General information of possible use to those wanting to learn and dance Tango in San Antonio. Some of the information is facts, but much of it is the opinions of the web site author, Frank Huddleston.

Handy Information

• San Antonio Tango Events Calendar
• Puro Tango de San Antonio, local Tango organization: 210-663-4954: www.purotangodesanantonio.com
• Austin Tango Events Calendar: www.austintango.org/

Table of Contents
(Click link to show or hide the article)

• The Tango scene in San Antonio Strictly my opinions.
• My Tango Story How I came to Argentine Tango.
• Learning Tango (in San Antonio)
• Basic Technique Guidelines ...according to Frank Huddleston
• Outline for a Beginner's Class
• My night at Niño Bien A little story about my visit in 2002 to the famous milonga.

Teachers of Private Tango Lessons in San Antonio

Loreen Alvarez (of Puro Tango)	210-827-2792	loreentango57@sbcglobal.net
Ángela Ángela	210-413-4671	amajleo@yahoo.com
Judith Foster	210-363-6070	Rincondeltango@sbcglobal.net
Sarah Stayer	713-444-6974	stayersa@gmail.com
Pablo Uresti	210-262-6945	desanantonio@sbcglobal.net

The Tango Scene in San Antonio

August 2008 The remaining associates of the group formerly known as "SA Tangueros" stopped renting the Jazzercise studio, and stopped activities such as teaching lessons and organizing workshops, at the beginning of February 2008. At this time, there are two main groups: Terry's group, and Puro Tango. Manuel is out there somewhere, teaching and occasionally performing, but he has been less active recently. Terry holds regular classes and milongas, which you can find out about at his website. Puro Tango is about to start their activities in a new location: the Let's Dance studio has closed. There are also some non-partisan activities, some regular, some not: there have been some "impromtu" milongas held at Olmos Bharmacy and the Mandala gallery, and at this time the Olmos "Bharmacy" milonga has become a regular event, held twice a month, and attended by members of all Tango factions. Generally there seems to be less hostility, more cooperation, and more inter-group activities these days, which is a positive development for the San Antonio Tango scene.

End of 2006: A little update
The leader of the SA Tangueros group, Terry Bauch, left the group to form his own group, which I think is called (if it's called anything) SATango, or maybe SATango.org. Or maybe SATango.com. He kept the domain name (web site name) that this site had used for several years, and used it for his new group. He has requested that nothing be posted or advertised about his group's activities unless he explicitly requests it. Since I usually try to announce all the Tango information and events that I think might be of interest to Tangueros in San Antonio, this puts me in the position of neglecting to mention the acivities of one of the groups in San Antonio. But if you want to know what's happening with his group, check out their web site at www.satango.com (satango.org should work as well).
Another big change in the group situation in San Antonio this last year was the breakup of Puro Tango. Loreen Alvarez is continuing the group under the name "Puro Tango Argentino", with most of the same activities. Josue is still around, but I am unaware of his Tango activities at this time.
Manuel Lobo picked up teaching at Circa on Monday nights, and apparently is guiding a group of regular attendees, as well as whoever shows up.
Judith Foster is running a regular Sunday night practice session at the restaurant "Pasión" way up on 1604. At least, I think she is doing that. She might be attached to Terry's new group, in which case maybe I'm not supposed to say anything about it. It's just so hard to keep track of all this stuff ;) And the chismes (gossip): sometimes I think we should have a "San Antonio Tango Chismes Wiki". Maybe we're better at making chismes than Tango!
Venues: Massimo's is out: I think it actually closed. There's a new Wednesday night milonga at Fusion restaurant, with Daniel Monserrat playing and singing. No more Tango Fridays at the Radius Cafe, nor Milongas Ardientes at the Let's Dance studio: the Friday-night Milongas Ardientes will be at the Instituto de México. I do not know if they'll be held every week, though.
Monica Caivano has not come to San Antonio for some time, and I don't know if she'll be returning on a regular basis in the foreseeable future. She's bought her own studio space up in Austin, and is pretty busy working on that, as well as teaching Tango at the new Footworks Studio space.
A few times a year, professional teachers come to San Antonio: Puro Tango Argentino is planning to bring some in the coming year, and we'll be hosting Carlos Cañedo, a talented young Tango teacher who resides in New York, and Brooke Burdett, who's been living in and working from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Both of them have become regular visitors to San Antonio. We're thinking of some other possibilities, too.
The Tango scene in San Antonio has become more fragmented in some ways, with groups splitting to become new groups. It's like the hydra monster of mythology: if you cut off one head, two heads would appear in its place. Maybe it will work out well after all. The proof is in the dancing, so we'll just have to see.

