Review: Tango de Salon Practica
24th March 2011
Introduction
"Tango de Salon" (Natalie, Asta and Beto) have been running a series of Tango workshops, Tea Dances and other events, mainly around Letchmore Heath near Watford.
They've recently set up a weekly practice ("practica") session, on Tuesday evenings, in Radlett near Elstree.
The format of this is still evolving, but roughly speaking there's a class-like start, and then a couple of hours of music during which people dance and practice. Typically, for me, the difference between this and a milonga is that in a milonga, if something goes wrong, you dance through it, but in a practica, if something goes wrong, we stop, try it again and try to figure out what I'm doing wrong...
The venue
The location was at Radlett Village Institute, 413 Watling Street, Radlett, WD7 7JG.
It's a nice little hall, there are facilities there and the organisers supply snacks (fruit, biscuits, waters and cups of tea) to keep you going.
It's a bit out in the sticks, so I imagine a car is required, but there is a train station quite close by.
The practica
There were about a dozen of us there, and the numbers were exactly even, which made a pleasant change.
Standards varied, but I'd guess most of the attendees had done at least a couple of years' tango. I'd kind of expect that, to be honest, it's very difficult to persuade beginner dancers of the value of a practice session - even if it's dead cheap. It seems that a lot of beginners are happy to pay more for a class, in which they'd undoubtedly learn less, than they are to practice themselves.
I mainly worked on my stepping, and had a go at using the walking turn I learnt last week in close embrace (verdict: challenging, but do-able, I'll need to work on it more to see if I like it or not, however).
Other comments
Maybe have a "And this week we will be mainly working on..." theme? For example, pivots, close embrace, posture, musicality, and so on.
It's very very difficult to get a proper practice session going - as I said, it seems far easier to run a class. So I very much hope that this one will continue; it deserves to.
~ David Bailey, 24th March 2011