Great tango dancers often break the rules, embracing bold deviations from norms that enhance their dance, showing that innovation and tradition can coexist.

Simplicity in tango is important, but it should never be a goal in itself and come at the expense of the dance’s true essence.

You can’t teach emotion? Yes, I agree, but I strongly believe that isn’t everything one can say about it. While teaching someone how to feel in a certain way is impossible, you can help people cultivate what they feel, express it, channel it; you can give them tools to give their emotions a form. I always believed that there is a part of tango that is well beyond the scope of a tango teacher. In fact, I’m not sure if I consider it a dance at all. There’s something unique happening between humans when they move together in intimate embrace…

What I am about to say in this article is not meant to be an insult but well-intentioned advice for all dancers who step on the dance floor aiming to emulate their favorite performers. I am also not trying to make comments about performers. My point is that one should differentiate depending on the context, and more importantly, understand what it means. How performance and social dancing are constructed differently and what things a milonguero dancer should be aware of. A bunch of clowns? When I first saw this comment, it felt like it came from a position of disrespect…

I understand, most of the tango world is not quite inspired by videos of old milongueros. There are many things people don’t like about them… they have no good technique, their dancing is not shiny and fancy and for some people it’s boring to watch because they can’t even recognize familiar patterns they see on videos of exhibition dances. Unfortunately, I must add, ageism plays a significant part in this repulsion – it’s not cool to be old. On top of that, most of those videos of old milongueros were really recorded when they were beyond their prime years, when…