More tango, easier, cheaper, and yet better: 6 tips
More tango, easier, cheaper, better. Below are 6 simple ways to get more of the dance that you love.
We’ll explore together how to:
- Let the local tango dancers help you
- Reduce accommodation and transportation costs
- Try classes with the right professionals
- Dance more with your favorite dancers
- Dance more during the events
- Find huge ammount of information to improve your tango
Scroll down and let’s find more tango for you!
Why should you read this?
I have been a social tango dancer for 12 years. During this time I made most of the mistakes and fell into most of the traps that social tango dancers encounter:
- I paid more than I should have paid while traveling for tango, especially for accommodation and transportation.
- I was in cities with wonderful tango but didn’t dance.
- I was close to amazing tango teachers but didn’t take a single class with them.
- I went to events and danced less than I wanted.
- I went to the milongas in my city not knowing that my favorite dancers were going to another milonga.
- I had classes with the wrong teachers for me.
- …and the list goes on.
If you want to avoid similar mistakes and instead get more tango for you keep reading.
How to get more tango, easier, at a lower cost, and yet better?
To not repeat the same mistakes I created resources, strategies, and solutions. I hope that you can use them and that you will share them with other tango dancers.
Disclaimer: Although there are many ways to achieve the results you want, my recommendation would be to choose the simplest option, which, in my extremely-highly-biassed opinion, is to use the free Tango Partner app.
Here are my suggestions:
Let the local tango dancers help you
Why?
Locals know better.
How?
Both when you are in your city or when traveling, ask other dancers for their recomendations.
Especially when traveling, take a few minutes to send your questions to local tango dancers of the city you are visiting.
To easily find local dancers in the cities you live in or plan to visit, you can use the free Tango Partner app. Simply type the name of the city, and local dancers will appear. Send them a cabeceo (a friend request) and ask for recommendations.
Reduce accommodation and transportation costs
Why?
If you haven’t experienced a tango festival, marathon, or encuentro, you are missing out. A total immersion in tango, wonderful embraces, and a nearly infinite amount of tandas (well, kind of). Although the cost for the event itself is usually very reasonable, accommodation and transportation can easily triple or quadruple the expenses, blocking you from getting more tango.
How?
My recommendation is this: share accommodation and transportation costs with other participants. It is easy to do:
- Find who from your city is planning to go to the same event.
You can do that by checking the event’s Facebook event, but there is a better way. Simply open the Tango Partner app, find the event you want to go to, click on “See & Connect”, and you will see who else is interested. Then, simply type the name of your city in the search option, and the app will filter the participants.
Find who from the participants are living in the city of the event.
Locals can host you or can recommend good local accommodation options. Just like above, either use Facebook events or use the Tango Partner app to filter through the participants of an event.
Pro tip: In case you plan to travel far away for more tango, go to the app’s Settings and increase the distance to “No limit”. You will be able to see thousands more dancers.
Try classes with the right professionals
Why?
Not all good professionals are good for you. No matter if you are in your city or traveling, it is important to find the right teachers for you. But knowing which professionals are in the city is not always easy, especially if you are traveling to a new city or the teachers are there only for a few days.
How?
Click on “Top Professionals” on the Tango Partner app, and you will see the ones that are closer to you. There you can read their description, watch them dancing, and find their classes and events. Send them a friend request and ask for a trial or if it is possible to drop by for a class. Why stay in the hotel room when you can dance?
Dance more with your favorite dancers
Why?
How much you enjoy a dance depends highly on the people that dance with you, both when you are in your city and when you are traveling. So why not go to the milongas where they plan to go? And why not make sure you know when they are in your city or when you are in theirs?
How?
The Tango Partner app allows you to see social tango dancers near you wherever you are. You can do three things:
- Click on the events you are interested in going to and see who else is interested. You can then send them a friend request or message if you want to get in touch.
- Click on “My Friends” and you will see a complete list of all your tango friends in the app, ranked by distance. You might be surprised by who is in your city today. Simply click on “Send message” and ask if they are going to dance tonight.
- Click on “Connect” to see other users that are around. Once you see someone you know on the list, send them a friend request.
Dance more during the event
Why?
Unfortunately, once you enter a milonga, many dancers forget that we are all human beings and start defining people based on their level of dancing. And if you ever paid lots of money to go to a tango event and ended up not dancing, you know what a horrible experience that can be.
Thankfully, we are social creatures. And a social connection often is enough to break the above pattern.
How?
For big tango events
When going to a big event, arrive one day earlier. Check on the Tango Partner app who else is going to the event and connect. If you are shy, ask a question about the local tango scene. If you are outgoing, go out for a coffee or ask for info on local milongas you can attend that night and maybe go together.
I found out that even a quick chat on the app’s messenger was enough to help me get the first dances in an event. Many people want to see how you dance before accepting dancing with you, so that first dance early in the night can make a huge difference.
For local milongas
Similarly, asking locals for recommendations on different milongas creates a social connection. And that connection often leads to the first dance of the night so that the other dancers can see how you dance. That can lead to more tango.
Disclaimer: the social aspect is important. But you still have the responsibility to prepare yourself properly, improve your technique and musicality, before embracing another person. You want to be a gift to your friends, not a burden.
Find huge ammount of information to improve your tango
Why?
Developing your tango can be expensive. People pay a lot to receive information. And this is why I am always surprised when I meet people who say that they want to develop their tango but don’t read tango books or never tried an online class.
In a single book you can find at a fraction of the price of a private class tons of information, tips, advice, frameworks, etc. Same thing for online classes (especially pre-recorded).
How?
I would recommend three things:
Books
On the Tango Partner app, click on Online Offers, and then select only “Online Products”. There you will be able to see a list of tango books that you might want to consider.
Online classes
Taking classes with amazing teachers in the past was quite hard. You had to travel to meet them and pay for accommodation, nutrition, transportation, etc.
Nowadays you can have access to great content online.
For example, on the Tango Partner app, you can find how to have live classes with Alejandra Mantiñan, a master in tango and biomechanics.
You can also get two weeks of free access to pre-recorded online classes by Leandro Palou and Maria Tsiatsiani, covering topics such as “Stability vs mobility”, “Musicality Drills”, “Interpretation & Improvisation”, “Passive vs Active Dancing”, “Change of dynamics”, and one of my favorites for followers “How to communicate your intentions to the leader”. I highly recommend the free trial.
Online Events
In a single online event, at a cost usually less than a single class, you can get days’ worth of classes. Most importantly, you can get exposed to the way different teachers think and approach tango.
Simply go to the Tango Partner app, click on Online Offers, select Online Events and see what is there for you.
A final thought: My goal is to make it easy for tango dancers to get more of the embraces they love. If you can help me spread the news about the Tango Partner app by sharing this post, or by letting a friend know, I would be grateful. It’s free, it’s tango, it’s for you.
Till the next time we meet each other, always remember to hug, and let go, hug, and let go.
The first will bring you happiness, the second peace.
Dimitris Bronowski – author of Tangofulness
Dimitris Bronowski – Portugal
Dimitris Bronowski is the editor and co-author of the book Tango Tips by the Maestros (Amazon’s #1 best seller in the Dance category) and the author of Tangofulness, the most translated tango book in the world. A tanguero since 2009, he sees in tango an opportunity to heal and be healed. His mission is to help tango dancers around the world experience more moments of meaning in tango and bring together the global tango family through the Tango Partner app.