As of the end of July 2005

Just looking at the calendar of Tango events in San Antonio, one might think there is quite a thriving Tango community here. It has almost as many Tango activities as Austin; sometimes even more. The big difference is in quality; there are few good Tango dancers in San Antonio, and the general level of Tango dancing is quite low. It seems that people here are just not very dilligent about really learning Tango. The few guys who start getting some skill seem to go off on their own and don't take classes or lessons any more, perhaps figuring "OK, I've got the hang of this", the way guys so often do, and then develop their own idiosyncratic style that requires that they "train" their partners in how to dance with them. It's as though they speak their own dialect of the Tango language, almost unintelligible to anyone not trained to understand it. Then there are the couples, who dance only with each other. Some of them are impressive in their abilities, but again, it's a private language. So to me it seems as though that "core" of Tango dancers, especially leaders, who have learned a basic set of skills in the dance and can help each other advance and improve, has never developed in San Antonio. There are some followers like that, who have the fundamental skills and are fairly dilligent about learning the dance, but they despair of finding good leaders. At least one has resorted to becoming a leader herself. To be fair, I don't think it's always hubris that has the leaders going off on their own; it's hard to be a leader, it takes longer to develop as a leader, it's especially challenging to a guy's self-esteem, and there just isn't as much social motivation as for some of the other dances, like Salsa or Country-Western. The Tango group in San Antonio is mostly an older crowd; no guys are wearing head-scarves or workout pants made of parachute material with zippers on the sides, and no young chicks with navel piercings (well I admit I have not done an extensive investigation). I could be missing some undercurrents here, because I'm one of the more experienced and accepted dancers, but the scene doesn't seem very snobby, which is nice. Followers might have to sit out a lot of dances, but I get the feeling that everybody dances with everybody else, pretty much, and the crowd is friendly.

There are two main Tango organizations in San Antonio: SATangueros and Puro Tango. SATangueros is now officially a non-profit organization, and functions as more of a collective, but headed up by their president, the dynamic Terry Bauch, whereas Puro Tango is like an association, and was founded by Josue Matutino. He is helped by his partner Loreen Alvarez. Jose De Lara, who teaches the classes at Massimo, is also a prominent Puro Tango member. At various times there have been some bad feelings and frictions between the groups, but I would say that the extent of that depends on which individual is portraying the situation. In general, the two groups pursue their activities independently, although there are many Tangueros and Tangueras in San Antonio who do not feel obliged to claim allegiance to either group, and choose their events according to their own assessments of the event's merits. Both groups offer regular classes; see the activities page for particulars. Puro Tango's events tend to be a little more obviously branded as such, and sometimes offer discounts to members, but are open to all comers.

In addition, there are the venues. I admit that I have not attended Massimo's since Pepe Cervantes started there, but the venues all seem about the same to me; a singer with a guitar and a music box singing and playing a variety of music, usually mostly Tango but also mixed Latin and other dance music: watered-down Salsa, the ubiquitous Elvis Crespo merengue, the "Baila Como Juana La Cubana" Cumbia, a few Rancheras (which drive the crowd wild), and a Swing or two. The singer might be excellent, and live music without a doubt creates an ambience, but give me the recorded Tango orchestras any day for dancing. I never saw a single milonga in Buenos Aires with a guy singing with a guitar. There might be a live Tango orchestra, but even then, it would be for part of the evening only. I'm speaking of the milongas here, where people go primarily to dance; I'm sure it's different in some of the clubs. But even in the milongas in San Antonio, it's almost always the same thing; even the recorded music played in between sets is frequently some kind of Tango-matic synthesized, machine-beat stuff suitable only for Tango karaeoki.
Except for the milongas at the Jazzercise put on by SATangueros; there alone can one dance to the great orchestras, to music that has enough range and complexity to make the dance really interesting. Granted, it does not have the social buzz that Circa or Massimo's have, and some might turn up their nose at its humble environs; a strip mall. But it offers the best place to dance Tango in San Antonio, and the only place to dance to the kind of music danced to in the milongas of Buenos Aires.

