T A N G O M I L O N G A . B I Z
An Argentine Tango website based in Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Elizabeth Pajka's vision realized!
Friday February 29th, 2008
TANGO AT THE TOPA!
S O L D O U T !
An Evening of Argentine Tango to Remember
Argentine Dinner and Wines
Tango Show and Dancing
to the fabulous sound of the Live Argentine Tango Band of Marcelo Caceres
and a Spectacular Panoramic View of the Pacific and the mountains from the Top of the Topa Tower!
Tango Show by
Julie Stillman & Fardad Michael Serry
Sarah & Daryl Race
TANGO AT THE TOPA IS SOLD OUT!
6pm
The Topa Tower Club
Oxnard, CA
805.983.7777
"Tango at the Topa Tower Club" was first envisioned by Ventura County Tanguera, Elizabeth Pajka (better known to her many loving friends as Betty.)
On behalf of the Argentine Tango Club of Ventura County and tangomilonga.biz, for your hard work and patience to see this event come to live this Friday ...
Thank you, Betty!
The Master of Ceremonies for the evening is Dr. Jerry Bruns (jerrytangos!)
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F A R D A D M I C H A E L S E R R Y . J U L I E S T I L L M A N
Present
Labor Day Weekend Tango in Paradise!
A Unique Series of Workshops with a Structural Approach to Tango
Created by Fardad Michael Serry
plus . . . 3 Milongas!
August 31 - September 3, 2007
Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Sunday and Monday workshops open only to Saturday workshop attendees.
Join us for 3 Milongas in Beautiful Santa Barbara.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday. An Excellent floor. Musical Selection. In a gorgeous, well-air-conditioned ballroom! with light refreshments.
Location, hours, and fees below.
Tentative Summary of Events. (details below.)
| DAY & DATE | TIME | EVENT | SUBJECTS included in the WORKSHOP (descriptions below table) |
| Friday Aug 31 | 7pm - 8:30pm | Workshop 1: Exercises, Practica, and Orientation. We'll start the exercises that will be the common thread throughout the workshops. You will find out more about the workshops. We will find out more about you. | B |
| Friday Aug 31 | 9:30pm - 1am | La Milonga De Santa BarbaraThe Original Friday Night Edition! | |
| Saturday Sept 1 | 2pm - 3:30pm | Workshop 2(pre-requisite for all remaining workshops) | A, B |
| Saturday Sept 1 | 4pm - 5:30pm | Workshop 3 (pre-requisite for all remaining workshops) | A, B, C |
| Saturday Sept 1 | 6pm - 7:30pm | Workshop 4 | C, B |
| Saturday Sept 1 | 9:30pm - 2am | La Milonga De Santa Barbara Special Saturday Night Edition! (ELEGANT ATTIRE REQUESTED) | |
| Sunday Sept 2 | 3pm - 4:30pm | Workshop 5 | D, B |
| Sunday Sept 2 | 5pm - 7pm (with a short half-time break) | Workshop 6 | E, B |
| Sunday Sept 2 | 9:30pm - 2am | La Milonga De Santa BarbaraSpecial Sunday Night Edition! | |
| Monday Sept 3 | 3pm - 4:30pm | Workshop 7 | F, B |
| Monday Sept 3 | 5pm - 6:30pm | Workshop 8 | G, B |
Schedule and material covered are subject to change if unexpected circumstances arise.
PLEASE NOTE: This unique program is heavily grounded in Workshops 2 and 3.
Workshops 2 and 3 are pre-requisites for workshops 4 thru 8.
