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.

Tribute to Carlos Di Sarli

In this class, we focused on soft 180-degree and 360-degree turns that would fit well Di Sarli's soft music.

Summary video



 

Beginners & improvers: Pause and 180-degree turn

Top tips

  • Leaders: To lead the turn, you need to open your shoulder sharply to the right, to create space for the follower to go forward.
  • Followers: There’s a common phobia amongst followers – that of going forward! 🙂 Try and fight this phobia, if the leader is creating space for you to go forward, you need to take it. He should remove his foot so that you don’t step on him.

 

Beginners & improvers: Rebound and 180-degree turn

Top tips

  • Leaders: For the rebound, only transfer your axis half way, not all the way to the front leg. If you transfer too much weight forward, the follower will probably collect her feet instead of doing a rebound.
  • Followers: For rebounds, the energy is always in the other direction to the rebound, so for a rebound backward, the energy is actually forward. That means you should try and resist the floor with your foot and not let the heel collapse.

 

Intermediates: 360-degree turn in two steps

Top tips

  • Leaders: To lead the follower to turn, you need to move your axis backwards a bit.
  • Followers: To be able to reach out and step where you need to, you need to slide both feet on the floor.

 

Intermediates: 360-degree turn with small colgada

Top tips

  • Leaders: To lead the colgada, you need to first relax the embrace to send the follower out of axis and then immediately go backwards yourself to conter-balance her weight.
  • Followers: The colgada is only from the waist up, so you’re not hanging your whole body off the leader, you need to lean outwards only from the torso. The rest of your body is in axis.

 

Intermediates: Homework

Top tips

  • Leaders: To get a more precise lead, try and lead the difference between the 360-degree turn in 2 steps and a giro. Your follower should clearly feel whether you want her to continuously go forward or get into the giro sequence.
  • Followers: With your partner (or hanging from a door handle if you’re on your own), try the colgada posture: your shoulders should be down and relaxed, and you should be out of axis by bending from the waist not by keeping your whole body straight.

 

See you soon on the dancefloor,

Nati y Bruno