And it occurs to me that, for all my criticism about the quality of dancing in San Antonio, maybe it's not so different from a lot of places in Buenos Aires; after all, I went to mostly the big milongas popular with the international crowd of serious Tango fans, and the situation might be quite different in the other places. I find that the activity of dancing Tango tends to be interpreted and shaped by the person experiencing it; for some, it's a chance to organize grand, stylish events; for others, a chance to be involved in a social group. I think one tends to experience the activity in one's own terms, and for me, it's a continuous challenge to be skilled and competent, one that I'm never quite achieving, and I'm critical of others who I judge to be too easily satisfied. Somewhere in there I realize that that is not everyone's approach to things, and that it's a good thing that it isn't. I tend to be somewhat of a martinet, but, I hope, a nice martinet. I guess it really does take all kinds to make a Tango scene.

Top
Bottom

---

My Tango Story

or, how I came to Argentine Tango.

Everybody's got one: the story of how they came to be dancing this dance which seems to be so much more than just a dance. Of course the story of this is really the story of one's life, but I'll spare you that, and tell you just the parts that relate to dance. I grew up in a suburban, white, upper-middle-class family of no particular ethnic designation. My parents danced, and were somewhat musical: both my Mom and Dad played the piano, and my Dad had played trombone once upon a time. I didn't see them dance much, and whatever dancing they did was probably social ballroom-type dancing. The music around the house was either classical or "easy listening". I remember hearing things like "Afternoon of a Faun" by Debussy and the Sabre Dance by Khachaturian, and a lot of classical music was kind of familiar to me, although I couldn't have told you what it was. Although my parents were educated, they were not "high-brow".
My first memories of dancing were obligatory square-dancing in fourth grade, which I liked alright, as I remember. My next memories were from when I was about 13 and went to social dances at the recreation center at the apartment where we were living by then. The music was some kind of "rock", probably prominently featuring Beach Boys tunes, since this was California in 1965 or so. I really had no idea how to dance to this stuff, except maybe the slow dances, and those were just... embarrassing. But sometime during my late high school years my parents (I'm sure I didn't do this on my own) enrolled me in one of those summer courses taught by the school district, and I got basic training in the ballroom standards, including a dance that you could do to rock music; I remember we practiced to "I Heard it Through the Grapevine". Finally, I had a clue what to do. That's all I remember really taking away from that class.

 Years later, my last year in college, I was looking for something to help me break out of myself, or maybe get into myself, or somehow get beyond the stifling prison of repression and insecurity in which I perceived myself to be, and, towards this end, attended a class in International Folk Dancing. In retrospect, I don't know why I didn't just enroll in a Modern Dance class, but maybe that was just not in consideration, because it was just too far "out there". In any case, I became an avid folk-dancer, and kept up with this for several years, up to the time I got married, when all dancing stopped. Well, we did dance once in a great while on the odd occasions when we actually went out, but that was really seldom, believe me. Then about the time we were planning on getting divorced, my wife said she wanted to take dance lessons. I think she was thinking about her upcoming single life, and wanted to prepare for it. We took Country-Western dance lessons, but didn't get along any better on the dance floor than we had elsewhere, so I started practicing with another dancer, and going out to the local dance places. One day I got the idea that I would like to learn this dance they called "Salsa", and mentioned that to my partner. She wanted to learn it, too, and it so happened that just that weekend I saw a notice for Salsa and Merengue lessons to be taught locally. We attended, got started with that, and later attended a longer course in various tropical dances, to include such exotics as the dance to "Sopa de Caracol", whose name I think is "Punta". We asked where we could dance this stuff around town, and were directed to a dance spot called the "Tropical Grove". The first time we went, our teachers were there, and chaperroned us, enjoining me to ask one of the girls to dance ("Don't worry, I told her to say yes"). Once we showed up by ourselves, at about 9:30 or so; the place was empty, the chairs still put up, the smell of disinfectant in the air. They weren't closed; it's just that nobody would ever think of dancing that early in the evening. I soon learned that people didn't really start to dance until about 11 PM, and there were people still making an entrance at 1 AM. I started going to the place more frequently; it was totally exotic to me, and people were pretty good to me. Sometimes I would come home, set my alarm clock for 10 PM, go to sleep, wake up, take a shower, go to the Liberty Bar for a few cups of coffee, then head over to the Tropical Grove about midnight. I got more familiar and comfortable with the Salsa and Merengue, and was a reasonably competent, but not a really good dancer. I got to be fairly well known at the clubs, though, to the point that it sometimes felt like a homecoming if I hadn't gone in awhile. I liked it: people were nice, you kissed women on the cheek, you shook the men's hands, they patted you on the shoulder. But it also had another side; it was definitely the "club" environment, in which a partner is chosen with careful consideration of their dance status, versus the "dance studio" environment, where almost all comers are accepted: You learned which cliques there were, and who not to even bother to ask to dance; you could be turned down brutally, and sometimes I felt snake-bit; I had asked everyone I could see who looked even remotely "danceable", and had no luck. It was a little like gambling; you did't want to leave when you were having a losing streak; that was just admitting defeat, but when you were winning, you did't want to leave, either. More than once I was asked to audition when I asked a woman to dance, so she could make sure that I knew how to dance this type of dance. It was probably profiling, and, although extreme, kind of understandable in the "club" environment: she didn't want to be made to look like a fool out there on the floor by someone who had no clue.

