Gallery Updates: June Workshops and Milongas with Carolina y Diego
These long overdue photos from June are posted. Relive the memories of a wonderful tango weekend with Carolina, Diego and Paloma!
tangophilia blog
Commentary and announcements about tangophilia and Argentine Tango.
Gallery Updates: Tangophilia Weekend with Eric Jeurissen
I’ve decided to jump the backlog for now and post the pictures from the special weekend with Eric Jeurissen immediately. Enjoy!
No wrong notes
In classes, you’ll often hear me remind people that there are “no wrong steps.” I also believe that the improvisational and exploratory possibilities make Argentine Tango the jazz of social dance. The following quote from Thelonius Monk brings those two ideas together nicely.
There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.
– Thelonius Monk (source)
Gallery Updates: May Festivals, June classes
These are my initial pics for these events. Later on, I’ll be adding even more photos taken by Todd and others.
Catching Up on Overdue Galleries from April
I’m finally catching up on posting some of the long overdue galleries from this very busy summer. I hope you enjoy them!
Regional Tango Weekend featuring Alex Krebs
Our 3rd Regional Tango Weekend in 2005 will be bringing together many tangueros from the mid-Atlantic and Southeastern states including some fellow instructors from different cities and states. Many of our regulars will be back, too! Please do not miss the early registration deadline, May 4, in order to get the discount pricing for the weekend’s festivities.
We are fortunate to have found an opening in Alex Krebs’ schedule to be able to bring him back to North Carolina! Alex will be teaching six classes during our Regional Tango weekend! Learn more about Alex at
Tango Berretin.
The weekend will also have two milongas with different flavors
- Friday night, May 13, we’ll start with workshops and later continue on with our first Regional Milonga of the weekend at the Triangle Dance Studio! Our DJ will be Jason Laughlin.
- Saturday night offers a catered Thai dinner followed by demos and a great milonga with traditional, contemporary and alternative tangos by one of the best DJs in the US: Alex Krebs!
Saturday’s Regional practica will allow you to practice with many different partners with different backgrounds from all over our region and beyond. Jackie Ling Wong, a favorite DJ and instructor from the Massachusetts/Connecticut area, will be our DJ for this practica. Learn more about Jackie at http://www.tangopulse.net.
The Practica/brunch on Sunday is a great way to keep practicing with a wonderful group of people while enjoying the home-made food at Triangle Dance Studio!
May 13, Friday
- 7:00 - 8:15pm Class 1: Close embrace technique and combinations (All Levels)
- 8:30 - 9:45pm Class 2: Musicality - Beyond the Basic rhythm (Int.)
- 10:00pm - 2:00am Regional MILONGA 1
May 14, SATURDAY
- 11:30am - 12:45pm Class 3: Milonga Traspie explained (All Levels)
- 1:00 - 2:15pm Class 4: Musicality - Dancing to the melody (Int.)
- 2:15 - 3:00pm Lunch Break (group lunch provided at TDS, RSVP required!
- 3:00 - 5:30pm Regional Practica
- 5:30 - 8:0pm Break
- 8:00 - 9:30pm Group Dinner
- 9:30pm - 3:00am Regional Milonga
May 15, SUNDAY
- 11:30am - 1:30pm Regional PRACTICA/BRUNCH
- 1:30 - 2:45pm Class 5: Musicality - Adding dynamics to your dance (Int.)
- 3:00 - 4:15pm Class 6: Refining your dance (Int.)
Pricing:
The Early Registration Deadline is Wednesday , May 4th. To qualify for the Early Registration Discount, payments should be received on or by this date whether you mail a check or use Paypal.
This event is part of a series of events being held for our second Regional Weekend of 2005.
Visit these pages for more information about the Regional Weekend events with Alex Krebs.
- Workshop and Milonga, Fri 13 May
- Workshops with Alex Krebs Sat 14 May
- Milonga at Chamas with Alex Krebs Sat 14 May
- Sunday Brunch, Practica and Workshops with Alex Krebs Sun14 Nov
To register or purchase tickets for these events email gulden@tangophilia.com or tel: 919-361-5145 or 919-423-7681 before sending any payments. We will do our best to maintain gender balance at our events. Registrations are not completed until you receive confirmation from us!
Payment may be made by cash, check, credit card, or Paypal. To pay with a Credit Card, you MUST pay via this site by clicking prices below to add them to your shopping cart. Transactions will be processed via Paypal. We cannot accept credit card payments via email, over the phone, or in person.
