[Tango-L] What to learn first.

[Sergio Vandekier]

Aurora asks what style  do you think should be taught first.

Do you have to learn more than one style?   No, this is not necessary. You 
can learn close embrace and dance that way for the rest of your life 
enjoying most of the things that tango has to offer.

You will be able to dance socially in most places and circulate with ease in 
very crowded milongas.
You will be able to do exhibitions and take part in competitions using close 
embrace salon tango.

This is the situation in most milongas in B.A. where due to lack of space 
people only dance close embrace tango.

If you only know Salon Open embrace or Nuevo Tango you will obtain all the 
benefits of dancing tango as well but you will not be able to dance in very 
crowded places.

You will have to arrive to the popular milongas early or late in order to 
have enough room to dance or else you have to go to certain dances which are 
organized for these particular styles.  Close embrace dancers on the other 
hand  will be able to mingle in these last events without disturbing anyone.

My impression is that close embrace and open embrace have different dancing 
techniques.

Open embrace teaches you a very complete dancing technique that is not only 
useful for tango, milonga and vals but it is also applicable to any type of 
dancing including stage tango.

Under these circumstances you acquire the basis to learn any type of tango 
style and also ballroom dances.

IMO Close embrace and social dancing should be introduced as soon as the 
students can handle the basics of open embrace, so that they will be able to 
dance under any circumstances of space availability.

In this fashion you will have a group able to dance Salon open and close and 
eventually with the introduction of the ocho cortado and a few other 
adjustments the milonguero style, and if so desired even Nuevo tango.

IMO and I have discussed this subject many time with dancers of all styles 
is that if you start dancing close embrace for a long time you end up being 
fixed in that style and become unable to learn the other tango styles either 
due to lack of basic technique knowledge or due to lack of interest, or due 
to lack of necessary physical skill. It is more difficult to make the 
transition from close embrace to Open than the opposite. (many dancers of 
close embrace will think otherwise, mostly the ones that only know close 
embrace and despite of that give opinions on the subject).

Those are my thoghts,  other people may have different opinions. I dance 
Open and close both and feel very comfortable dancing tango in any place. I 
learned Open first and close embrace later.

Under any circumstances what should be avoided is to teach just figures of 
open tango instead of teaching how to dance socially, walking with 
musicality around the dancing floor.

I hope I have not offended anybody with this note, accept it as just one 
opinion more among many different ones.

Best regards, Sergio

_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! 
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/