Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Would you like to become a better Tango dancer? If so, there are several important changes you can make, starting right now, which will really help speed up the process of achieving that goal.

Change your learning process

The very best thing you can do for yourself, if you want to become a better, more accomplished dancer is to invest in private lessons with a competent teacher. Yes, I know —such a commitment is expensive, but this is undoubtedly the biggest and most important change you can make. Classes, workshops and on-line resources certainly have their place in your learning process, but nothing works more effectively than regular private lessons. The hands-on, one-to-one focus you receive in working with your very own teacher will get you to your goal much faster and far more effectively than anything else you could possibly do.

Change your work/play habits

How often do you dance – maybe once or twice a week? Starting today, put more dancing on your calendar. In Argentina, the best dancers (milongueros) spend pretty much all their time in the milongas. You probably don’t have time for that (what with the pesky need to earn a living or maybe raise a family), but try to carve out a little more time each week to dance. Start by adding one new venue to your schedule, and work yourself up to two or three more, if-as-and-when time and circumstances permit. You’ll end up having more fun in your week — and your dancing ability will go up, up, up!

Change your focus

Most of us start off a typical dance encounter by more or less unconsciously moving around with a partner without really thinking at all about what we’re doing. If we focus at all, it’s probably on some fancy figure or special adornment from a class, workshop or YouTube fantasy that we‘d like to impress our friends/partner/audience/mother with.

Sound familiar?

Instead, start sweating the small stuff — those crucial foundational skills that will eventually enable you to make even the most complex movements and sequences easy. Yes, I’m talking about the individual elements of lead/follow: Forward steps, backward steps, side steps, weight changes in place, pauses and pivots. These are the essential building blocks of social Tango. As you’ve heard me say over and over in these posts, you just cannot get enough practice in fine-tuning these movements in your interactions with a partner. The more you work on lead/follow skills (as long as you know what you doing), the better you get. It’s a direct correlation, folks. And, of course, the less you work on them … well, you know where I’m going here.

Change partners

Do you dance with the same person all the time? If so, it’s not uncommon to fall into a kind of dance rut — by which I mean forming potentially bad habits with one another, or unconsciously compensating for each other’s faults on the floor. If possible, a very important change in your ongoing dance/practice habit from now on should be to dance with someone new for at least part of your time on the floor. This will enable you to treat the dance encounter as a brand new challenge between you and your new partner, opening the door to a more consciously focused lead/follow experience.

Change your life

Making these changes in your ongoing learning process will unquestionably kick your social Tango up a huge notch. And as your Tango gets better, your fun level will increase; your life will be more fulfilled; and, yes, the world will become a better place — all because you did the right thing, and made a few simple changes.

Wow! You couldn’t ask for more than that.