There is no getting away from it, learning tango is different to learning other dances. Other dance classes will start by teaching you some basics that can be used to take you through an entire song, which might include a few fundamental steps, some sequences that you can dance from memory, and maybe a few embellishments to add a bit of flair to the sequence. After a couple of lessons you may not be good, you may not be smooth, but the steps you have learned at those classes will look like and feel like dancing. You will usually have the shape and rhythm of the dance by then, and over the next few months you can start to concentrate on polishing up the edges and expanding your repertoire of steps. But tango is a bit different. Tango isn't danced in sequences like some dances, and the basic [read more...]
As most people probably know by now, when I started teaching tango at Jivebeat it was almost entirely by accident. A random decision to give the regulars at Sevenoaks a tango taster class one evening (you can read about that here ) soon became a regular feature, and pretty soon more people were finding us because of the tango than were finding us for modern jive. This was not a problem for us as we love teaching both, but after a few months we started to realise that people were being confused by the name. Tango at Jivebeat...? Is it really tango? Is it "modern jive in a tango style"? How can modern jive and tango be even slightly compatible? We hadn't thought of this, as since we knew what we were doing we just assumed everyone else would as well. Jive and tango are two separate classes [read more...]
Something we see and hear a lot in tango classes is frustration with the rate of progress that people feel they are making. People come along for a few weeks and enjoy the lessons, but the more they learn the more they realise how much they don't know and they start to wonder what's going wrong. Simple things like walking become a challenge, and we start to hear things like "I don't think tango is my dance", and "I'm never going to get this" by the end of the evening. A lot of this comes from their experiences with learning LeRoc and the rapid progress most people seem to make when they begin to learn it, but is the comparison justified? Or is it only natural that we find learning tango harder than learning LeRoc? LeRoc is a dance made up of large confident moves, and the size [read more...]
In my last post I wrote about how I accidentally became a tango teacher and turned Jivebeat from being a Modern Jive club into a Modern Jive and Argentine Tango club. But there has to be more to becoming a tango teacher than standing up and teaching your first class, doesn't there? There must surely be a process to follow or an exam to take? Or is there? Unike LeRoc which has a recognised path to training as a teacher and obtaining a teaching qualification, there is no equivalent qualification available in the UK for Argentine Tango. You can train and qualify as a ballroom tango teacher through the IDTA or other similar bodies, but ballroom tango is not the same as Argentine Tango, and as there are more differences than there are similarities between the two dances a qualification in ballroom tango would be of no real use. [read more...]
Not many people can say that they became a tango teacher entirely by accident, but that's definitely how it happened in my case. When I first started Jivebeat, I assumed it would always be predominantly about Modern Jive, with maybe a few guest teachers brought in from time to time to demonstrate other dance styles or maybe teach a 'fusion' class. I had qualified as a Modern Jive instructor, and all my efforts were going into developing that style and working out our curriculum. But then one evening in Sevenoaks after a fun but small beginners' class, I asked everyone what they would like to do next. I offered them a more advanced Modern Jive routine, maybe some dips and leans, styling or musicality tops, or perhaps they'd like to try some Argentine Tango. And unanimously they all decided they wanted to try some tango. I had been learning [read more...]