After several years, I was taken to see a Tango show by a friend: the show was "Tango X 2", as I remember, and, while I liked it, I can't say I immediately thought, "I've got to learn that!". At some point early on I also saw the movie "Tango Bar", and liked the dancing in that a lot. After some time, I became intrigued with Argentine Tango and started thinking that I wanted to explore it; I thought it would be a nice contrast and complement to the Salsa. Salsa was so high-energy, extroverted and perpetual-motion, whereas the Tango seemed more introspective and intimate. I started investigating; this was about 1999 or so, and I contacted the Austin Tango Connection because I saw their site on the web. I asked if there was anybody teaching Tango in San Antonio, and was told there was someone in New Braunfels or somewhere up North, but they didn't know of anyone in San Antonio. I figured New Braunfels was too far to go. A little while later, I attended Tango night at Salon Mexico, and Aaron taught a basic Tango lesson. I remember that it was very clear and easy to understand. At that lesson, a guy stood up and said he was teaching Argentine Tango on the patio of Arjon's once a week. That's just what I was looking for, so I began attending. This is when it started to get frustrating for me, though; instead of the simple, easy, clear-cut demonstrations of Aaron at Salon Mexico was this flowery talk about the "passion" and how everyone was a great Tango dancer inside, etc. etc. etc. They did demonstrate and teach the basic step, but it really had no rhyme or reason to me: or rhythm. I was like "what's the rhythm?", and they were like: "anything you like!". I didn't like to hear that; I was used to dances where "el ritmo" was everything; it didn't mean a thing if it didn't have that swing. This guy who was teaching was named Oscar Wright, and he was visiting from Florence, Italy. He had gone over to Italy to live just because he liked it; he hadn't known the language or been there in the Army, or anything. He just liked Italy. Pretty ballsy, I've got to admit. He was probably teaching me OK; I remember he'd always correct me for not "gathering" or "collecting" my ankles, but then he left and his protoge took over. She was not quite as experienced as he was, and was easily distracted. I found myself in the situation of a lot of those people who, once they are no longer complete beginners, get ignored at the basic dance lessons. I remember this person telling me to just go over in the corner and practice the basic step. After awhile, I decided that I would just have to go to Austin to learn Tango.

I started driving up from San Antonio every Monday night to attend classes taught by Monica Caivano. There I was being taught the Argentine Tango, all right, but the one lesson once a week, with nobody to practice with in the meantime, was not going to work; I needed people to practice with. I talked to Chris Humphries who was one of the instigators of Argentine Tango in Austin, and she said that she and her boyfriend had started the group about three years ago in their living room after having attended a Tango workshop in, of all places, San Antonio. I figured I could do the same, and so started prosthletizing to whomever I thought might be a candidate. A few of us got togther and started practicing at the rec center of an apartment complex, but it was really the blind leading the blind. We had these Daniel Trenner tapes that I had bought, and would try to use those to teach each other. It was my idea that we would all take the classes and workshops, and then help each other remember and practice what we had "learned". However, few of the people who started coming actually went to other classes, so we were put in the position of having to teach those even more inexperienced than ourselves. Along the way we changed places a few times, because we always seem to do something to irritate our hosts sufficiently to cause our eviction. At the apartment it was scratching the concrete floor with either our shoes or the furniture when we would move it; I don't remember now. We then found a great place at the Incarnate Word Retirement Center recreation room; it even had a TV with a VCR, and was provided free of charge. But it seemed that some kids that had accompanied one or a few of our attendees caused too much of a ruckus, and so we were ex-communicated from that arrangement. I remember maybe only one occasion of kids being present, but I am told by some that yes, they were quite disturbing.

