Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Today, I want to focus on goals. Well, to be more precise, Tango goals.

I’m sure it’s fair to say that if you’re currently studying Tango intensely — or even just taking a class once in a while — your overall goal is to somehow learn how to dance Tango. Okay, that’s obvious. We can safely say that learning Tango is your long-term, out-there-in-the-ether, wish-list goal. But how do you get there? What are the short-term goals that are going to enable you to reach your final destination; i.e., becoming a Tango dancer?

When I decided that I wanted to learn Tango, what I really wanted was to accumulate a working vocabulary of the figures I’d seen in the Broadway show, Tango Argentino. This was my goal. I mean, I already knew how to dance, right? (I had been a professional dancer/teacher for over 20 years by this time!) I figured that all I’d need now would be to add a bunch of new material to my repertoire. Right?

Wrong.

If you’re like me, you probably want to start learning fancy figures and sequences right from the get-go, too. The majority of my students want me to hand over “the good stuff” right away. They’ll worry about the boring technical foundations sometime later (usually way later, down the road (if ever). Leaders want steps; followers want adornments. Let’s cut to the chase.

Does this sound familiar?

Eventually, I began to realize that there was a serious disconnect between my long-term goal (becoming a Tango dancer), and the route I had chosen to get there — without first understanding the special skills and techniques necessary to make such figures and sequences work as they were supposed to. With great reluctance, I started to identify small, short-term goals, which I believed would put me on a path to real mastery of the material I wanted to learn — rather than inadequately superficial familiarity and largely incompetent execution.

If you’ve been following my Tango Tips over the years, you won’t be shocked to learn that my short-term goals (and I hope yours after reading this) involved first becoming as proficient as possible at primary lead/follow interactions between my partners and myself; i.e., leading/following forward, backward, sideward, and in-place movements, as well as pauses, and pivots. I supplemented this by developing specific exercises, designed to enhance balance and make partnering interactions within such material easier to master.

When I teach my highly motivated students today, I find myself applying these same principles in order to offer them the best chance of actually learning the material they want — rather than simple staggering through the motions, and never really gaining the competence they’re after.

If this all sounds good to you, I invite you — I urge you — to re-evaluate your premature pre-occupation with elaborate steps and sequences (long-term goal), and focus intensely on the short-term goal of building the essential skills and techniques that you need to ensure that you really do finally achieve true mastery of Tango.