My Tango Diaries

Guest post from Jane Prusakova “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha  (Epigraph borrowed from Zen Habits - Guide to Achieving Flow and Happiness in Your Work ) Flow is a state of being when a person is fully focused on a task at hand, feels happy and in control, is creative and productive.  The time and space (environment) outside of the task cease to exist, past and future drop off the horizon.  There is only a happy, glorious, challenging NOW.   Tango is ultimate flow-producing activity – the music and interaction within the couple (and with the rest of the floor) require complete concentration, the challenge and creativity are infinite, and dancers are fully in control.  All of which leads to a fairly easy conclusion that tango equals happiness.   Except it does ...

Add to your Google calendar: When: Sunday, June 30th, SPECIAL FREE CLASS 12:00-12:30pm: Foot Technique and Care for a more graceful, grounded, and comfortable lifetime of dancing! (for men and women!) Practica de la Leona: from 12:30pm-3:00pm Where: 8650 Spicewood Springs Rd #104 Austin, TX 78759 (Austin Bellydance Studio) Cost: by donation DJ: Juan Marcos (On the opposite end of the shopping center from Big Lots - near Cupprimo and Liberty Pharmacy.) A map can be found on Bahaia's "Instruction" page . Description: The next Practica de la Leona will be Sunday, June 30th from 12:30 pm - 3:00 pm at Austin Bellydance Studio. Come practice what our wonderful visiting instructors have been teaching us with wonderful friends on a great floor! There will be a FREE CLASS from 12:00-12:30pm: Foot Technique and Care for a more graceful, grounded, and comfortable lifetime of dancing! (For men and women!) Then later, let's see everyone at Tap...

Second class of Javier Rochwarger's Workshops at Esquina Tango, Austin     (Background: I've had classes/lessons with Javier Rochwarger for the last 3 years. He makes his annual visit to Esquina Tango here in Austin every Spring. You can read about two of my previous experiences here: Spring, 2011 and here: Summer, 2012 . ) Group Classes One of the reasons Javier is so popular is that everything he teaches in group classes is taught in the context of the social dance. The movements and the technique are intended for dancing on a populated floor, and respecting the line of dance. He talks about listening to the structure of the music and understanding movement in terms of the music's grammar. His classes have always been filled with beautiful and immediately applicable skills on the milonga floor. Javier's focus is on the quality of the embrace and of the dancer's movement - not so much on sequences, though he does use them. When he uses a sequ...

(I am not using the name of the teacher in this post, even though my follow-up posts will identify him, because it doesn't really matter who the teacher is for this subject - and I don't want to get distracted in defending or attacking his style of dancing/teaching etc.) The continuing adventures of a slow learner . . .   It is deeply disheartening to have my yearly private lesson with a teacher I've studied with the last 3 years, and be corrected for the same mistakes I've been making for the same . three . years. The first year, he was very understanding. I was still pretty new - only dancing a year. The next year he pushed a little harder and I made excuses. I said I would practice - I would work on it. This year was intensely frustrating. These were things I should have resolved by now - fundamental issues with my embrace, control of my axis, how I change weight. The foundation of tango. Instead of becoming defensive in the lesson...

Move along, nothing to see here . . . .     I had a 'talking to' no less than 3 times weekend before last - all by dancers I deeply respect and admire. They were each very helpful, well-reasoned arguments against what I had "taken to doing lately with a particular leader." When it happened, I knew I'd hear about it.  Mouths turned down at the corners, eyebrows knitted and furrowed, a couple of quiet comments were made. On the milonga floor, my leader was breaking the rules, and I was not only letting him, but worse, I was also grinning madly in response. It was a threefold milonga scandal: 1. My leader and I changed the embrace from a traditional abrazo, to what would look like an odd practice embrace - his arms over my shoulders and my arms around his ribcage (he's quite a bit taller than I am). It looked like I'd given him a big hug and we just started moving. I'll get to the reason for this in a moment - for now, just know ...

As you may or may not have noticed, the URL for this blog, and for Leona Training for Dancers, has changed to www.mytangodiaries.com and www.leonatraining.com respectively. It was long overdue, I was just nervous that the transfer would not go well. Mostly it went fine but there have been a couple of hiccups. (And if you happened to be reading this blog while I was going through my experimentation phase of "Let's try this . . . and this . . . and maybe this other thing," with the layout and template - thanks for your patience.) The biggest hiccup is that my extensive, and up-to-date, Tango Blog List got completely blown away. It's not even in the backup, which I don't understand, but there we are.  I need help from you dear readers to try to build it again. If you can, please send me your own tango blog links, and the blogs that you like so that I can compile the blog roll again.  Meanwhile, above there is a tab for my Tango Blogs page, but the page is not as ...

    “Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.” ― Mario Benedetti. Where did you find me? I laugh a little, my glasses are where you found me. The lights are still low as poor-sighted dancers search for their spectacles. Right now I cannot see a thing. When you found me, what was I doing? What was I thinking, so long ago, 5 minutes ago, 1 year ago, 5 years ago, when you found me? I can't remember anymore. I am remembering everything wrong, everything colored by the music and soft sighs. Your arm is gone, your voice is gone, hazy-visioned and disoriented, I try to return to the place I was. When I think I am there, I realize, blinking slowly, hands reaching toward empty space, it is no longer there. It has moved on without me. That place where you found me. And with it, the woman you found there.