Brief Description of the Subjects Covered in Workshops
| A.The Global Structure of Movement in Tango, rooted in a system of turns. The significance of the form of the starting embrace as it relates to the Global Structure of Movement in Tango. The roles of the man and the woman. The roles of the inside leg and the outside leg. The only two kinds of steps in tango! The left-turn tendency of the dance, and the built-in, fun possibilities that comes with it. The necessary compensations (to the left-turn tendency) that make the dance more interesting, and more balanced. All illustrated in simple and complex combinations to suit the learning appetite of dancers in different levels of experience. B.Technique and Novel Exercises (developed by Fardad Michael Serry) as they relate to the Global Structure of the dance rooted in the system of turns. For men and women. For complete turns (Giro) to the left and right. The roles and the forms of hips, torso, knees, and feet. The importance of head alignment. Progressively more challenging exercises towards the end of the weekend. C.The Fundamental Musical Feature Embedded in the Structure of the Tango, a direct consequence of the Global Structure of Movement, rooted in a system of turns. For simple combinations, we explore simple turns. For more experienced dancers, we explore giros with enrosque and lapis, and syncopation options in turns for Vals for even more experienced dancers! D.Changes of The Embrace. The form and orientation of the bodies (man and woman) change in the embrace to suit the movement. These changes are logical, and make sense in the context of the Global Structure of Movement, rooted in a system of turns. To illustrate in detail, we explore the changes in embrace at the cross, in parallel and cross-walk systems for advanced beginners, and also in turns with entradas (some call them sacadas) including back sacadas for more experienced dancers. E.Changes of Direction. There are only five ways to change direction while holding the tango embrace. We go through two of them with some interesting examples. Then we explore one more in some detail for dancing simple yet exhilarating traveling turns in Vals. (That leaves out two more, which are called "ochos" in the only proper use of that term in tango.) F.Ganchos: an example of how you can understand most any element of the tango as derived from the Global Structure of the Tango rooted in a system of Turns. Proper technique for Ganchos follows as a logical consequence of the Structure, and this point applies to boleos, colgadas, volcadas, tomas, barridas, pasadas, etc. We focus on ganchos. G.2+2+2. A blueprint, a recipe, created by Fardad Michael Serry, to identify the most salient features and transitions of any new combination in the context of the Structure of the Dance, rooted in a System of Turns. Learn new combinations faster, from any teacher, or from other dancers. Create your own combinations within the Structure of the dance rooted in a system of turns. (You are encouraged to share a combination with the rest of dancers in the workshop for 2+2+2 analysis!) Find out what works and what does not, and why. If it even makes sense to try some combinations, and if so, how to refine it so that you enjoy the dance more. Depending on the makeup and the progress of the workshop, we will explore various elements the same way we do with Ganchos in "F." |
Requirements for Each Workshop
| Workshops 2 and 3 are pre-requisites for all remaining workshops. You must take both of these workshops before you take any of the later workshops. Workshops 4 and 5 are closed to Beginners, but they are open to more experienced, advanced beginners. Workshops 6 and 7 are closed to beginners and also closed to advanced beginners. Workshop 8 We strongly recommend this workshop for everyone, and everyone will dance. But beginners and advanced beginners are expected to learn more by watching and analyzing, less by dancing, as some of the combinations will be too difficult for some dancers to dance, but not so to watch and analyze. |
MILONGA AND WORKSHOP FEES
For Schedule of Tuition and Milonga Fees please Click here |
WHY THE STRUCTURAL APPROACH TO TANGO?
Does the Argentine Tango have a structure? Is there a way to bring the different parts of the dance together and approach it as a whole? What would be the benefit of it, if this can be done? The Argentine Tango has a definite structure. |
THE TANGO ENCYCLOPEADIA
Most places in the US, most of the time, the tango is learned in a way that you may call "encylcopeadic": Here's "the basic" with the steps numbered from 1 to 8; in 5 (or is it 4?) the woman crosses; here's the basic in cross-walk system (what happens to the numbers?); here's the technique for practicing "ochos", (acquiring the muscle memory that gradually kills the freedom to turn); here's how to "do" volcadas, (and gradually injure the spine); here's the way to "do" a colgada, (and surprise the man!) ... And my all-time favorite: Here's "how to improvise in tango"!
In the encyclopeadic approach to learning tango, things are learned largely disjointed, with no clear connection between ALL of the parts. There are lots of "secrets"! There are occasionally some meaningful connections between the parts, and that makes tango dancers happy, because they appreciate things that make sense. But in the encyclopeadic approach, there is no underlying structure; no reliable, solid backbone; no first principles to go to, in order to understand why something does not work, and how it may be modified to work and work beautifully, musically, technically, and structurally. In the encyclopeadic approach, there is no blueprint to judge if one explanation of something is more meaningful than another.
