These new workshops are intensive 3 hour classes with a small break.
There is a new focus each month. If you’re coming from out of town, come for the
workshop and stay for Carmela and Jeanine’s milonga Sat!
**Just so everyone knows, I will be moving back to Houston on April 1st. These will be the last classes I teach here in Eugene as a native, so please come and bring your friends.
It would be great to see you all there!
This month:
When:
Sat, JAN 30 , 1-4 pm
Nuevo Tango Intensive
A handle for the evolution of tango. We will look at the newest ideas of the fundamental approach to the dance, from embrace to vocabulary. Focus is on connection, creativity, musicality and style.
Price:
$20. 1/2 price for full-time students.
Location:
The Reach Center
2540 Harris
A NEW INTENSIVE EACH MONTH:
Saturdays from 1-4 PM
FEB 27 Close Embrace MAR 20 Music + Musicality
Close Embrace - Looking exclusively at the most addictive expression of the dance, we will dissect, understand and explore the subtleties of the embrace, limits and openings when we choose to dance close.
Music + Musicality - Both a deep look into the music that we dance to as well as well as a series of processes that get us to hear what is happening on the most exquisite levels. Then how to translate that into our personal expression of movement and emotion.
This is a very common movement in tango. You see it everywhere in vals, milonga and everything from the 90 year olds to the most ‘nuevo’. Its often hidden in turns, angles wide and narrow and speed, but its there.
If there is a spanish name for this movement I’d love to know!
Next time we’ll look at the movment with a partner, add more details and play with variations.
and we create a stopped and rebounded energy for very clear and powerful check-steps. These can be done in parallel or cross system and in any direction.
Here are Monday’s + Wednesday’s editions rolled into one.
Today I begin a few simple and somewhat challenging exercises to build up strength in the standing leg and open up freedom in the free leg, by using a spicy balancing posture while articulating the free leg. Practice these like everything else, one song per side per day and you will feel a tremendous increase in your stability and control.
Exploring my headspace, and the way each of us think, has always fascinated me and shaped the way I teach. What do I bring to this moment? To this dance? To this conversation?
Here are some of my thoughts on how to distinguish where your attention is during dancing. Are you aware of the little voices chattering away in your head? What are they saying? How do they affect your experience, your performance, your enjoyment? In other words: what’s in your head?
This is part 2 of a 3 part molinete series looking at training around a chair to cultivate precision, balance and elegance in molinete. Today is we finish the movement with the pivots in the front and back step, how they are generated and a few tips on making them better.
Molinete on the dance floor around your partner is rounded (obviously!) so there is another way of moving that has to be integrated ultimately, yet, if you can do molinete around the chair with balance and grace, it becomes effortless to translate that into rounded movements, but the reverse is not quite as true.
In addition to my written blog postings I’m introducing a regular video blog. Focuses will include dance technique for a variety of styles and levels, classes, practicing, how to get the most out of practicas and milongas, interviews y mas.
Today’s topic is the first of a three part series on molinete. I love to look at molinete around a chair to create an environment that requires:
larger steps, which cultivates more power in your movement and exposes inelegance,
linear movement, which is often lost in the ‘falling-this-way-or-that’ tendencies when we have every angle available us,
specific direction and size of steps, which focuses our precision even more to do a step exactly this big, exactly there, into exactly a 180 degree pivot,
balance on each step.
I find that working for one song a day on each side around a chair can be an excellent practice. Of course, the way in which you practice is equally important to what you practice, but that’s another video.
I’m enjoying the challenge of slowing down to clean, connect with my partner, my family and guests, cook and the endless chores. Thanks to everyone one of you for the contribution you make to the world, your circles and mine! Enjoy your day and your obsurd amounts of food!
I’m super psyched to share that tomorrow is the launch of my new yoga video blog at: royalyogastudio.com
+
at my youtube channel HERE: youtube.com/adugas
+ don’t miss that beginning next Friday I’ll begin my tango video blog! Just go to my youtube channel and click the ‘Tango Blog’ playlist
Every Mon, Wed + Fri there will be a new post on every topic from technique to etiquette to practicing to teaching to learning to music to DJing and whatever else is exciting to y’all! Shoot me an email with topics or questions and I’ll create a blog about it!
Imagine a general walking before the troops under his command to deliver a speech before a bloody, pivotal battle. He begins by puffing himself up and storming onto the podium raising a fist high into the air and opening his mouth wide saying in a meek voice:
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh…I, uh. I’mmmmmm not exactly suuuuuuuure of what we need to do, you know? I’m feeling a little stressed right now and really confused. What do you guys think we should do?” Imagine the response of the troops who’s lives are being risked by this general. It won’t be one of confidence. He isn’t leading. To lead is to listen, carefully planning and then: decide. Leading is decision, direction, action. Call it the yang, the fire. In the dance I must move. I must move in way that inspires trust. The surest way to trust is clear invitation and caring about the safety of my partner. Sweetness.
Now imagine having a conversation with someone who interrupts you with non sequiturs after every few words. They look distracted and seem to be both oblivious to your words and absorbed in their own thought (maybe checking out their body in the mirror or chuckling at thoughts in their head). There is a lack of awareness, receptivity and rapport. You are not being met in the conversation. On the other end of the spectrum, nor are you simply passive in your listening, sitting blankly, occasionally nodding with understanding. Lets say you are flow, movement. Yin.
An image I had very early on in tango was that of a river. The follower in tango is the river, and I am the banks of the river, shaping the flow. The river ultimately decides and often just overflows the banks, and yet, I subtly and clearly attempt to define the course of each twist and turn. When I dance, I want to dance with you! Where are you? Who are you? How do you move? Let me know…this is a conversation.
In the yin and yang symbol, the black is not purely black, and the white not purely white. As a leader I am also not purely ‘leading’, as in a confident general. As a follow I am not purely ‘following’, as in passive listening. There is an element of the each role always present, fluctuating with each moment passing, each movement and shift. As a leader, I must move, and yet my partner doesn’t I can’t. I stop and adjust. Thus I am always following my ‘follow’. As a follower I am responding to the impulses I feel and yet I am not simply surfing their energy, weakly, meekly, passively nodding in agreement as a puppet in the dance. No! I move move myself too! I must. I am light not because I weight nothing (which I don’t!), I am light because I respond, I move, I choose to flow instantaneously with the feeling I perceive.
My job as a leader:
Powerful, irresistible leader: decision, direction, action, balance.
Action through clear invitation.
Responsible for both my own and my partner’s balance, connection, fun.
My job as a follower:
Match the energy of my partner.
“Listening” to three things from my partner - When, How far & What direction.
Responsible for my own balance, powering my movement, enjoyment.
In the milonga, that’s where I leave it, if there’s a mistake, its mine (lead of follow). In a class or private, you pay me to make you wrong for everything I see. If there’s a mistake, its your fault.
Next time we discuss the difference between practicing and dancing.
Cheers and marvelous dancing to you all,
A
Here are two videos of a master of Tai Chi push-hands, an art that has endlessly informed my tango. The lines between lead and follow are intentionally blurred and shifting to through you opponent off. The ‘pushing’ is always from the flow and is usually a devious masking of a push as a innocent movement…until the last moment. If you haven’t try it!
