Tango leaders are like donkeys stuck up a minaret. If they can't see a way out of it there is no moving them.

Tango Adjectives

I'm looking for adjectives relating to Tango

e.g. Neo-Tango, Nuevo-Tango, Tango-Danza

Please Comment below

On Passive Leading

The Brain: Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: Yes Brain, but if our knees bent the other way, how would we ride a bicycle?

"Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
-Blaise Pascal

(Translation: "I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.")

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction" - Albert Einstein.

Going forward, pushing off

In fencing one stands with ones feet squared. Your feet are at 90 degrees to each other, your front foot points directly forward, your rear foot points off to the side. Moving forward is achieved by first hinging out the front foot, testing the water so-to-speak, the rest of the body follows. [1]
Movement in Bartitsu[2] is slightly different, the foot positions are the same but when moving forward you throw the body into the movement by pushing with the rear foot.

I write of the first movement to contrast with the second which is how one should move in tango, propelling yourself forward with the trailing foot, pushing the chest ahead like a ships figurehead. After talking with Armando Copa at the weekend I am going to modify this idea slightly further. With the same sense of motion do not throw yourself into the forward but push yourself away form the behind.

[1] Image from The Theory and Practice of Fencing, Julio Martinez Castello, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933
[2] An eclectic martial art and self defence method originally developed in England during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Starting

Every so often someone will ask the question:

"So what made you take up tango?".

If they are a dancer they will get the story. If they are not they will get the answer which in its full form can be quite complicated, and for me uncomfortable. Why complicated and uncomfortable? Because, really, within that question there are two questions that compete to be answered. What made me walk in the door of the tango class and what made me stay? Because their answers are at odds with each other and yet not.

Why did I want to take up tango? I can't say I know why. It exists somewhere in the collective subconscious, Adams family pastiches, a couple locked arm in arm cheek to cheek, rose between the teeth, marching up a room and down again, a dance was just steps. Which is of course Ballroom Tango, but the collective western European subconscious isn't terribly aware that there is anything different. Tango is tango, is it not?

My first conscious decision that tango might be something I'd like to try was probably influenced by the tango scene in the 1992 film Scent of a Woman. Who could not be captivated by Al Pacino's forthright character, who wouldn't want a beautiful woman like Gabrielle Anwar in their arms? Strong male, a woman to be seduced, sounds like a good idea.

That was then and this is now.
I've stayed because of what I found, not what I was looking for. Because of what Al Pacino said in that scene, not what he did. "No mistakes in the tango...not like life...It's simple...That's what makes the tango so great..If you make a mistake...get all tangled up...just tango on." What I have found is more subtle, more intimate, a lot more taxing mentally than the uber-machismo of pushing a woman around a room.