How to create your own tango sequences

Tango Factbites – Beginner Series

If you’ve been to our classes, you’ll surely have noticed that we’re not big fans of teaching sequences – for many different reasons. First, they’re hard to remember. Second, they make it hard to connect to the music. Third, they’re hard to use on the dancefloor. So, what we prefer instead is to help our students come up with their own sequences.

In our private classes, we use a concept we call “the ocho family”. The ocho family is a series of step that can be easily linked up to create your own original sequences. This concept is useful if you are a beginner / improver and want to learn how to link the steps that you have seen in our Thursday classes.

With the Ocho Family as a cheat sheet, the list of combinations you can create is almost endless. Using a simple boleo, you can switch from forward ocho to backward ocho and therefore navigate within the ocho family at will.

Here are a few examples of combinations you can create:

• Salida -> Forward ocho -> Americana
• Forward ocho -> Forward ocho con parada -> boleo
• Forward ocho -> Boleo -> Sanguchito
• Backward ocho -> Boleo -> Ocho -> Americana

Backward ocho -> Boleo -> Giro

When stuck on the dancefloor because the line of dance is not moving, you can use the ocho family to effortlessly dance on the spot until the way becomes clear.

Happy dancing!

Nati y Bruno

The ocho family is a concept created by Tanguito. All rights reserved.