Alain and Halina dancing Tango (Organito de la Tarde)

Dance Conmigo offers private and group classes in Montreal. (www.danceconmigo.com)

Alain and Halina were invited to do a Tango demonstration at a biweekly Caribbean dance party called Family Dance. This parties are organized at Studio Metronome by dance teacher Emile Darius. In this evening they dance "Organito de la Tarde" by Carlos di Sarli.

Halina Dudyk have been coming to Dance Conmigo for over 6 years, and although Halina is above all a social dancer, she enjoys the challenge of performing in front of an audience.

Alain is a Tango addict.  He will take advantage of any possible opportunity to talk about Tango, teach Tango or perform Tango. Alain would be delighted to teach or dance at your next social event.

Variation of Crossing on "5" of Tango basics

Dance Conmigo teaches private and group classes in Montreal (www.danceconmigo.com)

This is a variation of the basic 8 step pattern of Tango. This movement, although not significantly different from the regular basic step, it give a different feel and look to the dance.

 1. The leader takes a regular back step.
2. The leader takes his regular side step. Here I like to take my side step less than 45 degrees from my "one" so that I can indicating our new direction.
3. On my "3" the leader creates Contra body movement of about 45 degrees
4. On "4" both leader and follower take a side step (similar to step "Two")
5. On "5" the leader crosses his feet on the back while the follower crosses her feet on the front.
 6. On "6" the leader rotate the follower's shoulder to align her to go on the line of dancing.
 7. "7 " and "8" should be the same as our regular basic step.

Pictures of the Role Reversal Class

Role reversal in not only a great tool to improve the communication between partners. It is also very fun. All during the class, both leaders and followers could not stop laughing while finding themselves in the other side of the dance. I could see their brains racing to process all the information that they already had but which had to be applied from a different perspective.

I do not know how to thank my student for being so patience with us the teachers. Thank you guys. 

Circular Colgadas: Michelle & Joachim

Circular colgadas are extremely deceiving. At the beginning they seem to be so easy and natural, then as the dancers try learn all the elements that come into play, (body pasture, changes in the abrazo, momentum of the movements, foot positioning) the dancers can realize how difficult this movement can be. After many hours and even weeks of practice, it begins to feel natural, the dancers can get in and out or the circular colgadas with little hesitation  and finally, when the dancers feel comfortable with the movements they realize how easy and natural it is do and wonder how did they ever dance without circular colgadas.

At Dance Conmigo, we dedicated almost the whole Winter 2012 session to learning, practicing and experimenting with  Circular Colgadas. The students were delighted and now it has become part of their every day dancing.

Tango Music for Beginners

Dance Conmigo offers Private and group tango classes

If a person registers for a tango class, love the class and the music, the next logical step would be to get some music to practice. But here comes the question: Which is the best tango music for beginners?

Usually my first tango lesson every session starts with walks. Without explaining any of the characteristics of the Tango walk, I ask students to walk as if they were walking in the streets and then I put a tango song. This Tango song has to be a song in which the beat is clear and constant.

Some of the favorite composers used for beginner classes are Carlos Di Sarly, Francisco Canaro and Miguel Calo; their music has a clear and simple tempo that is easy to follow in our Tango infancy.

After one to three years, a tango dancers begins to understand how to walk in harmony with the music. It is at this moment that the dancer could start experimenting with other composer such as Juan D'Arienso, Anibal Troilo, Ricardo Tanturi.

Of course, when a tango dancer goes to a milonga, he/she does not know the names of the songs that the DJ is playing, and at the beginning, perhaps every song sounds the same, most of them have a violin, a piano and a bandoneon, but the first purchased song should have a clear and steady tempo that would be easy to follow as we concentrate in doing a perfect tango walk.

Forced Crossing in Tango

Dance Conmigo  teaches group and private classes in Montreal.

This week we introduced a simply, playful step that we called "Forced Crossing". The idea is that on our "3" step, the leader will step outside partner in a way in which, when he transfer his weight to his right foot, he pushes her leg and will force her to cross.

Although the step is not intuitively obvious, after doing it a few times, it has a very natural feeling. Its playful nature allow us to use it while dancing tango or dancing milonga.

Try it and let me know how it worked out for you.

Tango Vals, Javier Diaz & Daria Nikolaeva

Tango vals, danced by Javier Diaz & Daria Nikolaeva in St.Petersburg, Russia, 21.04.12.

Dance Conmigo is teaching Tango vals this spring session 2012

When we dance regular tango, there is a lot of room for interpretation of the music, the leaders constantly switch from the tempo to the melody, make long pauses, do contretemps steps or simply dance to the music inside of their head, and somehow, it all seem to work out.

When we dance Tango vals, we have to be more aware of the music and the tempo.  Tango vals is danced to 3/4 time and the tempo could change from slow to very fast within the same song.

Although most of the steps are taken from traditional tango, dancers tend to choose more turning steps, and also choose not to pause as they frequently do in Tango.

So how do we dance Tango vals?

Generally the music is too fast to step in each one of the 3 beats of every measure, to do so would be exhausting. The most common solution is to accentuate the beat 1 of the 3 beats.

Once that we have gotten used to the rhythm stepping on "1", the next step would be to do some syncopations and step twice per 2 beats of music instead of the more traditional tango walk of one step per 2 beats of music. Dancer would generally step on "1" and then either on "2" or on "3".

Although not a regular tempo, in class, I prefer to teach in series of "slows" and "quick-quick". I find it easier to explain to students and for myself as well. That would be 1 step of the 1-2-3 tempo, or two steps within the 1-2-3 tempo.

In the dance floor you might find dancers who never syncopate and who would only make steps on the "1" and this would be perfectly fine, but I have never seen a dancer who syncopates on every beat. Here comes the liberty of interpretation, where a leader can switch from stepping on every "1" and occasionally switch to the quick-quick syncopation.