Teacher: 3 meter tall!

For several years I have been fantasizing about using hologram kind of frames for intensive learning of tango steps. You buy a set of hologramsteps and load your devise, adjust the size of the image to contain your body and there you go. The game is to keep your body inside the hologram frame and if your feet is sticking out, there will be a signal so you and your neighbours know about the mistake! And of course a great fanfare for a success!

As a first step to this direction we could have instruction videos and performances in 3D holograms. You can go around and watch from different angles when  your favorite couple is performing. To understand better the difficult parts you can play it slower, just in the same way as on your screen, but here in 3D hologram, 3 meter high. I am sure I would get better understanding for the details then!

 Click here to se him walk around!

Seriously guys! Here you get some technical information and please watch anyhow
the last 20 seconds with a running image.


Some fun from Japan - 3D images in the air 
(I put you directly on the fun part at the end of the video :)

Seoul Tango festival 2012

My longtime dream became true in May when I had possibility to participate to the Seoul Tango festival. I have all my life been interested in Asia and I have earlier been two times in both China and Japan so it was time to visit Korea! and Tango there!

Here you have the first sights from the festival filmed by the organizers Florencia and Leonel! The canvas video is filmed by me on the way to the Grand milonga on Saturday evening, 5th of May. Maestros on the festival were Miguel Angel Zotto y Florencia Roldan; Javier Rodriguez y Virginia Pandolfi and Christian Marquez y Virginia Gomez "Los Totis". I was interested in the Dansers group with performers from Pohang, Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires. Quite young and talented dancers and many of them have started to dance tango as late as around 2005!  Unbelievable!

Take the opportunity and enjoy their dances here!

When you hover over the video icon you get some more information and if you click on the video a playlist will start!

You can find a lot of interesting information about tango and people in Korea in these links
http://www.seoultangofestival.com/2012/01/2012-seoul-tango-festival-may-3-7.html
www.facebook.com/events/212093065546705/

Inverted boleo

During my first year of leading I was traveling for a Belgian Tango couple VINCENT MORELLE and MARYLINE LEFOR. They have an extraordinary musicality in their dance, which I appreciated and at that time they were unique on it around here. They are the only couple I have cried for during an performance! As I understood it their main tool was a strong contact and I would say their dance is more like contact improvisation than ordinary tango performance. She has totally surrendered her self to be an instrument, but still, they are one of the most balanced couples I have met.

They had about one workshop per month and I traveled in Sweden, to Kopenhagen and Brussel to participate. During that year 2004, we were working on the most of the movements I have seen other teachers introduce us later on. This inverted boleo is the latest one to come up.

Ordinary boleos are always going towards the standing leg and the turning point is on the other side of the standing leg or around it as for front boleos. Inverted boleos are instead going away from the standing leg and the turning point is in the air.

I have seen it performed only by follower's right leg.  The first one is in the begining of Vincents and Marylines performance in Brussel festival 2007. About 6 s in the video, the first thing after the walk.



The first time to see this boleo performed by another couple was Sebastian and Marianas milonga. Well done in both cases!

The first serie starts with an ordinary back boleo with left leg going to the right and then a inverted boleo with right leg going to the right too. The last two are ordinary back boleos with left leg.
(This link takes you directly to the steps http://youtu.be/IXkGanrd4HM?t=45s)


Here we have a double boleo with the right leg. Mariana starts with an ordinary back boleo and then continues to an inverted boleo. Beautifully done!
(This link takes you directly to the steps  http://youtu.be/IXkGanrd4HM?t=53s)


And here you have the entire video!

Angelina's Tango Blog: Leading ladies

Angelina's Tango Blog: Leading ladies

This is a comment to a posting at Angelina's Tango Blog

I have been regularly leading since 2004 and the last years I have been following a tanda only once every other month. I belong to the first wave of female leaders here in Nordic and it was some rough in the beginning. It is accepted now and the younger ones seems not mind so much who is leading if s/he is providing a good tanda. ;)

There has only been one more negative incident about my leading. One of my male tango friends started to criticize my leading posture calling it ugly; my following posture he find ok and in some occasions even beautiful. I was quite devastated until I understood that he was deeply hurt by the fact that his favorite follower preferred dances with me. So if you choose to lead be prepared ;)

Actually you do not need so much strength in leading and the more experienced the follower is the softer the lead must be (otherwise she gets mad....) I lead even men and after I got better technique and contact with the floor it is OK too. With better technique I started to move more powerfully, I knew where I was going to without any doubt - I think this is the quality many have in mind when talking about strength. But as a leader you need to have a more focused attitude than women usually have and that has taken long time for me to develop. (But when I got there - I am sure that it also gave me a higher salary at my office!)

Big boobs at eye level are a problem for me as well as they are for every short leader - you can't see anything. The short man is happy and I try to handle the situation. It has actually happened only once - she was sitting and when she stood up I became aware of the problem. I offered an open abrazo but she was used to dance in a close embrace so it was a unstable dance but we made the tanda!

I grew up in a culture with very little physical contact and for me it took several years to become fully comfortable with another woman as dance partner. I danced the first years nuevo so open embrace was the appropriate hold and later on I became comfortable with the close one as well.

If you like to test check if cannyengue hold would be an alternative! We use a variation of it for every kind of music. As you can see we are not performers but we dance when we have possibility to do so!

And one more thing! There has been men in queue to participate to the courses my partner and I are teaching at! ;)

For questions you find my email address in the profile section or you can comment here. I would love to hear from you!