Please accept my apologies in advance for the length of this post but I’ve totally fallen in love with dancing once again and feel inspired to share…
I thoroughly enjoyed my first two AT classes at The Dome in Tufnell Park where the teacher’s style is intensive concentration on technique. Lesson one, walking backwards, forwards and sideways, lesson two, forward and backward ochos, they were hard work.
I tried another class on Saturday where the teaching style was quite different. We started with forward and backward foot tapping and foot sweeping exercises. With 13 women and 1 man in the class we were divided into two groups which was okay because we all practised the same thing walking backwards and forwards taking in turns to lead and follow.
At the end of the first hour the classes changed from ‘beginners’ to ‘beginners plus’. The new set of people I met had been dancing from a couple of months to a couple of years or so. There were no fixed couples and the group of 7 men and 7 women changed partners frequently as we learned
The Basic 8,
The Giro,
Basic 8 with Giro,
Basic 8 with backward ochos
Basic 8 with ocho and sandwich
Basic 8 with ocho, sandwich and flick
All this in an hour! I felt like I’d been there for a day’s workshop, I was exhausted.
I thought the teaching was excellent, the teacher Federico danced as follower for all of the leaders and as leader for all of the followers. He called us all by name and it was great that he danced with everyone in the class. During this class of routines he continually highlighted technical points like frame, tension, weight transfer, head position, step sizes and attitude with heaps more attitude.
For one stop shopping he sells shoes, tango music CDs and instructional DVDs.
It’s a long way for me and I’d find it hard to commit to every
Saturday 5.30-7.30 at Expressions, Linton House, Highgate Road, Kentish Town but I’ll definitely love to go again when I can.
The venue at Expressions is well worth a visit because it has a real selection of dance classes and there were a couples of girls in my class who had just finished a two hour salsa class in the same place, exhausting but hey it’s all good fun. While we were waiting for our class to start there was an extremely loud drumming/stomping/clapping kinda class going on which was entertaining to watch!
Federico has classes every day of the week at a variety of venues
www.tango-federico.co.uk and a couple of guys on Saturday told me that his Friday class in Covent Garden is worth going to. (This was just a teeny weeny bit irritating for me to hear because I tried to find this class on Friday and found myself hopelessly lost wandering around the streets of the West End, cold, hungry and tired).
Never mind I had a great time at the Casbah which helped me get over it.
I’m off now to listen to some Tango music and practise my Basic 8 and stuff …