Lessons with Monica Paz in New York next week

There are no openings remaining for private lessons with Monica Paz, our wonderful teacher and friend from Buenos Aires.  

Happily she joined us for my birthday  celebration on Thursday, April 14th.  Additionally, she will be at Los Pitucos Milonga in Franklin Lakes on Saturday, April 16th.  

Please call me at 201-826-6602 or e mail firehousetango@gmail.com to reserve time for lessons in New Jersey.  I will be happy to answer any questions that you might have. 

She will also be giving private and group lessons in New York City.  Her schedule is below.  

Registration, please contact Monica at: tangopaz@yahoo.com.ar 

www.mptango.com

Sue Dallon

Firehouse Tango

Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Today, I'd like to share with you some of my personal recollections about how the teaching of Tango evolved over time during the late 1980's and into the early 1990's here in the USA. As I remember, our first response to the 1985 lessons we were receiving from cast members of the show "Tango Argentino" was to view them as extensions -- albeit quite exotic -- of our own well-established ballroom tradition (by this time quasi-competition oriented). What I mean by this is that we automatically made certain assumptions about Tango, which ultimately turned out not to be true. The most consequential of these were the following:

·      That Tango ultimately consisted of a finite repertoire or "syllabus"

·      That like our own indigenous ballroom dances, this syllabus either was -- or at least could be -- codified into a graduated sequence of static, learnable figures, starting with a "basic" step, and moving on from there

·      That like our progressive dances (Foxtrot, Waltz, etc.), Tango was rooted in continuous movement

In hindsight, I think we (students and dance teachers alike) made these assumptions principally because:

1.     There was a profound disconnect between the way we viewed dancing, and the way   practitioners in Argentina did

2.     Neither we nor our Argentine mentors were aware of this fundamental disconnect

3.     Due to this crucial lack of communication, our early Argentine instructors -- of whom most were themselves oriented toward performance rather than social dance -- weren't able to provide us with what we needed in order to learn properly -- and we didn't even know the right questions to ask

Eventually, through the efforts of perceptive people who recognized the differences between Tango and our own conventions here in this country, a more authentic approach to learning this unique dance tradition began to emerge. With a more social-dance oriented crop of Argentine instructors coming to the USA on a regular basis during the early 1990's (thanks to the efforts of people like Daniel Trenner), we began to hear ideas like these:

"Tango is a way of walking"

"Women need to wait at the end of every individual step they take"

"Tango is completely improvised both in its repertoire, and in the way one responds to its music"

"There are no 'steps' in Tango"

To us, these were at first nothing short of revolutionary concepts. They absolutely defied our established ballroom dance tradition. And as it turns out, however, understanding these radical notions was utterly essential to even beginning to comprehend Tango as it is danced in Argentina.

Though some students, teachers, and schools in this country continue to resist embracing the differences between Tango and "ballroom" dancing, most of us have over time come to accept that

·      Tango does not consist of a finite syllabus of memorizable figures -- it is indeed improvised in the moment. Or, as we hear again and again from our Argentine teachers, there are no steps.

·      Unlike what has come to be commonplace in our own partner-dance tradition, there is no basic step in Tango (from which other figures derive as variants).

·      The essential skill necessary to dance social Tango is the complex -- but precise -- mechanism of lead/follow.

The fundamental basis for movement in social Tango is not the so-called 8-count basic step (which is an invention designed to consolidate various individual skills into a recognizable sequence for teaching purposes only). Rather, the basis for social Tango is a single step (forward, backward, side, in-place), which has a beginning (lead/follow), a middle (traveling through space or in place), and an ending (balance at rest).

One of the difficulties with these ideas is that they're not sexy. Many male students continue even now to prefer the acquisition of elaborate stage figures over the slow and steady development of foundational skills. (Do you recognize yourself in this description?) At the same time, many female students continue to obsessively crave the latest adornments with which they choose to clutter up their dance rather than electing to move simply, with quiet elegance, finding stillness at the conclusion of their individual steps. These distortions of what in my opinion is appropriate in fostering and maintaining the social Tango tradition are lamentable, but, regrettably, all too common in our American dance culture.

One possible antidote to this behavior is to buy a ticket to Buenos Aires as soon as you can, go to the milongas, and see for yourself what choices the milongueros make in their dancing. You will, I hope, be humbled by their simplicity, and inspired to emulate their good taste.

Next week, we'll consider the make-up, construction and practice of Tango through the eyes of a seasoned milonguero -- who's going to spell out for us what we really need -- and don't need -- in order to be a good social Tango dancer.

See you then.

Please join us for our Saturday Practica at Dardo Galletto Studios, 151 West 46^th Street (between 6^th and 7^th Avenues), 11^th floor; 2-4pm, $10 per person. (Bringing a partner isn't necessary.) Pat and I will both be on hand to answer any questions you may have about your dancing, and to help you with material you're working on. Plus you get a new “must-have” tango move each week! If you’d like a private lesson, you can visit our website at www.franchesleigh.com, call Fran directly at 212-662-7692, or email him at franchesleigh@mac.com Join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/franchesleighllc

Los Pitucos Milonga brings the best of Argentine Tango to Northern New Jersey.

Experience the finest of Buenos Aires at our Saturday night Milonga at VFW.

Los Pitucos is a Monthly event which is held on the Third Saturday of the month...

Find yourself engulfed in the
spirit of Buenos Aires, circa 1940.  Mingle with other delightful Tango dancers.

Allow the romance of the period music to move you.

Your evening's hosts "El Tordo" and "El Zurdo" are dedicated to an authentic and enjoyable Tango

experience.  Our DJ (and instructor) El Tordo, incorporates composers from the

"Golden Age of Tango" to replicate the best of the Milongas of Buenos Aires.

Milonga Los Pitucos is
the first and only Milonga to offer gourmet food, prepared fresh,

by our chef "El Tordo".  Chef Tordo takes pride in creating a new dish for every event.

We have been bringing the finest Tango events and music to New Jersey since 2009.

    ● Beginners Welcome... no partner necessary.

         ● Cocktail Bar area - BYOB

    ●
Munchies & Finger food (Feel free to bring a dish to share...)

    ● The evenings "delight" is made fresh before the Milonga by chef "El Tordo"

Facebook Members: Please join Los Pitucos Milonga group by clicking here

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

• Steve Maisch - 
• Tsipoyra Sartan
• ​​​​​​​Elena Titova
• Mike Porro
  
• Georgina, Daniel
  
• Felix 
  
• Bob Brillo
• ​​​​​​​​Steve Turi
• Lynn Gross
• Jesse Barton