Skip to main content

Tango Blogs

When I'm procrastinating as I am now, I tend to read blogs. Now that I've found tango, I've combined two of my loves together, tango+blog=tangoblogs! Perfection. Like homemade Kaya and bread toasted over one of those ancient charcoal fires. Best teatime snack in the world.

Looking around it's not hard to find gazillions of tango blogs all talking about the fanatic drive that seems to grip the Tango obsessed. Funny how one dance can cause that much devotion, but who am I to speak, these are after all the chronicles of us tango beginners!

Adapted from http://mytangodiaries.blogspot.com/:


"Your baby at One Year - Milestones this month (from Parenthood.com)"
- She can stand alone for several minutes. (standing is fine, moving it a bit harder)
- Baby walks well(decently so)
- Baby expresses her wants with gestures and words instead of cries. (or exclamations of oops/shit/sorry/crap!)


I think...I'm definitely still less than a year old!

"I am finally starting to let go of "dancing in a state of apology" - that constant feeling of not being good enough - not following well enough...I am through apologizing for the things I don't know or haven't yet mastered... It's still a struggle. I still catch that inner voice of doom telling me I've missed yet another gancho lead. Or leg wrap lead. Or whatever. "

So true, when your Tango vocabulary is limited to walking and that cross-thing and Ochos, and that other swivel-swivel movement which I have forgotten the name of again, there's only so much you can do, just because you don't KNOW how to do it. Of course the best leaders are the type that can make a beginner look amazing and that takes sheer talent and/or years of leading to perfect.

I will make a promise to myself that at the next Milonga I am not going to apologize for anything. No small oops or mental thoughts of incompetence, but to really listen and connect to the music.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm...Back?

Honestly, it has been a struggle to get back into Tango. I'm having a bit of difficulty figuring out why, but it might just be a combination of having disconnected from it in my regular weekly schedule because of COVID, same COVID making it impossible for me to travel to other countries to dance and join Marathons, a number of years since starting and feeling stagnated, and honestly just feeling a waning interest overall. There is still motivation there, it isn't entirely gone, but life has gotten into the way. The using Tango as a bit of an emotional crutch has also been replaced by a real life human being, so that is yet another reason for the increasingly ambivalent attitude I seem to be having to the dance nowadays. All that being said, I did just fly to Singapore this weekend for Tomas workshop and because damnit, I am fan #1 in Malaysia, unabashedly! Time to see if it's time to kickstart the organising again!
Post a Comment
Read more

Recap 2019

Well well well, here we come again to the end of another Tango year in 2019. Granted, this year was a lot more muted for me, just one Tango Prelims Championship, one Fame Tango Weekend extravaganza, one Tango marathon (shit, just one?!). This years tango centered very much around home, no crazy travels (thanks to change in job), no multi-country tango events (thanks to no budget + no time), a smattering of lessons. But internally, centeredness, duende. Next year, Taipei Tango Weekend, Singapore Tango Marathon + Lisbon for food, travels and Tango. Where is my tango this year? 10 years since that fateful day running to Michigan Union in shorts and t-shirt with flipflops, hair wet from a swim on a balmy end of September day, 3 to 4 weeks into the new semester. Not knowing this would kickstart one of my greatest passions in this life. The one that brings me into the world of friendships, arguments, travels and meetings. All sorts of people, friends, acquaintances, annoyances. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Malaysia Prelims & Tango Festival - Musings

Off the back of a weekend that required me to leave work early and sleep cray hours to finally get back into a semi-human mode of work and sleep. Thoughts? When I first started tango, I jumped straight into a Fire & Ice festival in Ann Arbor January of 2010. That was my first taste of a tango festival which was relatively social and a good scene in hindsight. Coming back to Malaysia I've participated in the KL Festival every single year, Singapore festival twice, Taiwan festival once (24 hour on a whim - fuck it all flight), Shanghai festival once. Other than that the flavour of the day nowadays is definitely geared more toward marathons/encuentros, and for a good reason. Festivals in this part of the world are seriously so tipped toward a certain "type" that it is far more worth my money and sanity to go for the social dancing rather than the festival format. Granted, lessons were good, always learning, picking up new things. Competition was, so-so for me, was...
Post a Comment
Read more