2476  Tango festival in Denver. Some impressions with shuffle step to the left.

Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 21:58:24 +0000
From: Oleh Kovalchuke <oleh_k@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Tango festival in Denver. Some impressions with shuffle step to the left.

What a wonderful weekend this was for a tango dancer to be in Denver. So
many absolutely fabulous dancers from all over the US and world. Once more I
had a chance to confirm that tango is the most cross-cultural dance out
there. I personally danced with Bosnian, Korean, Japanese (2), Egyptian,
Spaniard, Italian, Peruvian, Russian and Chinese and of course many American
followers. All were outstanding dancers. Had I experienced tango trance? You
bet. At 6 a.m. Monday morning I was like a kid in a candy store wishing for
couple more days of dancing with all of them (perhaps too much like a kid).
Thanks to all of you - it was over much too soon.

As usual I took weekend workshops. And as usual Briggita Winkler has managed
both to challenge and to entertain as she taught. I have learned new cute
hook, which I am going to use - the more you dance the more you learn, and
decided not to use another sequence she taught - not everything you learn
you dance.

Among other classes Alex Krebs taught one hour milonga workshop. Here he
said something I strongly disagree with. Basically that unlike Argentinean
women, North American followers cannot do small shuffle step to the left
(relative to the line of dance), because they are hardwired by instructors
to go into back ochos after this lead. Once he had said that I had led my
follower to do that particular shuffle step then to do shuffle step to the
right then shuffle step to back ochos. She was North American. I had no
problem leading shuffle steps in any direction with all the followers I have
danced with at this festival. Perhaps problem is not with geography? At this
point I decided to leave the milonga workshop and this is how I happened to
learn the cute hook from Briggita s class, which run in parallel in the
other room.

Overall - great weekend.


Cheers, Oleh K.
Colorado Springs
https://TangoSpring.com