Blog.
The Benefits Of Good Posture!
Has anyone ever told you, "Stand up straight!" or scolded you for slouching at a family dinner? Comments like that might be annoying-but they're not wrong. Your posture is the foundation for every movement your body makes and can determine how well your body adapts to the stresses on it.
The Tango Lexicon
EL ABRAZO: EMBRACE (AS IN DANCE HOLD)
ABRIR: TO OPEN
ADELANTE: FORWARD
ADORNOS: EMBELLISHMENTS
AL COSTADO: TO THE SIDE
Dance Floor Hygiene: Dress to Stay Fresh!
We all sweat when we dance, and some of us sweat more easily — and profusely — than others. There's nothing wrong with that — in fact, sweating is good for you. It opens up pores to release toxins and regulates body temperature.
Johana Copes & Jaimes Friedgen: Paciencia
Johana Copes & Jaimes Friedgen perform "Paciencia" with live music by Seth Asarnow, Adrian Jost & Sascha Jacobsen. Milonga La Cumparsita, San Francisco, 9/7/2015
Our Last Tango
Our Last Tango“ is above all a love story. A story of love between the two most famous dancers in tango’s history and their tremendous love of tango. María Nieves Rego (80) and Juan Carlos Copes (83) met when they were 14 and 17, and they danced together for nearly fifty years. Despite a rocky relationship, the two continued to dance together because of their undeniable chemistry on the dance floor, making tango a worldwide sensation with their "Tango Argentino" Broadway show in the 1980s.
La Confiteria Ideal: The Tango Salon
This documentary examines La Confiteria Ideal, a Buenos Aires dance hall where fervent devotees of tango flock to escape everyday life. Including wonderful interviews with famous milongueros: Gerardo Portalea, Javier Rodriguez & Geraldine Rojas, Mariano Chicho Frumboli and Puppy Castello.
Siempre Es Carnaval
I started thinking about tango lyrics when one of my teachers told me about one of his performances; he explained how his partner (who wasn’t a native Spanish speaker, he emphasized), didn’t listen to the lyrics and ended up smiling hugely through the depressingly sad song they were dancing to. My teacher described this as an example of how we need to understand the lyrics to fully understand the song, because even songs that sound happy and upbeat could be sending a different message entirely.
The Tango Lesson
"Most dances are for people who are falling in love. The tango is a dance for those who have survived it, and are still a little angry about having their hearts so mishandled. The Tango lesson is a movie for people who understand that difference." ~ Roger Ebert
Capturing Grace
This special screening will bring awareness and help raise funds for the free, Healing Movement dance classes offered at the Lineage Performing Arts Center for Dancing with Parkinson’s, Stroke Recovery, Dancing Through Cancer and Dancing with Down Syndrome.
My first Milonga
"I left the first milonga I attended after—maybe, at my most conservative guess—an entire seven minutes. In those seven bewildered and embarrassed minutes, I quit tango, hated all humanity (well, that’s nothing new), and had an existential crisis."
En tus brazos
En tus brazos (In your arms) - short film by Goby, Jouret & Landour - 2005, France
Tango Libre
In Belgian director Frédéric Fonteyne’s film Tango Libre Mariano ‘Chicho’ Frumboli plays the ringleader of the prison’s tough Argentinean inmates who is asked by the central male character to teach him tango after realizing its physical and emotional importance to his free-spirited wife.
The Three Faces of Tango
Tango emerged by mixing the music of the gauchos' rural milonga and the polka & waltz of the European immigrants with the African-Argentine dances in the melting pot that was Buenos Aires. The tango was shaped by and for the foreigner, the estranged, the disenfranchised, and it still revolves around the intimate connections between people, their communities and the intermixing of a plethora of international cultures.
The Golden Age
Tango music can be traced back to the 1850s, but during the Guardia Nueva period, (1925-1935) Tango dancing had started to decline. The musicians began focusing less on the beat and more on the melodies as people were buying records and listening to tango on the radio. Dancing was no longer the primary concern.
How To Select The Right Tango Shoes
Balancing our body and maintaining the balance is a prerequisite for beautiful movements, be they simple or complex. Our high heels influence and effect our spine and pelvis, knees, ankles and the feet, but with all the sparkling heels out there, how do we know what shoe is right for us?