Roxana Suares and her playfulness!

Lucky me to hit this video from Brussels Tango Festival again and I was moved near to tears by the  Edith Piaf vals she and Fernando Sanchez were dancing that year! Nearly painfully enjoyable!

Her excellent technique is always visible but the playfulness and musicality came to glow this time!

The year after, 2016,  she danced with Chicho and proved the same!

Enjoy you too!

https://youtu.be/VdtqoOVo5Kk
https://youtu.be/bzLouDyOnnc

An early female leader

Fabiano Sharna is a longtime female leader who started among the first female leaders in the world to lead in public!

Here some of the thoughts she want to share with us others

. . . report greater satisfaction with their overall social tango experience when they share learning and dancing time with other women.

. . . Beyond my own story, though, one of the biggest reasons I continue to offer events for women is simply to keep them dancing! I want tango to be healthy and inspiring for women and the truth is that it is not always that.

. . . Because when women DO stay involved for the long haul, and find ways to enjoy tango on their own terms, everyone wins! The community as a whole grows stronger and benefits both from their dancing skills and also from a multitude of creative contributions that range from DJ-ing to dressmaking.


The whole story you can find via the link below:
http://www.sharnafabiano.com/blog/2016/4/27/lady-leaders

She has been working on these aspects for a long time. Here her thoughts from 2011

The mishmatch shoes

She visited Buenos Aires and bought shoes. Different colors but same model, the only one fitting her capricious feet.
At home the pairs were worn out after months of dancing but she liked the model and the old lady who was running the shop was trusted. So the next pair was ordered at distance and was delivered across the Atlantic.

It was a disaster. The new pair did not fit.

After some time she was traveling to Buenos Aires again and the shoes with her!

The shopkeeper took a good look at the model, checked the dimensions, asked some questions about my friends special needs and when there wasn't any she said that the shoes were wrongly build!

The front part was size 37 as it should but the heel belonged to a size 38. That was the reason of the bad fit. But that wasn't a problem for her because they could rebuild the shoe, open up the heel and place a correct size 37 there.

When my friend showed the reminds of the earlier pairs, the highly beloved ones, she offered to restore them. Her team could open up the shoe, replace some of the worn out parts and then complete the reparation. That message gave back happy pista for her and some of the other followers my friend met there!

Eleonora Kalganova Women's Technique 5

When you see her dancing you will remember her!

The footwork is fantastic and I understand why after seeing her exercise. They differ from other videos because the movements are so small that you are actually able to apply this on your dance, and use on the pista!

Enjoy!





Here you have a walz from September this year!

Follower navigating

Sometimes when the floor is uneasy some followers start to take responsibility for navigation by indicating for troubles behind the leaders neck. It is mostly a discrete pull with her left hand suggesting that the leader should change direction or something.

It has happened earlier but I can not recall any memories of these early warnings. Today I find it quite disturbing! Most of the times the warning comes just a fraction before my change of direction but still it interferes the dance rhythm, the natural flow of movements.

If the couple has been involved in several and severe bumps when the axes of the couples are shaking - then there is reason to interfere. But why should you do it in other cases?

Once when the pista was very crowded a follower commented: I opened my eyes and was frightened - the other couples were so near! I decided to keep the eyes closed during the rest of this tanda and the leader got to cope with the situation.

Tango - an unequal dance

Tango is an unequal dance because the followers chances to a deep dance are much bigger compared to the leaders. When a leader has a good technical level and navigation skills the followers can feel safe, relax, enjoy the music and reach the deepest levels within her. Sometimes down to a meditative state.

For me the situation is more demanding. To get towards that meditative dance a leader needs a safe, predictable pista and to get there we are depending on all the other leaders. When the pista is working fine the navigation requires hardly any of my capacity and I can also get a deeper dance then.

I wonder when can we get a pista where all we leaders are working together for this enjoyable goal: a safe, predictable but fun pista? Sometimes when I look the crowd I nearly loose my hope of getting there in my lifetime.

This one is a positive exception!

A one night tanda

At my home pista I am actually not interested about a one night tanda. I am much more interested about long term dance relationships.

Sometimes it takes many months to establish a new relationship because there is several things we need to know about each others before coming to a mutual understanding and dancing. Does she have her own musicality?  Do we share the same musicality? Are we dancing well together? Can we talk about other things than tango? Her boyfriend, does he accept me?  and so on. . . .

So sometimes I just sit and watch the dancers even when the music is wonderful!

History impact on a tanda

In Athens:  the girl told me 
she took some steps on her own 
during our tanda.

She told it's because of her origin,
because she is from Sparta.

I did not noticed, it was ok

Wikipedia:
In ancient Sparta in contrast to Athens, the girls were reared much like boys, including physical fitness training. 









http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_Sparta

The different goals on one pista

It is not so easy to notice that on this very same pista people have different goals, which are driving the split of the group to different subgroups.

We could compare the possible groups in a runner's world to see the activators there and to compare those with the dancers' world. We maybe could agree about following groups: Sunday stroll, Easy training for health, to Get Good at running and the Long Distance Runners who are testing their personal edges.

Can you identify the corresponding groups in your dance community? 

I think the social aspects are strongest for the *Sunday stroll* group and least of importance for the *LongDistance* dancers. There are maybe some health aspects too but not for the Long Distance dancers who are pushing themselves through pain and injuries. The skill development must be extremly important for the LongDistance group and even for the GetGood dancers who are travelling for workshops and milongas around the world .

Which of these would be your group? 

I think your dance life will be much more pleasurable if you can identify the group which suits your interests. If you can find the other dancers with the same goals in your community, establish relationships with those dancers and you will create the most harmonious atmosphere possible for your dance life.

A milonga with max 10 followers

If the milonga is three hours long the organizer should allow at maximum 10 followers to attend the venue. That is the only change to give a good service.

When a DJ is using medium long cortinas there will be four (4) tandas per hour. In this case I can have two rests during the night. With other words I will dance 4tandas, rest one, dance 3, rest one and then dance 3 tandas again.

This kind of small milongas would make it possible for me to offer a tanda to everyone, if they are interested. It would also be easy and natural to say hello to each and everyone. 
What a releaf for a leader!

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written on a dark day      

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I desperately appreciate the followers who can handle a frustrating situation, who can see the actual situation even for the leaders and who are willing to work persistent for the tandas they are longing for. You have my eye! If you are interested.

An advantage of a new focus!

Sometimes it is helpfull to find a new focus point. One of my followers is a nervous kind of person, very like me there, worrying to make mistakes. I could feel it in her body because it was stiff and somehow jumping in to the next step. But one day that was different, up to the degree that I commented it. She told that she got tired to be so nervous and has decided to focus on music and leave the leading to me. If I did not fix her feet, she would give me a second try! :)