 We then moved to our present home, the Jazzercise studio at West Ave. and Patricia, where we have been for several years. We do still irritate the landlords; I recently incurred their wrath over my slovenly disregard of commonly-accepted dance studio neatness standards, and took a characteristically cheeky and sarcastic attitude with them when it was brought to my attention. We made up and got over it, though. I think.

 The group has never really developed the way I had hoped, but continues to struggle along. Most recently it was incorporated as a non-profit organization, the SATangueros. Although I have a somewhat independent relation to the group, it's the group with which I work most closely.

 In 2002 I made my first trip to Buenos Aires (pictures from that trip are probably available from the pictures page), and in 2004 I went to Argentina and Uruguay for almost a full two months. Not all of that time was devoted to Tango, but I did go to a lot of classes and a few milongas. As a result of my years of taking classes and trying to learn Argentine Tango, I'm one of the most experienced tangueros in San Antonio. But I've still got a lot to learn, and if anything, my experiences have made me humble, because there are so many great dancers and so much to learn and do.
 So there is my Tango story; aren't you glad I didn't tell you my whole life!

Top
Bottom

---

Learning Argentine Tango in San Antonio

So you are in San Antonio, and want to learn the Argenine Tango? Well, you've got a tough assignment; why not try something easy, like making fire with ice cubes? But if you're really determined, there are several options:
Strictly from the standpoint of instruction quality and learning environment, your best option is to go take classes in Austin. This isn't as bad as it might seem, because there are often several people from San Antonio who get together and carpool. If you are interested in doing this, contact me at fhuddles@yahoo.com, and I'll see if I can arrange for you to carpool with people who are already going up there.

Rather than give you information which might be out of date by the time you read this, I suggest you check the "Austin" sites listed under TangoLinks Texas sites on this site, and check out a few of the sites. There's also (at the time of writing this) an online calendar of Austin events at www.austintango.org

Now, not everyone will want to go to Austin for lessons, and even if you do, you will want to practice and maybe learn some more in between your weekly classes. That's what happened to me; I was going to Austin every week, taking classes and learning things, but had nobody to practice with in the meantime, and it was clear to me that I wasn't going to progress very much without regular practice. This site attempts to keep track of the Tango-related events in San Antonio, on the Tango activities page. But it currently does not publish activities put on by Terry Bauch, so you'll have to go to his site at satango.info to find out about those. Also, I notice that people are better at announcing when they are starting something, but bad about telling me that it's not happening any more, so if you are new here, you might want to check with someone before planning to attend an event. You are welcome to contact me: I can be reached at frank@tangosa.info or via the form on this site: comment/suggestion form.. Josue Matutinomatutino1@aol.comPuro Tango founder Judith Foster210-363-6070Rincondeltango@sbcglobal.netBeginner-Intermediate. Also DJ's.
Note (end of 2006): I'm not sure whether Josue is giving private lessons at this point. There are also some teachers whom I haven't included because I'm not sure they want their information put on a web site. I think Manuel Lobo gives private lessons.
--> Top
Bottom

---

Frank's Guidelines for Dancing Tango

It is of course a futile task to try to teach Tango on a web site, but at least here I can give the basic information I give to people in my classes. I hope I don't steer you wrong here; I'm still learning things myself, and sometimes I hear something that sounds like a complete contradiction to things that I have taught. This will happen in Tango; there are a lot of opinions, and sometimes seemingly contradictory things end up working together. I guess it's like one of those Eastern philosophies in that way. I'm just trying to give my information here so people can review it and practice it.

