Milonguero: a person who loves to dance to tango music and who frequents milongas (social tango dance environments) over many years. In the beginning, when you are first exposed to tango, you do not yet have the vision, experience, and feelings to appreciate of the inside of the dance. By inside of the dance, I mean the feelings that two people have when moving well together to tango music. As a novice to the dance you do get whiffs of it though, and that probably is part of the reason you are drawn to tango. For one thing, the intimacy is obvious. When you watch developed dancers, you notice that their four feet are doing all sort of independent and yet coordinated movement. The communicati
These days we have lost the clarity around the difference between a practica and a milonga. This is true here in the United States and it is also true in Buenos Aires. Not uncommonly what is called a practica is really an informal milonga. So it is confusing. But a tango community really needs to know what a practica is and what it is for. Here I want to say something about the spirit and goals of a practica and in a later post I’ll say something about the spirit and goals of a milonga. At a practica the goal is to improve your dance, to work on new material, and to deepen and solidify your tango foundation: your walk, your posture, the rhythm and tempo of your steps, your lead and follow. T
