My Tango Point Of View

My Point Of View is very simple: we cannot dance and think. The first goal of a first tango lesson should be to make a newcomer feel at home in the music. After that, everything else will follow.

At last count I've had lessons or workshops from more than 30 teachers -- which means that I should be much further ahead than I am ( and possibly would be if we had been fortunate enough to have an Advanced teacher resident in Victoria, but we weren't, and so have had to muddle through ). From such an abundance of tango riches it becomes obvious that you can't be like all of them, so you'd better pick on one....

My first role model was Fabian Salas. You may have seen him as one of the trio of male tangeros exchanging ganchos with Sally Potter in her film The Tango Lesson. More significantly, Salas, together with Gustavo Naveira, redefined the choreographic palette of our dance, in the same way that Astor Piazzolla did for the music. In 2005 my focus changed to Naveira. Gustavo combines an original mind, unique ability as dancer and teacher, and inimitable sense of humour.

My personal motto for Tango -- shared by Al Pacino in 'Scent of a Woman', and by Piazzolla to his musicians -- is that for the few minutes the music has us in its embrace:

There are no mistakes.

With such a state of mind, who knows where the Tango road may lead us...?