Basic Stance You should stand with your weight slightly forward. One of my teachers explained it as: hold your hands out straight in front of you, and feel how much that pulls your weight forward; that's about the right amount. You should have your weight on one foot or the other; not evenly distributed between them. Generally, the weight-bearing leg should be slightly bent. The non-weight-bearing leg (the "free" leg) should be, in the standing position, right alongside the other, and bent about the same amount. The weight of the weight-bearing foot should be concentrated in the front or ball of the foot. The free foot should touch the floor at the inside of the ball of the foot, in other words have a somewhat tilted position, but should have no weight on it.

Tango requires a separation in movements and attitude between the lower and upper parts of the body. In general, the upper part, or torso, is "up", and the lower part is "down". The torso usually stays with and tracks the partner's position, while the lower body points itself in the direction in which the steps are being taken. This may require quite a bit of twisting on the part of the dancer, and is one of the more difficult things to learn in Tango. It is also one of the things which makes Tango "work" and which gives it its characteristic look.

Because one's entire body weight is balanced in an "axis" that extends as an imaginary line, like the Earth's own axis, from the ball of that weight-bearing foot up through whatever else is directly above it, one can pivot on the ball of the weight-bearing foot. This fact of balancing on the ball of one foot introduces another of Tango's characteristics and difficulties, namely: balancing on one foot or the other the whole time one is dancing. But it also allows one to pivot to change direction. The bent knee on the weight-bearing leg helps one to maintain balance (this is "down"), and the upgright posture of the torso also helps to align one's body with one's own axis (this is "up").

The Frame On the open side, the hands should be about the level of the follower's mouth. They should be maintained more-or-less in the middle of the space between the two dancers; that is, neither pushed to the follower's or the leader's side. On the closed side: depending on the style and the height of the two dancers, the leader's arm should extend at least to the middle of the follower's back, just below the shoulder blades. The arms of the follower and leader should be together with maximum surface area contact. The follower's hand should be able to move up and down along the leader's neck and shoulder and arm, to allow for changes in position during dancing. In general, the frame should remain fixed throughout the dance. The leader's upper body should function as a bracket mounted on a turret. This is of course too inflexible a description, but gives a general idea; if there is too much movement, the lead will be compromised. The leader's lead is from the center of his chest, which requires that he rotate his upper body independently of his hips. This is only possible to a limited extent, but should be practiced. In general, I have found that I am never doing enough chest rotation.
About the relative stiffness of the frame; I'm still working this out. I have noticed that a lot of good dancers with whom I've danced have quite a loose frame on both sides, but that's not to say that it's wishy-washy. It's just that I can't use my frame to indicate the lead as much, and have to rely on my chest - see the chest rotation comments. That being said, there are some partners who enjoin me to be more solid on the closed side, and I'm convinced, for now at least, that some degree of frame stiffness is probably needed for some manoevers, like boleos.

The Walk Ah, yes; the walk; at once the most basic and fundamental, yet the most elusive and worked-on part of the dance. It's like the accent in a language; it's what makes Tango look like Tango, yet it's hard to describe and acquire, and, to some extent, is an individual thing. But let me try to give a few notes: Both partners should keep their weight forward. Usually the follower will be walking backward, and it's important to keep the weight forward, with the weight balanced on one foot, and to reach back and straighten the leg with the other, just before transferring weight to it. As the weight is transferred, the leg bends. Please, I implore you, followers: reach back! Don't let yourself get pushed back, and don't simply fall onto that back foot! I don't like stepping on my follower's feet; believe me. I also hate that feeling of worrying about stepping on their feet and feeling as though I can't really move forward because the follower is not moving back. But possibly I'm just not projecting my "intention" forward sufficiently BEFORE I begin to step. When the follower steps back and puts that back foot down, that defines how long that step can be; the leader can't step any farther than that without either stepping around or stepping on the follower's foot. Admittedly, the available floor space limits the size of the back step that can be taken, but at least, reach back so that you open a space for the leader to step into. That's one of the scary things for Tango beginners; the leader is stepping into a space that, when he begins the step, isn't there! He's got to make the space by projecting his "intention" from his chest, which loosens the follower's free leg, and when she reaches back with it - he can step. I believe that no amount of skillful lead can completely tell the follower exactly WHEN she should step; it's the music that synchronizes both of them and provides a "grid" to indicate when the dance events will happen in time. If the follower is simply reacting to the leader's intention, there's too much of a continuous motion to be able to determine the precise moment in time when the step should occur; only the beat of the music is precise enough to tell you that. Of course, this assumes that both leader and follower have a good sense of the music's timing. If the leader doesn't, I guess the follower just has to follow as best she (or he) can.
I think it makes a much better "line" if the leader also straightens the back leg as he's moving forward. As for the famous contra-body motion, this I think is used more in certain places than others, and, I've noticed, by certain dancers more than others. In general, there is not a side-to-side contra-body rotation of the upper body when simply walking in front of one's follower. But when walking outside, for example on step 3 of the basic step, the contra-body rotation is quite pronounced. On step 4, just before the cross, however, one doesn't rotate in the other direction, as pure contra-body technique would indicate. So again, this is a generality, to be applied appropriately.
 The last time I was in Buenos Aires, I heard "suelta la cadera" a lot; this means "loosen the hips", and I really do think this helps a lot in achieving a smooth, balanced walk, and even helps contra-body. It's rather hard to describe, but think about projecting the hip forward as you walk, rather than just the leg. A certain fluidity, almost a rolling motion, results in the hips that acts something like the suspension in a car, smoothing out irregularities and making you more balanced. The muscle movements resulting from the hip projection also encourage a contra-body motion. Probably the most prominent practicioners of this theory are Julio Balmaceda and Corina de la Rosa.

