Top Tips For Practicing Tango At Home
With lockdown still going on for us in the UK, many of us will be waiting to polish the dust off from our dancing shoes.
But don’t let that stop you, there are many ways to practice at home to work on your technique to help you prepare and warm up before our classes reopen again.
With that said, here are four easy-to-follow tips to help you keep your practice up at home:
1) Posture
Use a mirror to monitor posture, pay particular attention to your shoulders, don’t let them rise during your dance. Posture is so important, both for the performance of the dance and to prevent back problems in the future. Keep in mind not to let your elbows fall behind the line of your shoulders.
2) Strengthen your feet
Try to practice both in socks or practice shoes as well as your tango shoes. Try to do the following exercises everyday for 5 minutes, as this will help to keep your feet flexible and supple – I do these while I’m brushing my teeth!
- Stand with your feet together and elevate onto your tiptoes, count for 4 and slowly replace your heels to the ground. Do this 10/15 times
- Feet hip width apart and go up on your tiptoes then lift up one foot just above the floor and hold for 4 seconds and replace, now try with the other foot and do this 10 on each foot.
- Feet together, lift one leg and with the other foot which is on the floor try and balance for 4 seconds on your tiptoes – this one is more challenging so hold onto a wall to begin with if you need to! Alternate each foot, 10 on each side.
3) Walking
You probably already know by now that one of the key elements of tango is the walk. Music invites us to walk a lot and we can demonstrate our technique by being grounded as we walk, retaining some energy as you step forward for the leader, and for the follower retaining some energy as we transfer the weight onto the back leg and onto the axis fully.
4) Long pauses
Listen to the music, hear the phrasing of the music, the moments of suspension and take the time to enjoy them! Feel it and appreciate the pauses. The pause is a wonderful moment of connection in tango.
We hope you have found these helpful.
Need some more help? Head over to our Instagram page to watch some of our IGTV videos for more tips. Click here to watch right away.
Follow us on Instagram (or Facebook) to keep up-to-date with latest news and class updates when we can all finally return back to class.
See you next month for our next blog.
Leigh Tango x