Checks should be made out to JASON LAUGHLIN and mailed to 5814 Henner Pl, Durham, NC 27713.
Refund Policy
- Before the early registration deadline: We can refund the full payment.
- Before the date of the event (class, practica or milonga): We can refund 50% of the payment for events that you will not be able to attend. For a refund, you must contact us at Tangophilia at 919-361-5145 or 919-423-7681 24 hours before the date of the event.
- NO REFUNDS will be given if you cannot attend the event but tell us on or after the date of the event.
Accommodation
We have limited availability for accommodation with the local tangueros. Please let us know as soon as possible if you’d like us to find you a local host.
If you’d like to stay in a hotel we recommend the La Quinta in RTP based on the very positive feedback we’ve heard from past Regional Tango Weekend participants.
La Quinta Inn and Suites Raleigh Research Park
1910 West Park Drive
Durham, North Carolina 27713
Phone: (919) 484-1422
Fax: (919) 484-1423
Prices
After Early Reservation Deadline:
- Package 1 (All Events Plus Meals – includes 6 Classes + 2 Milongas + 2 Practicas + Saturday lunch and dinner + Sunday Brunch):
- Package 2 (Friday and Saturday Events, No Meals – includes 6 Classes + 2 Milongas + Saturday Practica only):
- A La Carte:
- Tangophilia or College Students:
- All Others:
Somebody likes coffee, but not tango…
There’s a cool new web tool called the Starbucks Delocator. Punch in your zip code, and it tells you the addresses of local coffeehouses alongside a list of Starbucks shops, so you can choose to support local coffee vendors.
I was taking a look to make sure some of my favorite cafes were listed, and so I punched in a Raleigh zip code to make sure that Helios Coffee Company, site of our 3rd Saturday milongas was represented.
Fortunately, it was. Unfortunately, the person that submitted the info apparently isn’t a fan of tango…
Helios
Cross Street: North Street
Address: 413 Glenwood Ave.
Raleigh, NC 27603
Phone: (919) 838-5177
Posted by Anonymous
Comments: Free wireless, rotating selections of pretty decent coffee, nice contemporary building…unfortunately some weird crap can happen like tango dancing on Saturday night. But give it a shot.
It’s also true that the anonymous coward isn’t alone in that judgment - one of the big issues of having social dances in public spaces like restaurants and cafes is balancing out the benefit we provide, in terms of entertainment, culture and paying customers, versus the customers that the venue might lose on those nights when we’re dancing. This is why it’s very important that we support public events with our attendance and with our dollars so that the restaurants and cafes that host us feel that it’s not only a good aesthetic decision to support tango, but a good business decision as well.
Our next Milonga at Helios Coffee Company is April 16th. I hope to see you there!
Piazzolla and Bandoneon on NPR’s Day To Day
I hope you were able to catch the report about Astor Piazzolla today on NPR’s Day To Day.
If you missed it, you can listen to the entire show on the Day To Day site or you can download the following mp3 (Piazzolla-DayToDay-NPR20050330.mp3) if you want to hear just the Piazzolla article.
The reason for the article, aside from recognizing the genius of Piazzolla, is that the Rough Guide music series has come out with a new CD: Rough Guide to Astor Piazzolla featuring 14 of his most popular pieces. In his day, Piazzolla (other recordings by Astor Piazzolla) pushed the boundaries of tango to new horizons. If you’d like to see how today’s artists are extending the boundaries and breathing new life into tango, you might enjoy the Rough Guide to Tango Neuvo.
I’m providing these links to Amazon for your convenience (and because I get an affiliate percentage), but don’t forget that we also have the Adios Nonino [IMPORT] CD by Astor Piazzolla on hand for sale ($18.00). You can reserve online and pick them up (sorry, we don’t ship) at any class or milonga!
Faux Pas de Deux or Shuggleftulation
In my tango foundations classes, I’ve often addressed the tendency of a nervous follower to second-guess her choice (or the leader’s lead, or the lack thereof) and take double or triple steps when one or zero would be best. The tendency sometimes arises because of a mistaken belief that it is the follower’s job to know or guess what the leader wanted and if she thinks she did the wrong thing, to try to fix it herself. I prefer to teach that the follower makes the best decision she can to take either a single step or no step, and that it is the leader’s job to then decide whether to accept or adjust the outcome.
I generally compare the result of the follower’s second-guessing to the situation in which two pedestrians are approaching each other on a narrow walkway, and then spend a few awkward moments stumbling and shuffling, trying to get out of each other’s way.