Rhythm I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I think that if you're dancing, whatever you are doing should have some rhythmic relation to the music. The Argentines also are awkward when learning Tango, but seem to have a better grasp of the rhythm than the people here. Maybe it's familiarity with the music: I hear people say that the music is strange to U.S. listeners, but it's not that strange; this is not Chinese music, people! And don't you Latinos start getting all smug and thinking, "Of course I've got rhythm: I'm Latin!". I'm here to tell you it ain't necessarily so, besides being a chauvinistic statement that reinforces an ethnic stereotype; we don't want to go around doing that, do we? OK, though; if you're Latin, you've probably got a leg up on the white boys and girls. Not necessarily on those Orientals, though; they rule! I mean, what can't they do better than you or I can! If you're white, don't despair completely; Mozart was white, Beethoven was white, even George Gershwin was white, and they had rhythm! (or was it George's brother Ira who had the rhythm - both of them, probably!) OK, we could argue about whether they had that "Thang"; they were no James Brown, but come on, you don't need to be James Brown to get on the Good Foot with Tango. You want to Feel Good without getting in a Cold Sweat about it; to Get the Feeling: Hah! - 'scuse me while I do the boogaloo!
Sorry; I got carried away: My theory is that people get so wrapped up in doing "steps" that they forget to put those steps to the music. That's OK if you're practicing, but when dancing, it ought to be to the music, and I would suggest restricting the steps to the most basic ones and making a dance with those - the people in Buenos Aires aren't busting a bunch of fancy moves on the dance floor at the milongas, not before 3 AM, anyway. There just isn't room, for one thing.
When I first started learning Argentine Tango, I expected a rhythm to be taught with every figure, like in Salsa. I was completely frustrated that my instructors were so glib and vague about it: "You can do it to any rhythm" they'd say. So now, with the wisdom of the years, I can see that that is true, kind of. But in general, the basic, default "beat" of the Tango is every two beats. If you want to speed it up and do "double-time", you've got to lead that; if you want to slow it down, you've got to lead that. The default is what will happen if you just lead without indicating otherwise. I hope that helps those of you who are struggling with the same questions I had when I started.

Another important thing about the rhythm is that it isn't just to look good; it helps synchronize both partners, and helps the follower know when things are likely to happen. When the leader isn't following the rhythm, the follower has nothing to follow but the leader; when the follower isn't following the rhythm, the leader doesn't really know when the follower is going to step; this makes his lead less assured and vastly restricts what he can do. When both partners are listening to the music and following the rhythm, it's as though they are two musicians reading off the same page of music. But just as musicians, even though they are reading from the same music with the same rhythm, sometimes need a conductor, so does the pair of dancers need the "conducting" of the leader. The follower can't just independently respond to the rhythm as it moves her, unless it just involves ornaments which do not change the dynamic of the dance. But she will use the basic beat of the music to tell her the default pace of her steps.

Top
Bottom

---

See the Activities page for descriptions of the Argentine Tango activities offered in San Antonio.

Note: December 11 is "El Dia Nacional del Tango"

---

---