Recently, while assisting another teacher in a beginning tango class, the students I was working with were trying close embrace for the first time. The teacher prompted them to find a comfortable hug, then gradually introduced variations to make the embrace work for tango. Both of the students I was working with started with a very comfortable […] Read more…
In partner dancing we commit to gathering our senses around the music and moving together. This is the beauty of our art. But with the goal of a shared dance, the ability to groove solo is often overlooked in favor of partnering skills and movement technique. Of course these are essential, but to find a […] Read more…
“When you lead this move, my weight goes into my heel. It’s subtle, not too uncomfortable, but it’s consistent every time. Can you feel yourself coming into my space?” “I can’t tell.” He leads the move again, watching himself in the mirror. “I think maybe I’m leaning, but I can’t feel it. What do you […] Read more…
Quite often I hear comments equating the lack of an improvisational quality in someone’s dancing with “doing choreography.” When someone says this, they don’t mean that the dancer has planned the entire dance movement by movement in advance. What they usually mean is that the figures they’ve learned are being repeated without connecting them to, […] Read more…