As well as running beginners courses and special workshops, we have for improvers and upward (dancers dancing about 3 months+ or having attended our Ten Week to Tango course) our open classes, where we review basics and extend technique, musicality and figure variations to get you dancing smoothly and elegantly. Each class will generally be approximately 1 hour and 30 mins long with a minimum of 1 hour teaching time with the remaining time for practice.
By definition these will be more difficult than beginners classes but we check that everyone understands the basics of the topic being taught, before introducing new material. We also tend to ‘ramp up’ the difficulty as we go through the class, so that new improvers will be able to cope with and learn the early material covered, even if towards the end of the class they are finding the material difficult.
This is deliberate by design, because you won’t grow as a tango dancer unless you stretch your abilities just a little bit beyond where you are now 🙂
We will link materials from one week to the next, so although the class is ‘open’ in the sense that you can drop in when you like, you may want to attend regularly in order to get the benefit of the review and practice of what has gone so far.
We may also look at exercises to improve balance and core muscles, and generally warm up before commencing the class, depending on the subject of the class. These exercises can be done at home so you can continue improving your ‘tango fitness’.
There will be plenty of teaching and demonstration but the aim is always to have class members dancing more often than the teacher. During practice sessions within and after the class, your teacher will be available to offer further specific help to those who need it.
Music will be played during our tango dance classes to allow class members to get used to hearing tango music, and to allow practice of musicality as well as choreography and technique.
We tend to request that class members join as couples, to make sure no one is left waiting for a partner to dance with. After all, it takes two to tango! There is no need to swap partners if dancing close with a stranger is an issue, you can stay with one partner during the class as long as that partner has volunteered to do so. However, you may become better dancers if you change partners, because each dancer is unique in build and stature, and we have to learn to adapt to our partners. As such, class members will be encouraged (but not forced) to rotate partners.
Whatever level of dance you believe you’ve reached, dancers are encouraged to attend for the whole class, even if you believe you don’t need to go through ‘a review’, or easy material. You never know when that little extra nugget of information might help you improve core technique, and musicality, even if choreography is well known. There is a difference between ‘knowing’ what you should be doing and ‘mastering’ the techniques and figures for smooth and elegant performance. Refreshing the basics is always a ‘good thing’.
For a full list of what we have coming up in the next month or two please visit our tango events page which lists all courses, workshops and events.