Tango is taught in many ways, each teacher prefers a specific technique. Here is mine.
Goals & principles
less talk, more practice
It is not unusual to attend classes where the teacher may talk for 20 minutes and then allow the students to try the elements taught. We feel this approach may not be the most efficient in most circumstances. There will be talk involved in the class, but there will be more “doing” than talking about doing.
no memorizing patterns
The beauty of tango is its improvised nature. While in the beginning, people feel they accomplish something by memorizing a pattern, in the long run that pattern is useless and most of the time spent learning the pattern is wasted. While I may use a sequence of steps to show a specific element, the accent is placed on the technique required to execute the element, as well as useful related information (when it’s appropriate to use the element, variations of the element, how it can be used musically, etc).
teach dancing not figures
There are countless “figure executors” out there crowding the dance floors. You see them move and executing figures with absolutely no relation to the music being played. You might even see them executing the figures after the music stopped. In classes,the focus will be on how to make your movements into a dance, not how to execute the pattern perfectly. This will help you when you are in a milonga and need to navigate as well as dance.
all level classes
Many teachers will have “beginner’, “beginner-intermediate”, “intermediate”, etc… classes. Unfortunately, these terms mean different things for each person, and more often then not, people end up in a class where they either get bored or are overwhelmed.
We only teach two levels, labeled “1″ and “2″. The Level “1″ class is an “Getting Ready to Dance” class, recommended for people who have taken a few classes but they danced socially very little if at all, and want to become comfortable dancing socially. The Level “2″ classes are for everyone else. The structure of the Level “2″ class is designed to challenge everyone, regardless of their level, yet to allow each student to concentrate on the element that they need to work the most. The elements taught in the class are presented in a gradual fashion and the students will work on each element until we determined they are ready for the next exercise. As the class progresses, students of different levels will end up working on elements of different degrees of difficulty, appropriate for their level.
We also do offer an Introduction to Tango class designed specifically for people who have never danced tango and want to see if they are interested in learning Argentine Tango. This is a single class, as opposed to Level 1 and 2 which are series classes, and is Introduction class is meant to be continued in Level 1 if you find that Argentine tango is something you wish to learn more of.