Today I came across a recent article on The Straight Dope in which Cecil Adams discusses Is there a word for the jig you do trying to get around someone on the sidewalk?. My personal favorites are faux pas de deux, ambi-ambulation, or avoidancing. Do you have a preference or an alternative?
New Options for Private Tango Lessons
We’re offering some new payment and scheduling options for private tango lessons that we hope you’ll find both convenient and affordable.
The highlights are as follows:
- Base pricing is simplified a little bit.
- We’ve clarified the payment options for Pay As You Go or Prepaid lessons.
- You can now create private small-group lessons for up to 6 people.
- We are making available some lunchtime time slots for private lessons during weekdays.
You can view the details on our private lessons page.
Locations Page Redesigned
I’ve redesigned the layout of the tangophilia locations page to make it more readable and useful.
Locations in North Carolina are now grouped by city/area, then grouped by state for regional/mid-Atlantic locations, then everywhere else 
For each area, those locations with scheduled upcoming events are listed first with a note telling you how many events are scheduled at that location. Those locations without scheduled events are at the bottom of each list.
Full Schedule for Regional Weekend in Wilmington
January 28-30, Tangophilia will be moving our Regional Weekend of Argentine Tango to Wilmington, NC. So far we’ve got over 40 people attending this event, traveling from as far north as Virginia Beach, VA and as far south as Tampa, FL.
Here’s the schedule.
Friday 28 January 2005
8:00 - 9:00pm Introductory Lesson (taught by Tangophilia instructors) for newcomers and beginners
9:00pm-1:00am Milonga
Saturday 29 January 2005
11:00am-12:30pm Workshop - “Navigational tools, musicality and
creativity on the social dance floor” for dancers with some experience
(taught by Tangophilia instructors)
12:30-2:30pm Group Lunch at the Vi�t Bistro, College Rd.
3:00-6:00pm Regional Practica
8:30pm-2:00am Catered Dinner + Demos + Milonga
Sunday 30 January 2005
11:00am-3:00pm Tango Brunch/Practica
3:00-5:00pm Tango Workshop for Local students
Classes Cancelled Wednesday 19 Jan 2005
Due to the weather in Durham, we’ve decided to go ahead and cancel the Foundations and Intermediate Tango Classes and Practica this evening. No reason to risk people slipping around on some snowy and icy roads (and even if you’re fine driving on it, there are plenty of other people around you who aren’t 
…). The 2nd classes of these series will be held next Wednesday, Jan 26th, and the classes will be extended one week to end on Feb 9th. Stay warm.
Human Do, Human See
This article, Human See, Human Do: Ballet Dancers’ Brains Reveal The Art Of Imitation, describes recent research conducted into understanding the “mirror system” of our brains. The “mirror system” activates both when we practice a movement and when we observe it. What this research demonstrates is that activation of the system is more pronounced when we’re observing a motion that we’re practiced in versus when observing a motion that is unfamiliar.
Professor Patrick Haggard of UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience says: �We’ve shown that the mirror system is finely tuned to an individual’s skills. A professional ballet dancer’s brain will understand a ballet move in a way that a capoiera expert’s brain will not. Our findings suggest that once the brain has learned a skill, it may simulate the skill without even moving, through simple observation. An injured dancer might be able to maintain their skill despite being temporarily unable to move, simply by watching others dance. This concept could be used both during sports training and in maintaining and restoring movement ability in people who are injured.�
This might help explain why it’s easier for an experienced dancer to understand and execute movements after brief viewings. It would also help explain why I find it so hard to sit still when watching a tango performance.
Dance Gumbo Tonight
We’ll be dropping by Jack Wolf’s Dance Gumbo tonight to encourage them to play some more Argentine Tango in the mix. The Dance Gumbo is an event DJ’d by Jack Wolf in which you can expect the widest variety of dances throughout the evening. Jack will play EC Swing, WC Swing, waltz, cha-cha, zydeco, tango, salsa, merengue, and other dance music to keep the eclectic crowd moving. The dance will be held at Triangle Dance Studio. There’s some kind of intro lesson at 8pm and dancing starts at 8:30 and continues well past midnight.
Switching to Wordpress
I’m just about done converting the blog software on tangophilia over to Wordpress from Moveable Type. Anticipation and stalled migration had been at least some of the reasons why this blog hasn’t been updated in a long time. Now with those out of the way, and the blog installed on a more open platform, I can get around to writing about a year’s worth of pent-up thoughts and ideas .