Royal Tango

As a musician I was constantly assimilating newness (music, posture, left or right hand patterns, rhythms, styles, new and deeper levels of awareness for everything that goes in to playing an instrument) and finding the way to integrate and master those new skills and insights. For me it always feels like I’m opening and engaging a new part of my brain. And pushing that edge, going deeper, feeling and noticing more is the first step to mastery.

Next comes the price of actually working on what you suck at…being a toddler again, beginning anew. Can you dare to look at those areas that don’t work, could be improved? Can you humble yourself to look at, hear, feel, notice what parts of your art differ from your ideal?

These questions are exciting for me, mostly because of the discomfort inherent in shedding light on the darkness. Implicit in the above questions is the notion of comparison. I’d like to draw a distinction between competition and comparison. Competition is comparison with the goal of winning a real or imaginary battle with those that you compare and yourself or your team. Comparison is simply putting something (possibly yourself) next to something else and noticing what you see.

Do you have an aesthetic ideal?
Do you have an practical, artistic, spiritual goal?
Good. With those in mind:
What do you like about that person’s dance?
What do you not like?

With something as fuel (excitement, inspiration, frustration), do something about it.

Ok, tango.
I’ll give an example. Watching hundreds of youtube videos has given me a vast store of possibilities of movement and style. I watch and select things I want to try or incorporate. One of the first things I ever got very frustrated by was the aesthetic of my own dance, specifically my walk. Watching videos of myself I was appalled to see how my feet hit the ground, how clumsy my movements were, how distorted my posture constantly looked. That was the first flash of insight. I used frustration as fuel and have devoted more than the last year specifically to elegance. I have more to say on elegance for another post.

Examples of elegance I like:
Gustavo y Gisele. Watch how their feet index the ground.

Jaimes Friedgen y Cecilia González. Foot movement. Elegance and fluidity. Musicality!

I’ll refrain from posting videos that I don’t like. But in general, toe-first forward walking, sliding forward steps, sloppy-twisted-ankle back steps and general sloppiness drive my aesthetic tastes crazy.

More on these processes next post.

Good tandas to you,
A

WOW!

What a crazy last year and a half.
Dana asked me what I would have said if someone would have told me in High School (when she first knew me) that I’d be a professional tango dancers…Ha!

I’d like to see the look on my younger self’s face. There has been such a phenomenal transformation in my life in the last 10 years. From a budding classical musician to struggling performance artist to SERIOUS classical musician to yoga teacher to jack of all trades, and now to tango teacher, with all that other stuff under the hood.

Since I started tango in April of 2007 (feels so long ago) I’ve devoted myself to the rough hewing, shaping, sanding and polishing of the aesthetic of tango as an expression of music that I see in my mind. My artistic vision is my strongest motivator. ‘How do you move perfectly to the music in unison with another artist?

My vision for this blog-like website is to share what I’m excited about as I push my edge further.

I am absolutely a youtube baby. I taught myself for the first 4 months. I’ve taken 4 privates (Dominic Bridge, Evan Griffiths, Tomas Howlin, Jaimes Friedgen) and been to 5 weekend workshops (Ney/Jennifer, Evan, Korey/Mila, Robin Thomas, Jaimes), 9 festivals (Houston[which I orgainized], Austin, Atlanta, Stone Soup, Minneapolis, Denver Memorial, SFTX, Denver Labor, Ashland) five of which I taught my yoga for tango class at. Dancing with the hundreds of amazing follows and leaders has been my main experiential teacher, yet youtube has been my primary exposure to the possibilities of tango and as such, I consider it my primary teacher.

With that, here’s one of the first videos I saw that made something click in my brain that made me know that I could do tango and that tango was an incredible art.

For me, these were part of the beginning. Scrutinizing and analyzing until I understood.
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With joy,
Andrew