Tango Footwear and Feetcare

Tango feet - they are always hurting, and they are always in view. So footwear must be comfortable and beautiful. But shoe makers still dont get it. Most shoes out there are neither comfortable not pretty. What's a dancer to do? This advice is probably useful only for beginners.

Tango is typically danced in shoes with leather bottoms. Women wear shoes with three to five inch heels and with straps to keep the shoes on feet. Men use pointed toes leather lace-up shoes with leather soles. There is an endless variety of shoes designed specifically for tango dancers. Find shoes that support your feet, don't squish your toes, and are comfortable enough to dance in for several hours.

Suede soles are suitable for most dance floors – resin soles are recommended for very slippery dance floors only. Patent leather shoes tend to stick to each other so you may want to avoid these unless you're very confident. You can make the 'sticky' effect less by polishing the patent leather areas with vaseline.
Suede shoes are usually flexible but get scuffed easily.

Use pads (Dr. Scholls foam pads or Spenco) to make long hours in shoes more comfortable. Ballroom dance shoes are not suitable because they have little to no support and suede soles.

For practices and lessons you can use Jazz sneakers or dance practice shoes, or even just socks.

Tango Quarrels

OK, soo...the big Big Tango problem I am thinking about today is why do tango partners fight. It is hard enough to find the right partners for a dance. Getting a regular longer term partner is even more challenging. But even if you are lucky enough to have a long-term partner (a spouse, a friend, a significant other), you still have occassional quarrels, conflicts, fights, wars. And they mostly occur during practice sessions.

These quarrels are usually short lived, mostly over silly things, often largely rhetorical, but they always hurt, sometimes overflow into the next day, and cut short the pleasure and duration of the dance session. Practicing tango is a frustrating thing. The steps are difficult, technically complex, need body strength, require simultaneous mental, physical and emotional effort. So you dont get them the first time, or even the fifthieth time. Enter frustration, and blame.

Moreover, tango dancers have huge egos - clearly disproportionate to their self perceived talents. So each partner thinks (s)he is doing the right thing and the other is to blame for errors. But god forbid if someone points out my errors. Men are more thin-skinned and have fragile egos. They just dont want to hear they are doing things incorrectly (when 90% of the times they are at fault). They dont like to hear a follower say - "you lead that wrong" or "bah-humbug". So, followers, please say it in a way that does not hurt his little ego. "Ah that was quite interesting, what did you want me to do there, Ohhh yes, blah, blah".

Another reason for quarrels is the unclarity (or is it flexibility) about the respective roles of leaders and followers. How much lead is needed at any point, and how much initiative is the follower supposed to take? The degree of lead changes as you evolve in your dance skills, and it changes with different partners, and different types of steps. Most of the time one is trying to figure this out, and work it out during dances. But with regular partners in practice session, this is a topic worthy of discussion. It can give you insights into where each partner needs help.

And then there is the memory problem. You did the workshop, and learned the fancy figures/steps. Now a week later you seem to remember the steps differently from your partner. But ofcourse both of you are 100% sure that it is done a certain diffferent way. You try it your way and the other way, and both are wrong. And there is no way to go back to the teacher for a refresher, and you don't have a video of it. Aargh. The solution - make videos of the final demo of the steps by the instructors. Most instructors allow that. Review those videos when needed.

Here is my mantra for leaders wanting to avoid quarrels - ALWAYS accept responsibility for any error, regardless, period.
Now say this aloud. "I did not lead that right, let me try again". And hug her.

Managing with Passion Using Argentine Tango

I need some help to take Tango into uncharted territory in Anaheim, CA on Aug 11, 2008. I was invited to develop an All-Academy Symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (www.aom.pace.edu) in Anaheim CA Aug 11-13, 2008. The Academy of Management is the world's largest academic society of management and business professors (about 10,000 members).

Title of the Symposium is "Asking Different Questions - Managing with Passion"

The original proposal: The questions that Organizational scholars have been asking for the last half century all deal with how to make organizations more rational and more productive in an instrumental sense. They have not used aesthetic inquiry, gained sensory embodied and tacit knowledge that can make organizations more passionate, artistic, beautiful and happy.

In organizations, passion is denounced and belittled as being a dangerous, risky, "irrational", crazed and an extremist tendency, best avoided by managers and organizations. Ironically, we also know that no great human feat was ever accomplished without passion.

This symposium will focus on the role of passion in organizations. Passion cannot just be "explained" intellectually, it must be experienced with body, mind, and emotions. Such embodied understanding can be achieved through many visual and performing art forms. Argentine Tango (AT) music, dance and culture epitomize passion. This symposium offers an opportunity for participants to understand and experience managing with passion using AT. It will review concepts of passion and embodied learning. We will explore how AT can teach organizationally relevant skills of improvisation, leadership, teamwork, communication, and community building . This will be followed by an Argentine Tango dance performance by three couples, followed by a brief discussion and Q/A on uses of passion in organizations.

My hope is that participants will learn about passion in an embodied way and this will prompt them to start asking different questions about organizations and organizing.

I am looking for 3 volunteer Tango dancer couples in Anaheim, CA who may be willing to join this symposium to demonstrate Tango dancing as a vehicle for learning managing skills. This is NOT a Tango show. It is part of an academic conference session. We are not looking to do a "professional show", but need competent dancers to simulate milonga-like dancing. If you know of Tango dancers around Anaheim or who can travel there easily, who may be able to help, please drop me a line at paul.shri@gmail.com .

Starting a Tango Community

Pablo Aslan's Avantango orchestra played some spectacular Tango at the Weis Center for the Performing Arts, in Lewisburg, PA on Dec 1, 2007. Their flight got delayed, so they were not able to get into Lewisburg in time to teach a 5PM tango lesson. Bill Boswell, Director of Weis center called us at 4PM to see if we could sub for them. The class had 32 people. It went well. About 40 people signed up the email list to receive more information about tango in Central PA. Michelle and I agreed to run a beginners class for 8 weeks.

Donald L. Heiter Community Center had space available on Saturday mornings. So we booked it for eight weeks starting January 19, 2008. On Dec 4 we sent out one email inviting people to join the class. Limited to 25 people. By Dec 11 the class was filled, and we had numerous requests for a class on Thursday evenings. We have people from Williamsport, Muncy, Hughesville, Lewisburg and surrounding areas.

So this little Victorian town in Central PA is on its way to getting its own Tango community. To see some amazing pictures of Lewisburg, see
http://www.city-data.com/forum/pennsylvania/85083-lewisburg-photo-tour.html