The Healing Embrace and coordination

An old story worth to be made visibly again!

* Argentine tango seems to have good effects even medically
* Both body AND mind are stimulated
* The need to coordinate your movements trains the muscle control for persons with Parkinson's
* Among different treatments tango is equally good or better
* Beneficial because of closeness
* Alzheimer patients are often isolated but get a possibility to communicate in dance
* Dance training makes them feel happy


I hope you wish to read the whole article and you will find it here below!

               Tango Therapy: The Healing Embrace

Exhausted, tired balance

The follower had had a difficult period in life, but now she was on her way back to the pista. She closed her eyes and started to dance prepared to enjoy the tanda as usual with this leader. But surprisingly his abrazo was unstable on that night and he was continously pulling her out of axis. 

When she opened her eyes, she noticed that the leader was as stable as usual, but her own balance was different. Her balance was tired, she told, it was strong enough to manage the situation by the visual support, but not the more demanding dance with closed eyes. 


PS
There is a game where the players are closing their eyes, standing on one leg and the one managing the longest time will win. I think the followers have good training to get all top positions in this game!  :)

Performing to Solo Tango

Rodrigo Palacios and Agustina Berenstein performing at Frostbite 2014 to Solo Tango!

Enjoy!                                                          

Dancing to Solo Tango

One of the festival bonuses are the breakfast discussions with friends. On Sunday morning we were discussing the Solo Tango orchestra and the easiness to dance to their music. One of friends pointed out the actually obvious fact that Solo Tango is an orchestra in DiSarli tradition and the dancers find their steps easily. Most other orchestras are fascinated about Piazzolla and the steps are different.

Here are we dancing to Solo Tango at Frostbite 2014!





The blur effect is applied for privacy reasons.

An after effect on balance

When I participated on my first workshop weekend I got clear effects on my balance!

During those days we had a local workshop and then a small milonga. We were dancing in this way for several days and my steps started to flow naturally compared to the week before. On the following Monday when I was doing my morning meditation I had a strong feeling of floating up and down on soft waves as on a boat. My blance organ had been so involved on dancing that it was echoing even days afterward!

I wonder how much this kind of phenomenon impacted my following at those days?
Was it disturbing for the leader, did they feel that I was unstable?
Could this be more a follower effect? Followers are often dancing with closed eyes and do not stabilise the horizon.

This came to my mind today, because I have the same feeling after the Frostbite festival in Helsinki. This time it is not the dance - my body has used to the soft waves of this dance - but the boat! Nearly 17 hours on a relatively rough sea on my way back home has kept my body on the waves, even on the solid ground. I wonder how long this will continue?

Frostbite 2014

Later night view when my feet needed a rest!

The number of available dances and a remedy

The painful fact is that the NUMBER of AVAILABLE dances is too low leaving many followers frustrated. To me the following two alternatives are the main possibilities to create a better situation.

You can ease the situation by REDISTRIBUTING the EXISTING dances by implementing new social rules so more followers can step to the pista.

To create a change so the follower group could cooperate and initiate mentor programs/ other activities to atract MORE LEADERS to START and STAY on pista.

This is a follower problem and needs a follower action!


Want to read more?
http://leadingladyl.blogspot.se/2014/02/women-cooperate.html

Dreaming of tango in Paris

It is early in the spring now but soon they will dance near Seine!

Shall we meet there?

Click here for the video!

Only youtube links are working directly - others need to be clicked!

:)

Balance, lost in whiteness

I never thought that a room itself could break my balance!

I had been dancing normally an hour or two, when we decided to go to the next milonga. It was a new one for me, located at a photo studio. For those purposes the room was white. I meen totally white; white floor, same white color on walls and the ceiling. The floor was slightly sloping towards the corner where our DJ was playing.

At first tanda I was lost, my balance was gone. Totally lost and it just continued. When talking about it, I heard some other leaders having similar problems and we became aware of that we were missing our guiding lines; the edges where the floor and the wall meet as well as the edge for the ceiling and the wall.
I suppose the followers were more aware of the uneven floor than the whiteness. Same pista but different difficulties!

Anyhow my body learned, adapted and the dance started to flow as usual. Later on I got an idea about using this as a special kind of tough balance training!

Photo Credit: Airi Iliste, Stockholm, 2014

At Milonga Brujo, February 2014

El Pibe y Geraldin - Tango El Adios

The musical interpretation El Pibe Avellaneda gives us here together with Geraldine is magic!
This time I am captured by all the round movements he leads for Geraldines foot; on the floor or in the ear, matching Donatos music beautifully.

The first favorite is at 0.30 where her left foot goes to left.
http://youtu.be/AxmVbnSzy1g?t=30s




One more is the section starting at 1min, with some repetitions.
http://youtu.be/AxmVbnSzy1g?t=1m

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A habanera tiger from China!

