Blog - Tangosynthesis

2020 - A Year in Review

04 Jan 2021 - by Graham

Well, that was a year. Normally in the first newsletter or blog post after Christmas I would write about all the things that have happened over the last twelve months. I would talk about the festivals we have attended, the concerts we have put on, the achievements and high spots of the year, and what we had planned for the future. But this has been 2020, and as we all know there has been nothing happening anywhere since March. It was the year that dancing stopped. This shutdown has hit the dance and events sectors particularly hard. They are arts industries, and so they are seen as ‘less important’ than other areas by some people and have received very little support. But for many of us our art is not just something we do, it is what we are, and to have that taken away from us by [read more...]

Jivebeat Radio

26 Aug 2020 - by Graham

One of the projects that I started during lockdown was to set up a small internet radio station to keep people connected to the music and to their dance classes. This was initially just aimed at the people who already danced with us at Tangosynthesis, and I would play the music that they knew from our XTango events and from our earlier LeRoc freestyles. I was not expecting big audiences, but if it could help a few people who were stuck at home missing the dancing then I would be more than happy to call that a success. When I started the radio station I assumed that it would only last as long as lockdown, and then as restrictions ended and things began to return to normal I would slowly start to phase it out. But the shows have proven to be surprisingly popular, especially considering that I have [read more...]

Twenty-Twenty Vision

11 Aug 2020 - by Graham

Well that didn’t go quite according to plan. I’ve not written any blog posts or published much anywhere this year because honestly, what was the point? There was nothing to talk about and no real clue when things might change, so I just kept quiet and got on with the projects that have been accumulating in my workshop. And anyway, with no tango and no events happening anywhere I was not really in the mood to be talking about that sort of thing. But at long last it seems that life is starting to move again, so it’s time for me to start talking about what I’ve been up to during lockdown and what we can look forward to over the next year. For the last few years the mainstay of our business has been from dance events, tango festivals, local music festivals, vintage fairs, and other [read more...]

Tangocrisis - Global Edition

23 Mar 2020 - by Graham

At the start of the month I wrote an article about the Tangocrisis, that moment in everyone’s tango journey where they start to doubt everything they think they know and they wonder if anything will ever make sense again. I was writing in response to a friend’s moment of tango self-doubt, but little did I know that within a matter weeks from then the whole tango world would be thrust into a tangocrisis the like of which has never been seen before. I am of course referring to the global shutdown of tango - and all other dance events - as part of the attempt to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Over a period of about seven days in mid March, every tango class, workshop, milonga, marathon, and festival around the world closed its doors for an as yet undetermined amount of time, leaving dancers and teachers alike [read more...]

Tangocrisis

03 Mar 2020 - by Graham

We have all been there. We have all hit that moment where we start to think that tango is impossible and that no amount of practice or tuition will ever make us any better. We become convinced that instead of moving forwards in our tango progress we are taking giant leaps backwards, and that as it is only a matter of days before we are no longer able to do something as basic as an ocho we should probably give up now before its too late. Anyone who compliments our dancing is obviously wrong or just being nice, and our teacher must be pulling his or her hair out in frustration whenever we are not looking. The tangocrisis seems to be a natural part of learning the dance, but why is that the case? And is it something unique to learning tango? For most of us, learning tango [read more...]

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