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.

This month, we are looking at steps inspired by old school milongueros, these couples who danced during the Golden Age of tango and who paved the way. We are encouraging you strongly to watch videos of each of these couples on Youtube. The steps we are showing in class are inspired by these old school milongueros, but if you want to have a better idea of their own individual style, musicality, elegance, you’ll need to watch their videos. We’ll be posting quite a few videos on our blog too, so come back often!

Dimension: Immersion - Theme: Steps inspired by los Perez

Los Perez are unavoidable in Buenos Aires. Apparently all tango world champions have trained with them at some point. We started the beginners class with a simple ocho with sacada before moving on to an ocho with leader's adornment, a giro with a barrida and a playful little cadencia.

Summary video

 

Beginners & improvers: Ocho with sacada

Top tips

  • Leaders: Keep your cool in the sacada and make sure you move into the follower’s space with precision but on the beat and not faster.
  • Followers: Your ochos should be, as always, big enough for this step to be possible.

 

Intermediates & up: Ocho with leader’s adornment

Top tips

  • Leaders: You probably need to practice this move on your own before working out the coordination with your partner.
  • Followers: Make sure you can do your ochos as independently as possible because the leader won’t be able to offer extra help. Use dissociation.

 

Intermediates & up: Giro with enrosque, barrida and parada

Top tips

  • Leaders: For this step too, leaders, you might need to practice your footwork on your own.
  • Followers: Keep your giro as stable as possible in terms of speed and distance to the leader.

 

Cadencia

Top tips

  • Leaders: When stepping with your right foot, lower your right shoulder to create the cadencia.
  • Followers: When stepping with your left foot, it is a diagonal step (yes, there sometimes are diagonals in tango!) so try and avoid pivoting your hips.

 

Homework

Top tips

  • Leaders: Lots of footwork to practice on your own.
  • Intermediates: Practice the ocho on your own with no support and for intermediates the giro.