Top 3 Things I Learned From My Classes With Oscar & Georgina

Last year I had an awesome private and a number of group classes with Oscar Mandagaran and Georgina Vargas. They have such a distinctive, seductive style I wanted to blog on what they highlight in their classes. They teach a lot of things, but here are the 3 things that Oscar and Georgina stressed the most that I took away:

1. Connect with your partner. Relax, slow down and enjoy each note of every tango. They intentionally spend time at the beginning of each tango connecting instead of rushing off at the sound of the first note.

2. Solar plex up. Too many people dance with their chest bent over, but Oscar and Georgina emphasize that our solar plex should not be angled down & not even facing straight forward, but instead should be facing up diagonally at a 45 degree angle.

3. More contra motion when walking. Some leading couples don't use much contra motion when walking & it works for them. But Oscar and Georgina teach that we should use it for a more natural walking motion and style.

I hope you enjoy this great video of them above performing at Nora's Tango Week last summer where they bring these 3 teachings to life in spades.

My Great Tango Private With Diego Escobar & Angi Staudinger

I just had an excellent private tango lesson with Diego & Angi. As you can see from their video, they have a wonderful sense of style and elegance. Everything they do looks so natural and effortless. I also took a super tango class of theirs at the Slovenian Hall Monday & they gave a fantastic performance afterwards. I think they were planning on performing two songs at first, but with the loud applause and the crowd chanting "Otra vez!" in unison they happily performed a third.

What did I learn in my tango private tonight? It's hard to boil 4 pages of great tango feedback into a few gems. But one intriguing thing is that they teach when the leader is stepping forward on 3 in the parallel system before going into the 4/5 of the cross that men should basically keep their chest forward. This is in contrast to most teachers I've had that say in the tango basic men should rotate their chest to the right towards the woman on 3 in a contra-body motion. I'd never walked going into the cross this way before on 3, but I must say it felt very natural. And Angi said it avoids the situation where sometimes men will rotate their chest so much that women think we're leading them into a side step. Anyway, I'm going to try it out this weekend or at least try less contra-body.

Diego and Angi leave tomorrow for NYC, so for our tango brothers and sisters out there representing on the east coast, I'd highly recommend taking classes or privates with them if you can. I haven't tangoed in NYC yet, but the word in the milongas here in the Bay Area is that you have an awesome tango community out there!