Skip to main content

My Tango Diaries: Lesson with Alejandro Gée and his partner, Joujou

My Tango Diaries: Lesson with Alejandro Gée and his partner, Joujou: From Alejandro Gée's studio - more pictures and info from his website here: http://tangoalejandrogee.com/ The Lesson with Alejan...



1.) Sink into the standing knee first instead of stepping/falling straight back into the back step. (I've heard that before - not sure why I can't seem to remember to do that.)
According to Alejandro, basically the sequence would be:

1. Sink the weight into the floor through the standing leg (here’s where the knee bends slightly in order to be able to push the weight of the body back in the next step), while straight,  free leg extends backwards  caressing the floor with no weight on it and torso reaches towards the partner.  The standing hip is strong and grounded, the free hip is relaxed and opening backwards as a natural continuation of the leg. The knee is straight.
2.  Weight transfer: heel of the leg extended backwards goes into the floor and the same hip starts traveling backwards until it is on top of the foot. This leg stays straight from the moment the leg extended backwards until the whole weight is on top of it. In the weight transfer the belly button pushes the spine backwards (that is, the abs sustain the whole movement). The transfer is not just in the legs, but mainly in the core.
3. Free leg (which was the front /standing leg until now and is about to extend next) softly collects with a relaxed knee. The standing leg starts step one.

Comments

  1. your explanations are so clear ! Bravo !
    But to publish a comment on your blog is really complicated.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not mine, posted from mytangodiaries.blogspot.com =).

    Isn't it just a comment at the bottom?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...

2019

Goals for this Tango year: - Continue to improve leading - Get deeper into the movements and music - Starting again with foundations (feet placement, weight, balance, transfers) Always and forever a noob. Training for the first ASEAN Tango Championships, more about process than outcome really but have always been a competitive spirit so part of me really wants to make an impact. We definitely are not at the stage of winning but if improvement continues then it'll at least make a dent in the social dancing. Training. Why is it that Tango doesn't inspire the same practice spirit that a lot of other activities require (tennis, swimming, basketball, piano..heck anything I've ever picked up, or been dragged into, in my life so far)? Maybe it's the fact and core of what makes it so appealing, that we rest on our laurels because we depend so much on what the partner is giving (50-50) hence...we think that if we give 50 and the other person gives 25 then we might a...

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!