- Artist Name:
- QTango
- Song Title:
- Por Una Cabeza
- Album Title:
- It Takes Q To Tango
- Artist Website:
- http://www.qtango.com/
(From the website): Created in July, 2009 by Erskine Maytorena, a third generation tango musician and opera singer, QTANGO performs authentic Argentine tango arrangements as often as two to three times a week throughout the Southwest for tango dancers and listeners.
- 00:04
- We’re going to introduce Colgada here.
- 00:06
- I think of colgada as one of the hardest of
the very basic advanced tango steps.
- 00:12
- And then later on, we'll, in another video
in the future...
- 00:17
- ..we’ll have a whole lot more detail about
the techniques of colgada.
- 00:20
- But this is a start.
- 00:21
- So, fundamentally, colgada means to hang...
- 00:24
- ..and so, basically, we’re just leaning
away from each other.
- 00:27
- But we’re leaning away, keeping our chests close.
- 00:29
- So we lean away kind of as if we’re sitting in a chair
and keeping our chests to each other.
- 00:34
- So to begin with, I want you to do this exercise where...
- 00:36
- ..you'll just stand flat on your feet, you'll hold your partner’s hands...
- 00:40
- ..and you’ll sort of bring your butt back
as if you were going to sit in a chair.
- 00:44
- Until if either of us let go, we’d both fall.
- 00:47
- Do you want us to show?
- 00:49
- No I don't. Are you kidding?
- 00:50
- I knew you wouldn’t, it was just to have fun. I couldn’t resist.
N. He couldn't resist that.
- 00:55
- So, once you get that, you do the same thing...
- 00:57
- .. but now you do it with straight legs
on flat feet.
- 01:01
- And then after that, we’ll be in a dance embrace,
but we’ll still do that.
- 01:07
- And then after that, we’ll be on the balls of our feets
and we’ll lean away.
- 01:12
- N: "Feets"
D: Yes, our feets. The plural of one foot is two foots.
- 01:15
- Right.
- 01:16
- And then, if you don’t speak English natively,
I was being really silly and that’s not true.
- 01:21
- So after that, then we’ve got the mechanics, as an aside,
the reason for that is...
- 01:27
- ..because this is Argentine Tango
and we want to be here, intense.
- 01:30
- Right? So, if I’m doing a lean, and here’s my beautiful partner,
I’m not going to do this.
- 01:35
- I’m not going to lean away from her.
- 01:36
- D: Hello Barbara, you know, that’s not good.
N: It’s just not tango.
- 01:40
- It’s not tango to be this.
- 01:41
- So instead, you’ll see my lower body will lean away…
- 01:45
- ..but my upper body will stay to my partner.
- 01:48
- In that camera,
they’re not going to see our lower bodies together.
- 01:50
- D: Yes, they did. They saw.
N: Okay
- 01:53
- The lead for this is the tilt of the forearm.
- 01:57
- So on my forearm, if I did this
and you can imagine a stick or a chair…
- 02:03
- ..you know, chairs are our favorite things
in David’s tango lessons.
- 02:08
- "Dear Diary, I watched another of David’s Tango lessons.
He had a chair again."
- 02:12
- So you can imagine, you have a chair in your hands
and if you tilt the chair this way…
- 02:20
- ..it would go away from you
or actually let’s do it here, to this camera.
- 02:24
- If I tilt the chair like this,
the upper part goes away from me.
- 02:28
- If I tilt like this, the lower part goes away from me.
- 02:30
- And that’s what we went,
that the lower part go away.
- 02:33
- Right, so you want to imagine that it's as if you’re doing that.
- 02:35
- So that the ladies' lower body goes away,
while her upper body stays with you.
- 02:40
- Let’s show the step.
- 02:53
- It’s kind of fun.
It’s kind of hard and it’s kind of fun.
- 02:59
- So it starts,
he’ll step side left, she, right.
- 03:02
- He’ll take her forward, up over, lean back,
turn, grab, spin, trap.
- 03:08
- So if I break down the leader's part – let’s do this angle
- 03:12
- We have side, I lean her away and I have to counter lean…
- 03:16
- ..and then I’m going to open my body to my right...
- 03:19
- ..and extend the right foot,
so I’m on the inside.
- 03:22
- Without the lean it would look like this.
- 03:29
- And we’ve done that in other sets.
- 03:31
- So you’re grabbing the sacada,
on the inside of her left leg.
- 03:36
- One more time, no lean we have this.
- 03:40
- With lean, it’s the exact same thing
except she’s pulling away. No big deal.
- 03:44
- N: Oh, right.
D: Right, right.
- 03:50
- And now, once she’s in that lean,
he can walk around her.
- 03:55
- He just steps to that foot…
- 03:56
- And traps.
- 03:58
- So after she’s in the lean, here I step to the foot turn a little bit...
- 04:04
- ..put the other foot down around her and go to it.
- 04:11
- For the followers, you just make sure the pull is even.
- 04:16
- And I use this arm.
- 04:18
- Yes, and you can use your left arm to pull in.
- 04:20
