What a surprise - and how pleasant - to come back after two months and discover how much HK tango seems to have moved on!

The dancers (and teachers) are becoming more sophisticated and more determined to improve - and are willing to work at it. There is a tremendous atmosphere and a general enthusiasm that will surely lead to a great work shop programme from which people can benefit!

However, I think that that most people can really only benefit to a limited extent!

Beyond a certain fairly basic level of dance, improvement is often limited by how well organised you are physically! Of course this is not a problem for natural athletes or professional dancers, but for most other people….

I have found that one of the best ways to improve physical organisation is Pilates.

It is a powerful system invented 100 years ago and improved ever since. It is widely used as a training system (particularly by dancers) and it is very adaptable. Pilates can be “tuned” to a whole variety of things - from rehabilitation to, well, tango!

So how does Pilates relate to tango?

An important part of it is mobilising and increasing your core strength. This is a benefit to everyone (particularly dancers) and very related to "moving from your centre” and balance / stability.

Pilates is also concerned with movement - particularly precision of movement. This breaks down into isolation (only moving what you want to move and not all sorts of other things as well - ever wonder why you lose your balance on certain movements?) and related stuff like body awareness / economy of movement. (Pretty related to elegance for me.)

Finally there is posture and balance (also related to elegance.)

I would be very interested to hear what people this about this! Meanwhile (inspired by the general spirit of enthusiam) I intend to organise a class of “Pilates for Tango Dancers”.

Would anyone who is interested please contact me!

Cool stuff, Geoff.

What are you going to do in the class? Is it relate to any tango movement we usually using?

Yes it does - but not in the obvious way. It is not "this is the Pilates way to do a boleo - now you do it!"

Pilates is a system of exercise designed to strengthen the body and increase your ability to use it. A lot of the movements in the excercises are (or should be) components of the movements we make in Tango.

And then there are things that in the foundation of Pilates that are very important for any form of movement generally - and dance in particular. This is mainly to do with discovering/engagine the core, the breath and using it with movements and the spine.

The general format of the class will be matwork.

Good idea Geoff. But Pilates requires a long-term programme and you'll have the same problem as Coleman, i.e. getting a qualified instructor to come to Hong Kong for at least a few months. There are plenty of local Pilates instructors but I doubt they can relate it directly to Tango - unless you know one that dances Tango.

A Tango / Pilates instructor was supposed to come to Hong Kong just recently, for Mona I think, but I don't know what happened to it.

I believe that Mona was simply providing the studio space and someone else was organising it. Anyway - I understand that there was a last minute problem - how very Argentinean!

Thank you so much Geoff for bringing this out. When I was learning Tango and discussing with Maestros and experienced Tanguaros like Mona and yourself, I understand and totally agreed that to further improve or even doing some basic movement correctly, we need to be familiar and in control of each muscle and movement in order to dance well, (which in turns will makes it a graceful and elegant dancing)

I believe that we can either take Tango class that particularly focus on this awareness, or take Pilate class with the intention of incorporating Pilate into Tango. I also wonder if Yoga can help doing the same? Or weight training??

It might be hard to come by to have instructors that have such deep understanding of our body muscle and movement as well as Tango dancing skill. In Hong Kong, I can only think of you and of course Mona :) ... I remember when I took classes from Pablo y Dana or Gonzalo y Mariel, they all can really isolate each of their muscles to perform each move, amazing to watch and feel (especially in their close embrace ... yum yum...)

I would love to take class just focusing on this sort of area with Tango in mind. In fact, I totally agree that to be on the next level of a Tanguaro, we have to take in depth class focusing on our body awareness and control for each application of Tango movement. To learn from a different perspective is good that we will understand it more, or doing some repetitive exercise that makes each muscle in total control is good that we normally will not or do not have chance to practice. That might be a very good way to learn about our body movement and control when we do not have to worry too much about dancing, steps, embrace, connections, lead, music etc all at the same time.

I said too much. Do you think you or Mona can give classes on this topic?

Just brainstorming, how about talk presentation or cross over class with Pilate instructor or other disciplines, so that you or dear Mona can explain to the instructors what we need and how our moves can be achieved with their exercise?? Or perhaps dear Mona can already teach all of it due to her expertise in both Yoga and Tango.

Many thanks