TANGOCOOL! English Version

The origin of the prácticas belongs to a distant past, as dancers would get together to practice amongst themselves, or at the “academies”, since the early days of the tango. The prácticas, as we know them today, emerged in the 90s when certain teachers organized lessons and people stayed after the lesson to dance and experiment. One of these is Gustavo Naveira who organized in Cochabamba 444. Over the years others followed in his footsteps, organizing their own prácticas and maintaining the enthusiasm of the search and of creativity. For various reasons, however, the phenomenon has only recently been recognized as such. Various factors generated the rise of the prácticas, a main factor being the economic crisis of 2001 that, despite all the bad, brought about an awareness in the Argentine population regarding the effects of the decade of the 90s, as well as a strong wave of tourism. Since then, more and more people have become interested in culture and the arts, and in the tango, whi...

It’s common to hear this said to a dancer: “When you stop worrying about the technical your dance will appear…” This affirmation leads us to the question of why this occurs. The tango has reached a high level of theoretical and practical development. The last two decades were crucial in that process. Nonetheless, defining one single technique for dancing it has not yet been achieved. Given the dancers’ incessant experimentation, it becomes necessary to know certain principles or technical codes in order to execute complex movements that require great bodily control. Therefore, the teaching methods are being re-formulated and little by little it appears the tendency of many instructors is that of leaving the teaching system that focuses on structure and steps. Instead they opt for those ideas related to body awareness and the natural development of movements in dance. Broadly speaking, two systems of teaching or transmitting the tango can be identified. The Traditional (which has nothin...