walking
The importance of Walking
Argentine Tango is a walking dance. Nothing more, nothing less.
You must never forget that. No matter what you do with tango, its just walking.
Ahhhhhh and here’s the kicker…you may not see this now, but you will later…
Learning how to walk, once you master it, you never do. You will spend the rest of your life working on your walk.
Stressing the Fundamentals
Here’s the funny part. Once you start down the road of Argentine Tango, you’re going to see some really really crazy things, things that will inspire you, things that turn you off, things that will really make you think, and things that you’ll want to try, and you may even go so far as to get private lessons to do that. However, the simple fact is that until you learn how to walk, all that fancy stuff means nothing. Really. Its a waste of your money, and your teachers time. Because s/he SHOULD be telling you that that fancy move you saw on a social dance floor is going to be incredibly impossible, very painful, and more than likely will damage you on multiple levels (socially, physically, intellectually, and emotionally…I know you can’t see it now…but its true). A teacher worth their salt and their experience, should be telling you that! Be careful of the teacher that doesn’t!
The fundamentals are the basis of the dance. Everything you see in Argentine Tango stems from that. Its like building a house. You build a house on a good strong concrete foundation! Without that foundation, you have a house that will ultimately fall down. Work on your fundamentals. Start there…stay there! In short, start with walking….
Walking Is Cool!
Once you get the hang of it. Walking is REALLY really cool. No. I’m serious. Its the coolest thing since sliced bread. ‘I’d rather have a lead that walked me all night long than anything else in the world.’ You hear women say this all the time. And leaders don’t listen. They don’t hear it. They can’t. Because they think that women want to do all that fancy stuff. Sometimes they do, but the simple fact, that the fancy stuff should be MUSICALLY driven, not flash for the sake of flash. So the staple of your dance, should be WALKING. Now here’s the real kicker: Walking Her/Him on the Beat….now you’re talking baby!
Here’s a really funny part for the follower: Ladies, you haven’t been walked properly yet! Once you are, you’ll never forget it. If you’ve been dragged around the floor, or pushed, or pulled, or stumbled over, yup…you’ve been walked wrongly. A follower who has been walked properly, will be escorted off the floor with a happy smile on her face, and when she’s asked “How was he ?”. She’ll say, “He transports me!”. Leaders pay attention here, because when you think back to the experience…all you saw was him walking her. And you’re going to scratch your head and wonder what on god’s green earth did he do to her. The simple answer is he walked her. The complex answer is that he walked her. But its HOW he walked her around the floor.
Guys, I know leads with 5, count’m FIVE moves. I can literally set my watch by some of them. But these guys consistantly have women RAVING about them. They’re not flashy at all. These are the guys that are smooth, clean, clear, patient, and oozing musicality! And they’re not doing anything more complex than the seemingly simple thing of walking. If you can do that every time, with the consistent response of “HE TRANSPORTS ME!”, you’re doing pretty damned good!