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Argentine Tango School

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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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Now we also have virtual online classes

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

Argentine Tango dance classes online.

Virtual classes

Online

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Argentine Tango class on vals

Argentine Tango class on vals






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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.

  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 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.
  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 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. 

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

Argentine Tango class: counterclockwise direction turn to salida cruzada

Argentine Tango class: counterclockwise direction turn to salida cruzada





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The goals of a good dancer cannot be quantified. 

Her goal is to be a good dancer, a good person, a good example of a human being.


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

Argentine Tango class: walking variations and turns

Argentine Tango class: walking variations and turns



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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!


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

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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