Every week, you’ll find on our blog class notes and a summary video from our Wednesday and Sunday tango group classes.

These video and notes are meant to help our students remember what they’ve done in class.

Dimension: Interactions - Theme: Ganchos & enganches

Ganchos are steps where one partner (often the follower) kicks under the other's leg and enganches are steps where one partner (again normally the follower) wraps one leg around the partner's leg. They are very emblematic to tango and most non tango dancers will think tango is what these steps are about.

Summary video



 

Beginners/Improvers: Gancho from parada

Top tips

  • Leaders: To lead the gancho, invite your partner to step over your leg and then block her with your left arm so that she doesn’t collect her feet. From this position, return her to her axis with a gentle circular move and at the same time, bend your right knee and lift your heel to create space under the leg.
  • Followers: For the gancho, you absolutely need to first establish contact with the leader’s thigh before bending your knee. This is not a “nice to have”, it is a must or you might kick and potentially hurt your partner.

 

Intermediates & up: Gancho from parada with right leg

Top tips

  • Leaders: Same lead but when your partner is stepping with the other leg.
  • Followers: This is quite a complex step in which your giro technique needs to be impeccable: step continuously without pausing at the corner and in a square around your partner.

 

Intermediates & up: Enganches

Top tips

  • Leaders: Enganches are created from a circular movement from the chest, whether from the cross, the cortado or the giro. In a way, you need to “trap” your partner’s leg so that it wraps around yours.
  • Followers: The energy for enganches is must softer than that of wraps. Do no think so much of a strong kick but rather of a soft movement.

 

Homework

Top tips

  • Leaders: Ganchos are often mistreated on the dancefloor. They are often badly led or even if led correctly, the leader often doesn’t create enough space for his partner. Practice the lead from the chest together with the motion from the leg (lift your heel and bend the knee witout moving your axis forward) as we did in class.
  • Followers: In the gancho, we bend the free leg because we hit our partner’s. The movement comes from the hip and not from the knee. Practice moving the leg freely from the hip and then flicking backwards as we did in class.