Physical Activities that Compliment Tango Dancing
There are lots of other physical and mental activities that compliment tango dancing. We have noticed their various influences upon our tango students.Pilates
This seems to be the number 1 best physical body control thing you do to improve your tango dancing. The posture that is taught in Pilates is pretty much a perfect match for tango, and it is also a very good idea to learn this for the rest of your life, particularly if you are prone to back problems. If you would like to know more then go to our links page.
Contemporary dance
We have yet to meet a tango dancer who also enjoys contemporary dance that is not a
good tango dancer.
If you would like to know more then go to our
links page.
Yoga
People who do Yoga do seem to develop into good tango dancers a lot faster.
Ballet
This is an interesting one. People that do ballet have tremendously good vertical posture, are very balanced and mobile. Unfortunately they often seem to have problems with relaxing muscles that do not need to be tense and being grounded (using the floor).
Apparrently the better contemporary dancers often study some ballet as well. This also applies to a lot of the really good tango dancers - a little bit of ballet, with a dash of contemporary can be very nice.
Sport
Physical control and exercise all help, obviously.
Alexander technique
We have heard great things about this, but have not seen great results in tango from the people that we know have done it.
Salsa
Generally people that have danced salsa can learn tango well and more quickly, as long as can leave basic salsa "body wave" behind and adopt the slightly different tango movement. If you would like to know more then go to our links page.
Ballroom
This is another interesting one. The dancing skills learnt in ballroom dancing can be
transferred very effectively to tango if one has an open mind. Unfortunately what often
happens is that people cannot leave the ballroom posture and philosophy behind. Ballroom
posture involves leaning away in the upper body and connecting with the lower, while
tango is the other way around (of course there is no definition of tango so anything goes,
but all the acknowledge good tango dancers we know adopt a vertical posture that is sligtly
towards ones dance partner). Also tango is NOT a sequenced dance, it is improvisation, whereas
a lot of ballroom is sequence driven.
Having said all this we have seen good ballroom dancers very quickly adapt their skills to
tango and become good at it.
If you would like to know more then go to our
links page.
Music
People that appreciate music really seem to enjoy tango, and work towards dancing the music as soon as they can.
Physics
An interesting one this. People that have good spatial perception and understanding of momentum do quite well at tango, no matter their start point.