Language and Tango

For Wednesday nights I was reccomended the Milonga at La Viruta. It is a bar in the basement of the Armenian Cultural Centre in Palermo. When I arrived there were about four large circles of people all around the building. It seems I ended up in an intermediate class. What has been bothering me lately is feeling completely lost when dancing with new people. The class was probably slightly above my level, but it was very relaxed and fun. I really enjoyed the spacious venue and the crowd was younger than the other places. I appreciated the lesson to warm-up and meet people before the dance began. Earlier that day I was suggested I should sign-up for a ladies technique class and a private class before I left, but in my mind what I need is practice. The teacher had told me to relax more when I danced with him, but when people keep throwing in new steps I feel like I can´t follow anything.

When I danced with people after the class, I knew they were about at my level, and we were both making mistakes. I started to get a better sense of the language of the dance and understand some of the leads. I started to recognize vocabulary that I have been taught over the course of the week that I have been here now. Before I learn new steps or take more classes I need to get a better sense of what I have learned. Now I can link this all to Krashen´s theory of language learning for you, but this isn´t one of my CERTESL classes.

A third thing I enjoyed was that there was a variety of tango music styles played, so I got to see a bit of the Milonga (faster-paced) and Tango Nuevo (often danced to electronic tango music). Definitely a tango club to check out if you are ever in BA.