Leaders have quite a challenging role. So many things to think about and most of the times we don't know where to start from! Often we are demanded to be musical, creative, comfortable, to look good, to make our partner look great, to have excellent navigation skills, to dress accordingly and to look relaxed... sure among other things! This list of must can easily get translated into: not to be deaf otherwise, you are. Being boring otherwise you are the most boring person on planet Earth. Being uncomfortable otherwise you don't care about your partner enough. Looking so bad in terms of aesthetic that no one choose to dance with you may be despite having the other qualities. You are messy when dancing socially others would say brutal. You don't dress up good enough, and you look too tense, you should relax. - "No living person or any person who ever lived on planet Earth relaxed after being told to do so" - Sometimes, when improving even a little bit in any of each of the above aspects of the dance, these small changes won't be recognized and you will be criticized again... There are a few things that you can do in order to improve your overall learning experience. Ignore this negative people who don't really care about how you feel or in which part of your learning process you are. Try instead to meet the people with whom you share time perhaps in your group lessons, or people that you understand that might be in the same level as you are. Be part of a group of dancers that are like you, and try to grow together supporting each other in their learning process to make the tango experience, a beautiful experience. As it should be. After all, we just want to have a good time! Do never stop learning. As you can see, there is so much for us to learn that doing it even little by little will for sure increase beautifully our dance experience. Hey, I'm neither saying that you should learn all the Tango repertoire available and become the most creative progressive transgresive dancer, but, whatever you choose to do, do it in the best possible way. And see you around, Matias

Tango can be very complex dance, and it can take so much time to learn it well that for many, at times, the process might feel quite frustrating. But hey, don't worry! There are ways to improve your tango, and here I will mention some. 1) First of all, don't get confused by so many things to learn that are out there. Concentrate in one or two things at the time, and please, do not forget that YOU MAKE YOUR OWN TANGO. YOU MAKE YOUR OWN TANGO means, that you create the tango that fits your needs. And there are so many 'but's and or 'parenthesis' to this sentence, because one could easily thing that what ever 'shit' I do is fine, and IT IS NOT. 2) I recommend to have a mentor. Not the same one for your whole Tango path, of course you can change! But stay with one for a while, or may be two, but be constant. This mentor should guide you throughout the process of learning tango and entering into the Milonga world. Have one for some years, don't quit too quickly! Otherwise you might ended up only grasping the surface of what Tango is and missing all the fun! As well as making your tango life harder in the milongas... 3) Try to get a dance partner, not easy, I know, but try. If you can't, keep going to group lessons or practicas to dance and do your training, and may be you will find one or two partners to practice with. You also have some Apps that might help you with the search. 4) Where should you start when having so many topics to choose from?! Well, my advice here is to start by learning to move to the music. No musical theory, just step with the beat, and then try some double tempo or quick quick slow patterns, then try some syncope and to hear the different accentuation of the music (differentiating between strong and weak beats for example). And all these with only changing weight on the spot and walking throughout the space (if available). 5) Always have a good time with your partner, otherwise nothing will work!!! This is ... connection too... 6) As you are building up your Tango dance, you might want to learn difficult figures, not that you must, but you could be interested in learning some of them to spice up your dance (and again, it is entirely up to you!). In that case, make sure you attend many classes on that topic with several teachers so you have different options and opinions on how to lead/dance/follow that particular movement. 7) Take one private class from time to time, may be once or twice a month if your pocket allows. Shall you take a class with a follower teacher or with a leader teacher ? Well, you can learn differnt things from each of them. My advice, learn with an experience leader for a while, because they will teach you different ways of leading and different approaches when dancing with so different followers. This leader/teacher, can be your mentor/guide for a certain period of time. but, 8) If you feel like needing a feedback from an experienced follower, then go for it! I'm not saying that they can't teach you how to lead, but I seriously doubt of their amount of experience leading on the dance floor. There are some, yes, but there aren't many.

If you have to pick up one thing that if taken out from Tango will make Tango to stop being it, what would it be ? What makes tango to be tango and not something else? How does Tango looks like ?

Many people like saying that one have to dance well, but may be a few dare to say what does it mean to dance well. In order to dance well, you need to master the communication with your partner, which means to make sure that you have developed enough skills to have a good sense of the other person way of moving and dancing to the music, to respect it, adapt to it and from there, if you want to, to try to get more from your partner dance. These skills come from taking lessons but also from hours of dancing. AND YOU NEED BOTH WAYS. Uppercase? Yes, you can not only achieve these skills by taking lessons nor by only going to the milonga: believe me, someone is suffering when dancing with you and is nice enough to not tell you. My advice is to find a teacher and a cool dance partner, try things out, specially minimalistic movements and try to move in slow motion. When you go to the milonga, dance those movements which choreography you know well so that you don't have to think so much about them, dance to a few simple rhythmical patterns, and concentrate mainly on navigation and understanding how your partner's body is moving. And that's it. Do that for while, listen to your partner's body, learn from it, and, keep doing that from the rest of your life. Have a good week, Matias