Argentine Tango is the influence of opposites upon one another, the masculine and feminine.  Opposing traits meshed together: powerful and subtle moments, quick and slow beats, sharp turns and flowing motions, expansion and contraction, discipline and freedom.  Tango is about a man and a woman, creating a dance according to the mood, music, and their inner feelings at that moment.  It is an expression of their hearts.

Tango allows the woman to express the widest range of femininity more than any other dance.  The man creates the form of the dance and the woman fills it with her beauty, grace, and inner spirit.  In expressing his masculinity though powerful and decisive moments, the man enables the woman to explore and express the outer limits of her femininity. 

Argentine Tango is a dance of heighten senses and precise movements.  The woman is not submissive or passive, but in a heighten state of sensitivity and response.  The man must lead clearly and decisively without giving mixed signals in his leads.  By exercising discipline in his leads, both dancers are given more freedom to express themselves.

Because the woman is in a heighten state of awareness, the man has to be creative to keep her interest.  He must occasionally give her an unexpected delight or surprise though his movements to keep her attention and involvement in the dance.  The involvement of the man and the woman, the pairing of opposites, each expressing their unique and opposite roles is the heart of tango.       

Argentine Tango is a contrast of opposites and the more immersed the man and women are in their opposing roles, the more creativity will be unleashed in their dance.  If tango was either a dance of just heighten senses or precise moments alone there would be limited creativity.  When the masculine and feminine roles are combined with disciplined movements and artistic freedom, creativity is unlimited. 

We all have one life to live, the same 24 hours in a day, and usually some discretionary time for hobbies when not working.  Many after discovering Argentine Tango abandon other hobbies, change friends, and generally neglect other activities.  After all, there are prácticas, classes, and milongas to attend with our new friends in the tango community.

Interests and preferences that use to define us no longer fit after we become immersed in Argentine Tango.  Our old hobbies are not as enjoyable anymore or we have reduced interest.  The only music we listen to on our iPod is tango music instead of the soft rock music that we use to enjoy.  Any new clothes purchased will do double duty and have to look good when dancing tango also. 

In short, we begin to look at situations, things, and people though our tango filter.  We spend hours on the Internet looking at Argentine Tango websites and checking with tango friends on Twitter.  If we are married we hope our spouses do not find out about our online tango obsession.  We think about it, want to talk about it, but most of all we want to dance tango.  Our tango time starts to become all the time.

Argentine Tango challenges us mentally and physically and has opened to us a community of friends we have never known.  It is a safe community of people with varied backgrounds who enjoy beautiful music together.  A community where it is acceptable to literally embrace a friend or stranger in dance.  How has Argentine Tango changed your life for better or worse? 

If an Argentine Tango leader starts comparing himself to more experienced leaders it will only lead to his frustation.  Once the leader realizes he will probably not be the best in the world or the best at the milongas and then just focuses on reaching his potential, he will become a better Argentine Tango dancer.

Some beginning and intermediate leaders often have the idea that followers like a bunch of figures. Women do enjoy the figures, but in moderation. Leaders just need to insert something different every once in a while; a sacada here or boleo there to make the dance more interesting.

The best thing a follower can do is to encourage the leader to concentrate on connection, not figures.  Even so, it can also be hard for a beginning tango leader to listen and interpret the music while at the same time doing his vocabulary.

A leader with less experience can often take the following approach to make his dance more interesting.  He begins the dance with just walking and gradually add more complex vocabulary during the tanda. 

The leader should remember to take pauses when walking and executing figures to let the follower play and do her adornments.  The goal is bring each dance and tanda to a sort of climax, going from simple to more complex figures.  When the beginning leader starts repeating some of the same figures, he can just resume walking.

It usually takes an Argentine Tango leader a couple of years, more or less, to learn how to walk, navigate,  be musical, and express himself while maintaining his own balance and axis.  Once a tango leader can hear the complexities of the music and hear what his partner is expressing through the embrace then he has become an experienced leader.

When a beginning Argentine Tango leader starts dancing after learning a few figures he can feel frustration in repeating the same ones over and over again.  After several tangos have played, beginners often express the wish they could do more figures.

Being that men are very competitive, they will see other leaders dancing and then think about all the tango figures they can not do.  After seeing a woman and thinking they would like to dance with her, they then realize their limited dance skills and that she is a more experienced dancer.

As a follower, you can dance with twenty different men and have twenty different dances. As a beginning leader, you dance with twenty different women and maybe you only have five figures to do.  To a beginning leader, it can seem like you have the same dance every time.

It takes a lot of control and balance to take those same figures and interpret them into five different figures musically.  Beginning leaders do not realize that to the follower, each leader feels different and provides a new experience for her.

Beginning Argentine Tango leaders think followers want more figures and do not understand that women really want connection and passion. Figures are merely a route to connection and passion. 

It is very difficult for leaders to believe that followers are not interested in figures primarily.  The reason a beginning leader feels like it’s the same dance every time is not because he does not know more figures, but because his connection with followers is so limited that he experiences every follower and every dance as the same.

Alternative music milongas is a controversial subject for some tango dancers as they believe Argentine Tango should be only danced to traditional tango music.  They fell in love with traditional tango music and traditional tango dance.  For them, milongas should primarily be traditional golden age tango music with maybe some Piazzolla.

A respected DJ and tango teacher in our area sponsored alternative music milongas for a while.  For example, he played various types of music such as country/western, beach music, pop music, and even Christmas music during the holidays for dancing tango.

Personally, I enjoyed the alternative music milonga as a way to develop my dancing creativity.  Being that it was not traditional tango music, I felt there was no right or wrong in the way I danced, so I was free to experiment in leading different steps.

Not everyone felt the same way, so after about six months the alternative music milonga ended due to requests for more traditional tango music.  Many attended milongas just to hear traditional music as they reasoned one could hear non-tango music anywhere such as a car radio.  

Though some dancers do not mind a little alternative music, they prefer it as a spice or seasoning to the main course of traditional songs.  Other dancers only want traditional tango music when going to a milonga.  It’s their feeling that those who prefer alternative music are just ignorant of the beauty of traditional tango music.

True, some beginning tango dancers may be drawn to alternative milonga music without first having an appreciation for traditional tango music.  No worries, if they continue dancing tango after a while they will start to appreciate traditional music as it is most often played at milongas.        

Tango can be danced to any music with a steady beat or rhythm though some feel non-tango music is just as another assault on tango traditions.  They respect and love the tango traditions such as el cabeceo, wearing of black, and music divided into tandas with cortinas.  For them the traditions make tango special and different from other dances.

Being that tango can be danced to alternative music, not originally written for tango, just shows the brilliance of the dance.  Though some people feel alternative music milongas are an attempt to Americanize an Argentine dance, they are just experiments to unleash creativity and to better understand and appreciate the intricate figures in the dance.