Improving your social dancing

Another blogger wrote about her dilemma on finding the time and money to improve her dancing.  Tango is a booming industry because of an addiction adults have for taking classes for years in the hopes of dancing like their favorite professionals.  The ego is never satisfied with how well you dance.

I know American women who paid Argentine tango professionals one hundred dollars or more for an hour private lesson.  Did it help their social dancing?  Did the men dance with the women in a milonga?  No.  But the women got to tell their friends about dancing with world-famous tango stars.

What is the best way to improve your social dancing?

1. take lots of group classes, weekend workshops, private lessons?

2. focus on technique and choreography?

3. find a practice partner?

4. dance in the milongas, preferably in Buenos Aires

No. 4 is the best way.  Classes may get you to practice some, but a class of beginners doesn’t help many improve beyond a basic level.  Ladies, you need to dance with men who know how to dance.  Workshops with teachers who disappear in three days with your money do you no good, especially those with a championship title who sell choreography instead of improvisational skills for the milonga.

Case in point.  Jean arrived for her third visit in Buenos Aires.  She danced very little in the milongas during her first two trips because she was too busy with classes and going to the wrong milongas.  She came to improve and gain confidence as a social dancer.  I gave her a milonga schedule where I knew she would dance.  I told her to forget classes with teachers whom she would never see at a milonga.  She followed my advice.  She went to the evening milongas and danced every tanda for four hours, something she never does at her local milonga.  I filmed her dancing in the milonga at the beginning of her trip and at the end.  I pointed out one thing to practice.  Her dancing changed by the end of three months.  She had to adjust to a different partner for each tanda.  The result was she gained confidence, her dancing improved and she enjoyed it more.

Many of the milongueras I know learned to dance in the milongas.  They didn’t learn in classes.  There were no technique classes to attend.  Their private lessons were tandas with the milongueros at Club Almagro and Club Buenos Aires.  The milongueros know how to dance well, and the women learned by dancing with them.

Teachers avoid explaining the embrace because they don’t use it themselves.  It is what sets tango apart from all other social dances.  Any milonguero viejo will tell you that the key to dancing tango is the embrace.   It is the vital element in the tango conversation.

I know many of you are thinking there is no way you can go to Buenos Aires to improve your dancing.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way.  Find a way before the milongas and milongueros are extinct.  Or at least stop taking classes that don’t help your social dancing one bit.