This is an old film but what a voice and charisma she has!

It still hits me with full power!

Relearn every five years!

Why should we accept the statement which is tumbling around and saying that you need to
GET tango RIGHT from the BEGINNING.

When I started to learn tango I had been walking for 45 years with different faults!

In the first wave I learned an open salong walk untill the Nuevo steps swept me away.

Today it is nearly and mostly milonguero but you never know when I jump to other steps!

You can just trust on your body  - it will relearn and develop to the direction you want!

.

The hidden followers

There are teachers who create copies. You can recognize the movements and sometimes the similarities go down to clothes and hair cut. I feel sorry when seeing it.

Amanda and Adrian Costa are tango teachers who give their students the right to find their own expressions and steps. They train your technique, musicality and musical interpretation, but you choose your steps yourself.

You will have difficulties to spot their students based on the visual similarities.

I like that! I appreciate that a lot!

Please enjoy Adrian and Amanda @Tango South London!      

(the picture is not linked. use the one above, please)   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmKGMRR5W1k

Theories for tango steps

There are very few theoreticians in tango but Mauricio Castro is one. I have been struggling through his books TANGO.Die Struktur des Tanzes I and volume II. Yes it would have been easier in English but those volumes were sold out at that time so I needed to activate my German, from early days in my life. (are available in English now)

It was a glad surprise to meet him at our local milonga at Pelé and chat for a while!

You can check his ideas in books at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=mauricio%20castro

Game for better life!

Jane McGonigal's game SuperBetter and her TED talk emphasizes the idea of training your mental muscles to cope with the difficulties of your life.

Link to the video!    

There is a commercial verson of this game but I will test my own one!

The strengths to be trained:
Physical strength - I go up every hour
Mental strength - I stick to my small goals and let them grow on the way
Emotional strength - look and read about something which makes me feel good
Social strength - connect to someone

Activities:
Create an Avatar - it unlocks me from my everyday boundaries
Ask people play with me - It is easier than asking for help
Identify the bad guys - define what is driving me down
Fine my allies - they are coming in bigger numbers than I think
Define my goals - walk 10 m, if it is my maximum.  MY goals, just that!

Peninsula Cho!

The leading woman I appreciate most is Peninsula Cho from South Korea. She has a musical interpretation of only a few performers today. Her posture shows only a clean, beatiful tango attitude for a leader.

Enjoy the latest one!

Peninsula Cho & Beau Chispita Kim 

playlist including some of her follower performances!
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Peninsula%20cho&sm=3

D'Arienzo twisted on the way!

According to the teacher for this weekend the way of dancing is different in Argentina and in Europe. In Argentina the DJ uses a D'Arienzo tanda to get a better flow and help to organize a chaotic pista. It works because the dancers feel how a D'Arienzo music is driving them forward.

On the way to Europe it changes and the couples start to do frenetic giros which just increases the chaos!

a playlist :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z5qEKxfmm8&list=PLD106DC5512C6F332

They can DANCE in Istanbul!

They both have so strong own beautiful musicality and the solo interpretations are so in line with the whole dance. Wonderful! Their appearance is elegant but still joyful and that is quite an unusual combination! I love them and want to go to Istambul!

Enjoy!

Esref Tekinalp & Vanessa Gauch Arabacioglu @333

If you want to se all this on spot! Find some info here :)
http://www.milongaistanbul.com/?ait-dir-item-category=milonga

A tricky question?

There is a group of tango dancers who claim that we/they can call for tango only the steps taken to the tango music.

What do YOU think about the following situations:

A. The couple is walking the caminata to a good tango song. Is this tango?

B. Another couple on same pista uses earplugs of good quality and can not hear anything but they are using wellknown tango technique in their walk, stepping in time with others. Is this tango?

C. There is an audience, youtube maybe, who has turned off the sound while watching the couple A. Are they watching tango dancing?

D. The same audience without possibility to hear the sound are looking the couple B without knowing about the earplugs. Do they watch tango dancing?

What is your opinion?

May 2014 edition for Seoul Festival is released!

May 2012, on my way to main milonga in Seoul.
They have now released all the god news fo 2014 and still I can not fly, NO, not this year, not for me. I envy you my friends goin there!

More info and updated you can find here!
http://www.seoultangofestival.com/2014/01/2014-seoul-tango-festival-may-1-5.html

Techno Tango

No I have not been at Disco Park but I got similar flickering feeling when dancing tango behind a young couple expressing everything in double tempo. The sharp movements of 4 elbows did emphasize the flickering movement effect even more.

It was so disturbing that I did not cope with those fast flashing movements but advanced diagonally over the pista inbetween two seasoned couples staying in the low tempo of the tanda.