Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Recently, a basic-level student complained to me that at one of the weekly milongas in New York City, he had been left standing in the middle of the floor by his partner after one dance.

"She said I didn't know enough to be an interesting partner, and just walked away."

My student had been totally demoralized by this incident. He told me bleakly that his first response was to give up Tango forever. "I'll just never be able to catch up to what everybody else can do," he said. However, after recovering somewhat, he decided that the solution to his problem was to get himself a "crash course" in "interesting" material, so that this kind of thing wouldn't happen in the future.

Nice idea, I told him, but unfortunately not the answer.

As it happened, I was acquainted with the woman who had so cavalierly mistreated my student. She herself had been dancing for only about one year; her skills we're minimal at best; and yet I knew that she liked to think of herself (inappropriately) as an accomplished dancer. In general, she always tried to curry favor with only the flashiest male dancers at any milonga (the ones who seemed to know the most steps), and she prided herself on being able to follow anybody (not true!). If my student had himself been more experienced, he would have recognized that this woman was trouble. But because of his naïveté, he was easy prey for her particular brand of unconscionable meanness.

I fully sympathize with the abject feeling of failure and incompetence that this student experienced in the situation I described above. Virtually all beginning students suffer the same difficulties, when they decide to throw themselves into the deep end of the pool prematurely. However, thinking that the answer is to quickly accumulate a lexicon of "impressive" memorized figures is precisely the wrong response. Learning to dance Tango with any degree of proficiency involves first and foremost an intensive concentration on building fundamental lead/follow skills over an appropriate period of time. Only then (in my opinion, at least), does it become in any way useful for the student to concern himself with developing an arsenal of "fancy" material.

The road to Tango expertise is paved with pitfalls and potholes. Keep moving steadfastly forward, and you'll eventually get there in your own time. Searching for a fool's paradise of false "magic bullets" and quick fix fantasies will only delay -- or even derail -- the process.

Be committed; be realistic; be strong. Success awaits!

The following folks helped set up, break down and clean up before and after the milonga. Without them, there would be no Firehouse Tango.

• Kathy Dinam - Cheese Doodles
  

• ​​​​​​Adeline Daleus
  
• Isabel
  
• Mary
  
• Fred Meyer
  
• Christine Russo
  
• Jack Messing
  
• Carl Schaefer
  
• Richard Abrahamsen
  
• Bob Brillo
  
• Edna Negron
  
• Diane Langmuir
  
• Eduardo Campos