TangoCast: Claudia Lissette's Class at the ODC Practica

Maybe it's just the tango crowd I roll with, maybe it was for no particular reason at all, but I've never known much about Claudia Lissette's teaching. I've taken a ton of tango classes with Claudia's partner, Julian Miller, that I've always gotten a lot out of. But for some reason, even though I knew what Claudia looked like, I'd never taken one of her classes.

This was my loss.

But this all changed Friday night when I took her class at ODC before the practica (please play the audio player above to listen to my TangoCast from that practica).

So, I wanted to highlight in this tango blog the most important things I learned from Claudia's excellent class:

1. She focuses a ton on connection, which I loved. She had us do a drill where we focused just on our connection. We were connected torso to torso, swaying back & forth with our partners, but we couldn't use our arms. Then we did the same armless exercise walking together. Please try this with a partner if you haven't already--it's a great way to learn what we need to do to connect more with our partner.

2. Our torsos should always be engaged, but relaxed. Mine was too rigid & that was preventing a more natural connection with my partner.

3. Lastly, Claudia is excellent at explaining detailed technique. She didn't just show us & then let us fall apart. She went into great detail about tango posture, connection & how our bodies should feel.