Argentine Tango Workshop (from my Facebook page)

I will be teaching a two-hour workshop on Argentine Tango to be held at Infinity Dance 4428 Convoy Street, San Diego, CA 92111, on Saturday August 21, 2010 at 10:30AM. Argentine (not to be confused with American or International style) Tango is arguably the most sensual dance in the world, but one does not approach it like other Ballroom and Latin dances. The hold is compact, not unlike Rumba, but much more intimate. The rules for partnership that are so well established in Ballroom go out the window with this dance. Anyone who has had more than 20 minutes of dance instruction from any moderately experienced professional knows that virtually every dance has elements in common with nearly every other dance. Not so with Argentine Tango. There is really nothing like else like it. Furthermore, I found that there is a whole subculture within the dance world of people who do nothing else but Argentine Tango, and almost none of the standard teaching methods I knew appeared to be in use.

I saw Argentine for the first time in the late 1980s while watching the Tony awards on TV. Some of the cast members from the show "Tango Argentino" performed. I was intrigued, to say the least, but it did not not look like anything I was learning. At the time, I had been teaching for about five or six years, I was competing on the professional circuit, and training with the best coaches in the country. Even they could not help me.

In 1990 or 1991 I saw a live Tango floor show performed at Starlight Dance Studio by Danel and Maria Bastone, who taught it in New York City and were doing Tango shows all over the country. They taught workshops the next day, including one for professionals only. My hard-earned Ballroom technical knowledge was not very useful at this point, especially since the Lady's head was now resting on my shoulder instead of the comparatively upright and locked position that I was used to. Once I accepted that this is a completely different way of dancing, I found that it was not all that difficult.

After a fair amount of trial and error, more training, and simply more practice, I have devised a way of teaching Argentine Tango that makes sense to Ballroom (as compared to Argentine) dancers. In my workshop, as always, I will introduce a series of different steps to be arranged in a repeatable sequence. In addition, I will also show how to add flourishes, alter rhythms, and rearrange steps.

The workshop is Basic to Intermediate level and is open to anyone who is has had little or no exposure to Argentine Tango, although anyone attending should at least be a reasonably experienced social dancer. The cost is $12 per person if registering the day of the workshop, or $10 per person for PAID registrations on or before Friday August 20, 2010.