So, often confusion rules, and this makes for superb cocktail party conversations about tango: Sacadas or entradas? This embrace or that embrace? Is there really such a thing as "Nuevo Tango", or not? What about that "Milonguero Style"? Susana Miller is after all from Argentina!"
And an awful lot of dancers spend an inordinate amount of time and energy to progress a little bit, but not much. So, people come to think of the tango as a "very difficult dance." I propose the tango has got this reputation unjustly. It may be a difficult dance, but NOT for the reasons that most dancers think it is. It has got this reputation largely because dancers learn the dance with the encyclopeadic approach. Why? Because most of the time, most places in the US, it is taught that way. In the Structural Approach to Tango, a lot of the difficulty is removed, because things starts MAKING SENSE. You learn you do not have to believe something is true because of any other reason than that IT MAKES SENSE!
THE TANGO IS A STRUCTURED LANGUAGE
The structure of the tango is largely unknown to most dancers, even after years of experience, even after accumulating a vast collection of steps and figures. This is a difficult "pill to swallow" for experienced dancers, but it is true. There are still a lot of experienced dancers who think "the ocho" is a fundamental building block of the tango. Or that the fast steps in the giro (or the turn or the molinete) are the back step and the side step that follows it!
A developed language has a structure. The letters make up the words; the words the phrases; and the phrases the sentences. There are no words with 10 consonants back-to-back; and you don't hear a word repeated back-to-back 5 times times times times times in a sentence, not very often. But in tango, this happens! It happens because the structure of the tango is largely unknown to a lot of dancers.
Sentences make up the paragraphs, and the paragraphs are usually connected in some meaningful way. The structure of the language is also connected to its grammar. If you switch the place of the words in a sentence, you most likely will make the sentence grammatically incorrect, even if the meaning of the sentence is not entirely lost. But in tango, many dancers, many experienced dancers even, often do things that lack coherence. And sometimes, when the things they try are also incongruent with the structure of the tango, they get in trouble for it, but they usually laugh it off, or they get frustrated if they are more serious about the dance, because they don't know why it didn't work. They don't know why it didn't work because the Structure is unknown!
The structure of a language also includes inflections in speech, choices of words for more or less the same meaning, or for different auditory "aesthetics". Now we are in the realm of poetry and oratory!
You can learn a few words or sentences and line them up and make some sense, but you cannot speak a language unless you learn it according to its structure.
The Structural Approach to Tango is intended to in part help dancers understand what they are doing, and when they understand it, their tango language matures, and their dancing can then become more refined, more meaningful, more of a story told rather than a bunch of letters and words and phrases uttered haphazardly.
WHAT IS THE USE OF THE STRUCTURAL APPROACH TO TANGO?
If you know the structure of the tango, you can for example learn the step combinations of other dancers and your favorite teachers easier and faster, if that is what you like to do. You can also create and refine your own combinations, if you like, with confidence and WITH FUN! When you see how the structure and the technique are tied together in a logical, meaningful way, then you will find the answers to a lot of unanswered or half-answered questions. You'll also then be able to tell the difference between a dancer's individual, personal stylistic preference, and a fundamental requirement that is not tied to one dancer (or teacher) or another's personal way of dancing. You may also be able to consider taking seriously, if you don't already, the seemingly absurd expression that a lot of the best tango dancers utter from time to time: "There are no STYLES of tango. There is only one tango."
THE SECRETS OF TANGO!
All sorts of so-called secrets are demystified when the structure of the tango is understood, and the simplicity of it revealed.
For Example, ...
If you know the connection between the structure and the technique, say for volcadas,, then you'll know how a woman knows not to step forward in a volcada, and what is required of the man to make the volcada clear to the woman; it is NOT rocket science! If you don't already know it, you will know for example WHY the faster step in the giro usually happens where it does happen. But more importantly, you may then use that knowledge to make a conscious decision how you want the triplet syncopated in a giro when dancing a vals: 1-2, or 2-3? Perhaps very differently in a stationary turn, than in a traveling turn.
Come dance with us. We are waiting for you!
Copyright 2007 Fardad Michael Serry