Still Sucking At Tango

First off, there are only about 7 or 8 users that ever see this blog, so I can't really be too worried about keeping my writing up.

I'm still doing at least seven classes a week and going to one or two prácticas (usually Práctica X and Tango Cool on Fridays, although last week I did Tango Discovery on Sunday and this week I might do Tango Motivo tomorrow night although it's quite variable). And I'm still concentrated on DNI and Copello Tango 2, and I'm pretty convinced that it's a good group of teachers. Gonzalo and Mariel from DNI are going to be gone for a while, which is a loss.

So the following things have come up:

• I'm moving my arms a lot, even though I'm also moving my torso a lot too (which isn't really a common problem: usually you move your arms too much because you're not moving torso). The problem is that "keeping your arms still" and "keeping your head with your torso" are obvious only according to some ways of looking at it. For me, moving my head with my torso is quite unnatural. It's hard for people to understand when they say, "okay, look you moved your arm" it's obvious, of course, but since my torso is moving the obvious thing for me to do would be to extend and contract the arm to keep it in one place, and not have it move with my torso. I think I'm REALLY close to a breakthrough on this... at least I've found my torso, so it's not going so badly.
• I've kind of found a way to start dancing, which is some mix between listening to the music, making sure my steps are truly right and left and backward and forward, working very carefully with the woman, and taking advantage of spaces on the dance floor and trying not to think about the figures I'm going to do. The idea is not to avoid using your vocabulary of figures, but rather to let your vocabulary come out a bit more naturally. I've practiced some figures a lot and I've also done a lot consciously on the dance floor a bunch. I have enough figures to get moving, the idea is to dance with the vocabulary I have plus one or two more figures that I've learned recently.
• After that breakthrough I went to dance with my chica who said that I'm indecisive, my leads are incomprehensible, and that I've even forgotten everything I learned about my caminata. Now this is weird because I went over this with Jose (from Copello) and he said that he doesn't feel my leads as weak. Now it's true that I'm working on getting my leads to be more dynamic with Pedro from DNI, but I'm not sure whether my chica is just expecting a lot, or whether she's sensing that, or whether she's sensing something else. But in any case, the point is that there's some weird Eastern stuff going on in tango: it has to do with flexibility and firmness and all that bullshit.

I talked to El Indio at Catedral the other night because I like how he dances. He's giving classes at La Catedral on Monday 20-21.30 and on Thursdays 21-23 at Avenida Lacroze 4181 6o piso (chacarita).

Well, chilling out tonight and tomorrow I head to DNI and then maybe I'll check out the night class with El Indio or maybe at Canning or... well, there are always options. This is Buenos Aires, after all.