Articles from an Independent Thinker

TangoForge

TangoForge has a lot of great articles ... Vio really does have a thoughtful approach to tango which she shares with great clarity and elegance. I've never met her, nor seen her dance, but I wanted to share the site because of the breadth of insightful articles she shares.

Below are the ones that I've read that I particularly like:

Tradition

On Complacence

Why you don't get asked by X

Why sometimes I don't go to milongas ... (aside from being stupidly busy!)

Her comments on queer tango are fascinating:

Stories from an old man:

Tango as art ... "Tango should be as diverse as piano music":

Styles:

Assignments to help improvisation

A brief Exchange

I've taken the liberty of copying a bit of an email exchange I had with Vio, to give a plug to her material, which is always thoughtful!:

I've also been working on how to make my knowledge and experience more effective. As you may know I've created the first comprehensive KnowledgeBase of tango technique and improvisation. http://www.tangoforge.com/kbasearch. (I use anatomically-correct terminology, which is surprisingly empowering.) http://www.tangoforge.com/exercises.

This material is working very well in our brand new Berlin School (we opened last month!), but the online version needs another layer. While it's fascinating to drift around wikipedia clicking on hyperlinks, it's not so empowering to have a hyperlinked tango encyclopedia. People need to get up and practice, and there's no training structure. So I've started mobilizing all this material to do private coaching of students around the world. They tell me their technical and artistic dreams, and I develop personal assignments for them about once a week, sending them into the encyclopedia for specific assignments. Of course students need coaching about knee pain and milonga pain too, so I try to address the whole experience.

Do you have questions or have things you'd like to say? Please post on our forum.