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On Stage Tango

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Written by Lily, on 23-04-2009 04:57

To most of the tangueros in HK, Stage Tango may not be what they are looking for, we enjoyed dancing socially, we all talk about the feeling, the embrace, the ... "nothing but just walk with the music with a nice embrace can make you feel soooo good ..." ... yes, these are the most important things to me too, and that's always what we told our students, but can we just practice walking to make our walking perfect? ...

We all like to watch the good tango shows, amazed by the elegance and intrigated movements, but you might say, i'll never be able to do something that difficult, and we don't know those big movements in salon dancing ... stage tango is not my aim, why do I bother to learn it? ...

The above have been my thought before, or might be yours ... but after I've tried stage tango classes in Buenos Aires, I realized some other important things ...

Stage Tango classes can be considered as a kind of intensive trainning to refine every movement so that it is executed properly and that it look good, it has to look good on stage, of course, but, behind 'looking good' it's the technique which is making one look good - - with all the dynamic correctly executed, so that we can do the movement with a good posture and embrace, and body alignment properly taken care of.

Some students asked me, that stage tango looks faster, yes, it is faster than normal salon dancing, but the speed is actually the factor that push you to use energy and correct dynamic naturally. It's very amazing that if you have to follow the beat and do some 8 steps within 4 beats, after a few times, you naturally get the dynamic of doing it, becos, your body will find it's way to do it when you add the energy into it.

For me, I realize how important it is, to dance with energy ... but energy doesn't means force, actually the more the energy, the more subtle can be the lead and follow, we have to learn to condense the energy so that it is not noticeable by audience, when you can make the lead as small as possible, you can move with freedom cos then you don't need to fight ... and then the elegance comes, the expression comes ...

... and it actually helps a lot back to salon dancing, with better balance, better posture, more disassociation, better control, more relax, more calm, and more sensitive ...

Last update: 24-04-2009 16:44

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Posted by lily, on 29-05-2009 05:42,

1. Attitude of Stage Tango

Geoff, yes, stage tango do need certain physical condition, but it's not for SUPERMan .. stage tango doesn't necessarily means flying bodies, there are a lot of stuff that normal people can do, learning stage tango doesn't necessary have VERY good physical condition, it's the right way to use our energy which make things happen, not so much physical strength, it's about using technique so that you can do the difficult stuff with lesser force, ... and if we don't have the training, we'll never have the condition ... If you are not physically fit to do a performance yet, at least you can be trained to have more solid core energy, more alive in dancing, that's what we need for the dancers in HK ...

I understand your worries, but Stage Tango is about control, not about doing big things recklessly, i hope in the long run, we have better dancers, instead of not teaching children to run, we teach them, but tell them when to do it, when not to do it, right? ... of course at some stage, when students are not so good in the control, they might bump into people, but, everybody bump into people, not just those who do stage tango, right? this is a process ... and this should be allowed in Practica, of course not in milongas ... Don't worry Geoff, the teachers shall emphasize a good attitude of doing stage tango ... well, let's see :)

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Posted by Geoff Poole, on 22-05-2009 19:04,

2. A few thoughts

I think you are quite right to suggest that the dance / physical aspects of Stage Tango can be much more demanding than in social tango. Clearly mastering these can give dancers a huge boost and be very useful indeed.

However, from what I''ve seen anyone who hasn't done the necessary physical conditioning tends to find it pretty frustrating. I wonder how many in the HK Tango community have?

And then again - will it encourage people to dance in a fairly unsocial way? I guess a lot will depend on the teachers...

It's going to be interesting...

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Posted by prof_chan_hku, on 12-05-2009 19:32,

3. Would like to have your comments also.

It is so good to see such a sophiciated sharing in this forum.
When comparing with other asia countries,
do u think we only have very few people could appreciate this quality level?
and even less people could dance in this level(even a good quality simple forward walk)?
I believed we have many tango lovers with heart and most of them take classes and practices every week, together with lots of oversea A grade visiting teachers workshops, however, do you think the majority on the practicas dance floor still stay only on social level.
As a professional teacher like you, could you share us more comments in rising up the overall dancing quality in HK?
Finally, I strongly support your claims that stage tango is a very good way to improve our dancing level.
Even though we have to take a very long practice to achieve such a small quality improvement, we could at least train ourself to become a quality tango watcher at first hand.
Looking forward to the up comming successful workshop.

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