the intricacies of this rhythmic and dynamic dance form.

🕺 Throughout this tutorial series, you’ll master:

1️⃣ Basics of Milonga Traspié: Lay a solid foundation with essential steps and rhythms, ensuring a smooth entry into the world of Milonga Traspié.

2️⃣ Technical Details for Partner Connection: Elevate your dance experience by honing your connection with your partner, whether you lead or follow. Discover nuanced techniques to enhance communication and harmony on the dance floor.

3️⃣ Variations of the Basic Step: Expand your repertoire with variations of the fundamental Milonga Traspié steps, adding depth and versatility to your dance style.

4️⃣ Walking Variations: Explore dynamic walking techniques, including the circular walk and the playful amague (fake out), to infuse your dance with creativity and flair.

5️⃣ Embellishments in Milonga: Learn to embellish your movements with subtle yet expressive touches, elevating your Milonga Traspié to new heights of artistry.

6️⃣ Change of side: Learn to make your dancing more dynamic and playful.

🎶 Each video clip is carefully crafted to provide clear demonstrations and detailed explanations, ensuring that you grasp each concept with ease and confidence. Whether you’re dancing solo or with a partner, these tutorials will empower you to navigate the exhilarating world of Milonga Traspié with grace and skill.

💫 So, lace up your dancing shoes and join us on this exciting journey! Let’s unlock the rhythm, passion, and joy of Milonga Traspié together.

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Marcelo Solis and Mimi dancing Argentine Tango

Argentine Tango class on 1-2-3 structure of turns

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I lead and I follow.

When leading, I like my partner to be sensitive to my lead, reciprocating with being sensitive to her interpretation of music.

Together we do the dance of a being that is not her or me, but the couple.

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

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

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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.

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Virtual classes

Online

See schedule:

Argentine Tango classes by Marcelo Solis. Dancing vals with Mimi.

Argentine Tango class on vals

See more video lessons:

Looking for tips about learning Argentine Tango dance?

Because you have realized the value of Tango, namely that Tango is highly important to you, I am offering here a guide into your Tango journey.

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.
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 flows, 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.
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 that is making 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 would be your teacher’s inner group of students. Not anyone who shows up in class, but those who showing up in class regularly, are noticeably there to learn about Tango. Be perceptive to 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 this to your teacher. He or she, if authentic, is your most reliable connection to Tango in Buenos Aires.