Chapter 2, p.2: The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style
"If you can't see it, you can't dance it."

In the process of going through the many hours of video we took in Buenos Aires, I found that patterns began to emerge. Although each of the dancers had their own different style, certain common markers of good technique kept showing up. The pictures below give an insight into the mechanics of the best dancers. A serious student who can develop a mental picture of these key elements and practice them with the aid of a mirror should move to a new level. After all, if the milongueros were able to learn tango by watching each other dance, shouldn’t we be able to do the same? Please keep in mind that these pictures weren’t selected for their artistic quality. They are pictures of every day milonga dancing, not performances or demonstrations. Here are the three essential elements of good technique:

Always place each foot directly in front of the other when walking.
Alejandra Todaro y Tete

Lead with the chest, especially when moving forward from a stop.
Graciela y Blas

Step solidly onto a straight leg... never onto a bent knee.
Tete

Los Bailarines: (Top row) Tete y Alej, Blas y Graciela, Napo y Lili
( Second row) Blas y Graciela, Norberto y Victoria, Ismael El Jalil
( Bottom row) Tete y Sylvia, Blas y Elba, Ismael

Walking with the weight forward (2) and stepping with weight onto a straight leg (3) is hard to learn—but it’s what gives tango its characteristic look. Dancers who do it naturally are sometimes spoken of in the milongas as being “muy autentico” or “muy Argentino”.

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Chapter 5, p.12 Training the Eye (Continued)

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Chapter 5, p.13: The Joy of Tango

The Joy of Tango This always happens. I start out with a great plan, but then I come across a different piece of film and get sidetracked. I was going to use a short clip of Alito dancing with another milonguera to demonstrate something or other—but then I found this one, and I had to use it instead. I realize it’s too long, it doesn’t show what I wanted… and you’ll probably notice that Alej and Alito make several obvious mistakes. But what can I say? Tango's about having fun, and Alej and Alito seem to be enjoying themselves so much that I couldn’t leave it out. Even when they trip each other up, they look like they can barely keep from laughing. And the music! If it doesn’t make you want to jump up and start dancing, it’s time to look for another hobby. Here are Alito and Alejandra floating around Lo de Celia's with Biaggi on a fall afternoon in 2004: Homework assignment: Use your trained eye to identify different ways Alito plays with the music. Can you desc

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Chapter 5, p.10: The Perfect Tango

The Perfect Tango I know... tango isn’t science. You can’t measure it by any objective standard. But I have seen two dances that are so good that I simply can’t imagine a way to make them better—so for me, they're "perfect". We've already shown one of them. It's the first video we posted of Ismael dancing to No Me Extraña . Now, here is the second one. It's a video of Miguel Balbi dancing to Biaggi's El Trece at a party in Almagro . Watch how he moves to the music: At the end of the video you can hear Alberto Dassieu comment, "Muy bien pareja de bailarines." — "A very good pair of dancers". For the milongueros, this is the absolute essence of what dancing tango is about: a pure, unadorned expression of the music; unpretentious and simple on its surface, but profoundly complex in its use of cadence and melody. To see what's really happening here—to actually get a feel for it—you should first just listen to this tang

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