Tango and Chaos (rebuilt)

El Chino This next video is the first one Alej and I had a real disagreement about. I’ve been watching it for about two years, and I’ve learned a lot from it... but Alej felt that people from outside the milongas wouldn’t be able to see it. She thought they might think it was less interesting or less exciting than the other videos we've put here. She even felt that some people would think the dancing wasn’t as “good” as the others. It is a clear change from what we’ve shown before—but remember, there are lots of different kinds of tango. To me,  El Chino  and Ophelia represent an older and quieter tango that’s more common to the “ salida del sabado ” tradition in the neighborhoods (Saturday night milongas with dinner and dancing for couples), than to the more frenetic milongas downtown. Here are  El Chino  and Ophelia dancing to one of my all time favorite tangos,  Como se Muere de Amor  ("How She Dies for Love"): I’ve watched this one so many t...

Gerard & Alej Video (continued) Let's talk about the Gerard and Alej video from the previous page for a minute. Gerard's way of expressing the music is to use a lot of energy, and to constantly vary his velocity. He's always speeding up and slowing down. It happens in his  corridas  (a run of steps), and also in his  giros . Gerard and Alej surge forward in the  corridas,  then they slow, hesitate, and go again. At times, Gerard runs back, hesitates, switches over to Alej's left, and then runs forward again. Throughout, he inserts  giros , and he varies the rate of turn to match the music—even more than Carlos and Nelida. For me, it's a very active, exciting way to dance tango—it's like he and Alej are riding the music on a roller coaster. He doesn't worry a lot about the niceties of posture or step; all of his passion goes into the movement. But that doesn't mean it isn't sophisticated—in fact Gerard is one of the most complex dancers in tang...

"Five Runs" in  Vals We're getting farther and farther off the track. The plan was to move from basics to the more complex secrets of the milongueros, but we've already skipped over the fundamentals, and now we're heading off into some difficult  vals  cadences. But we're rolling, so let's stay with it. Please just keep in mind that these pages about cadence, and also the upcoming one about  enrosques , are very advanced tango. Only a small percentage of dancers do them, and it's a waste of time to attempt any of them without very solid fundamentals and a complete understanding of the music. **** Here comes one of my very first videos. One afternoon Alej and I were dancing, and I mentioned I'd like to get a good  vals  on film. So she said, you want  vals , you got  vals ! Then she jumped up, asked Dany to put on a  vals  tanda, and went over and asked Gerard Gellé to dance with her so I could film it. Now, Gerard can be grumpy....