• Film Screening - A film by Firehouse friend Marta Bautis
• Musicians
• Dance Performance
• and Milonguita

Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Pat and I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration, and that you're all enthusiastic about getting back to Tango. Today, we're going to continue with our look at the "Ten Commandments of Ballroom Dancing." This time, we'll focus on Number 8:

To create our own social iteration of a dance form, we employ the entrances-and-exits principle of amalgamation.

Some years ago, I embarked on a fairly in-depth study of International Foxtrot. There are many very complex and demanding technical aspects to this dance discipline; but the one I want to discuss during this Tango Tip involves the individual figures and dance strategies I was exposed to. Like virtually all contemporary Ballroom Dance instruction, my lessons in International Foxtrot consisted of learning a specific syllabus of steps. These followed the typical model in all dance schools of progressing through "bronze," silver," and "gold" levels.

International Foxtrot is by no means an improvisational dance. In fact, one might say that it is exactly the opposite. Like all other International Dance forms, International Foxtrot relies on the principle of amalgamation; i.e., selecting from a menu (syllabus) of available learned figures, and creating individual, interconnected sequences, which are designed to enable dancers to move around the circumference of a dance floor. Using these steps and sequences, which are precisely connected to one another through specific entrances and exits, dancers move from one wall of the dance floor rectangle to another, with specific cornering movements serving as transitions from one wall to the next.

Typically, a couple starts at the corner of a "long" wall, and moves through a preordained sequence of steps designed to navigate the length of that wall. As they reach the end of the wall, they execute a cornering figure, which enables them to make an effective transition to the first "short" wall. At the end of the short wall, they execute another cornering figure to get them to the next long wall.

And so it goes.

The point I want to emphasize here is that in International Dance everything is memorized. Individual steps, amalgamated sequences, corner transitions, walls ... everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. The concept of creating a dance as one chooses in the moment -- the idea of improvisation -- simply doesn't exist.

Which brings us back to Tango. In Argentine Tango -- at least in social Tango -- everything I just described regarding International Foxtrot is out the window. We don't have a preordained syllabus of figures. We don't utilize a memorized strategy for getting from one wall on the dance floor to another. We don't need special cornering movements. Social Tango consists of fundamental, single-step elements (forward, backward, sideward, in-place, pause and pivot), put together by a leader in a completely improvised way from one moment to the next in a musical context -- and enhanced through creative embellishment (adornment) by both leader and follower.

Over the years, American dance students have become quite used to learning how to dance, using set patterns, set transitions, and memorization. This way of learning makes us feel that we're getting tangible results quickly. In order to dance, we simply pick a step or sequence from our menu, and take it to the floor. On the other hand, Tango makes us feel as if we're going nowhere fast for a very long time before we sort of start to "get it."

Not too long ago, I had a couple (with extensive International Ballroom experience) literally run from the classroom never to return -- because of the night-and-day difference between what they were used to and what was presented as a completely alien (to them) way of approaching dance. I don't blame people for this reaction to Tango. Tango can be frightening. Tango can be very difficult to learn. For me, Tango has been the greatest dance challenge I have ever encountered. But I will never give up trying to become as good at this wonderful dance as I possibly can be. And I really hope you will choose to do the same.

Next week, more Ballroom Dance Commandments, more comparisons to Tango. See you then.

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

• ​​​George Ngo - Hummus, Grapes, Bread Sticks
  

• Barbara Lombardi
  
• Mary Pagano
  
• Bill Krukovsky
  
• George Ngo
  
• Camille
  
• Richard Abrahamsen
  
• Walter Milani
  
• Bob Brillo
  
• Jesse Barton
  
• Francis & Marie
  
• Eduardo Campos