Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. As we've been stressing throughout the past several Tango Tips -- social Tango is an improvisational dance form, in which two partners combine the skill of lead/follow with a specific "single-step" movement vocabulary in order to create their own very personal immediate dance expression within a given moment.

When two people dance social Tango, all kinds of things therefore become possible. If the partners are relatively inexperienced, they may automatically repeat a few very simple learned "figures" over and over again as they move together. On the other hand, if they've been dancing for many years, they will instead tend to create a steady stream of unique improvisations during a typical session without even thinking about it.

Skilled Tango couples would never consciously censor any individual "steps" or step patterns in creating their dance. On the contrary, they would routinely open their imaginations to virtually any improvisational possibilities -- unless such movements were somehow outside the boundaries of commonly acceptable behavior; i.e., if they simply did not comport with the general tradition of Tango practice -- what is sometimes referred to as el codigo del tango -- the "manner" in which Tango is danced.

By contrast, Ballroom Dance -- at least, ballroom dance as defined by the overwhelming majority of contemporary dance school professionals -- presents itself as an imperious set of autocratic statutes, which rigidly dictate to the would-be dancer an inflexible series of rules, regulations, prohibitions and proscriptions. If you recall my Tenth Commandment of Ballroom Dance, it reads as follows:

As one of the characters in the often riotously funny 1992 Australian film, "Strictly Ballroom," pompously declares (as his cheap hairpiece becomes hopelessly dislodged): "There are NO NEW STEPS!"

Where we allow teachers to tell us with such absolute certainty what is right and wrong in our dancing, how we are allowed -- and not allowed -- to behave, we run the dangerous risk of turning social dance into a cookie-cutter pastiche of dos and donts. Not only is the notion of "no new steps" ridiculous, it is utterly antithetical to the idea of social Tango as a collaborative creative act between two people. We must never let this idea corrupt the world of Tango in any way, shape or form.

Here is what I would encourage you to do. Make it your ongoing mission to create something new in your Tango every time you get up to dance. If an idea doesn't work, try something else. This assignment may prove difficult -- even impossible -- at first. But if you keep at it, you'll eventually begin to transform your efforts into a dance that you own exclusively, and can be very proud of. Remember: Your Tango belongs to you, not to YouTube, not to your classes and workshops, not to your dance teachers. It's yours.

Never give up.

Incidentally, since our subject here is social Tango, I'm not going to discuss other kinds of ballroom dance just now (Foxtrot, Waltz, Swing, Salsa, etc.,). However, I would argue that at some point the learning of these dance forms ought also to be re-evaluated by teachers and students alike in terms of lead/follow rather than exclusively as collections of memorized figures. Speaking from personal experience, I can attest to the fact that my own ballroom dancing improved significantly, when I consciously incorporated lead/follow into the mix. I think that the time has come for Ballroom Dance teachers to see the light. What works for Tango ought to be working for everybody.

Don't you think?

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

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• Barbara Lombardi
  
• Jack Messing
  
• George Ngo
  
• Walter Milani
  
• Charles Moorman
  
• Bob Brillo
  
• Eduardo Campos