Tango as it crosses over with the relationships, seduction and sexuality

However, I hear many excuses for not using cabeceo:
The lights were too dim. My eyesight is poor. (S)he couldn’t see me. I really wanted to
dance with him/her. I want to make sure everyone is taken care of at my event. I’m just
being friendly.

I’ve tried to defend the case for why there is no excuse, but find resistance.
I use cabeceo inviting every tanguera that I'm not really familar with, and often then also.
But on the other hand, I do not discuss with people who classify arguments as excuses beforehand and wonder aftewards why they find resistance.
 
Jorge Torres, Forever Tango's Dance Captain, practices Aikido & vouches for it as complement to AT practice.

Everyone seems to believe that whatever else they do is a complement to AT practice. If we can take them at face value, the natural conclusion is that AT uses a lot of different skills and most of them are not being successfully trained to a high level in typical tango classes.
 
I vouch for aikido and judo as complements to AT practice. I dont know what it is, exactly, but all the leaders i know that also did martial arts in the past are good. Maybe something about being mindful and grounded?

So, in the unlikely scenario of having to choose a dance partner just by knowing their skillset, i would choose aikido + tango or judo + tango over salsa/ballet or even yoga + tango.
 
I vouch for aikido and judo as complements to AT practice. I dont know what it is, exactly, but all the leaders i know that also did martial arts in the past are good. Maybe something about being mindful and grounded?

Unfortunately I don't know any followers with martial arts training to compare. It might be more of a leader thing though, redirecting the movement of your partner.
 
Even amongst martial arts aikido is pretty niche - boxing is the trendy thing these days. I'm sure eventually someone will write a piece on how boxing is relevant to tango.
 
Aikido is basically a sword art. But weapons have nothing to do with tango. I practiced taiji chuan for many years, and everyone said: it complements tango well. However, I cannot confirm that.
 
It is not the impression i got.

It seems like a lot of children start with karate and aikido. And boxing is something that people decide to try as adults, and rarely. I dont know a lot of people who do any kind of boxing, but all those who do, they did other forms of martial arts before.
 
It seems like a lot of children start with karate and aikido. And boxing is something that people decide to try as adults, and rarely. I dont know a lot of people who do any kind of boxing, but all those who do, they did other forms of martial arts before.

It could be a British specific thing, a lot of new boxing gyms have been opened around here in the last few years.
 
Modern martial-arts instruction is super-regional. Not to go too far into the weeds . . . but as part of my day job, I worked on several peer-reviewed books on the martial arts with a man who'd studied boxing, kachin bando, kali silat, karate (goju-ryu and shorin-ryu), submission grappling, and wing chun, and who moved to Japan to fight in the SHOOTO organization (a kind of MMA) and earn his kendo black belt. Anyway, one of his favorite pastimes in discussions of the martial arts was talking about how "interpretations" vary radically from teacher to teacher and town to town, never mind country to country.

To get somewhat on topic: He loved music. He also informed me that in decades of studies in many countries, he had met unusually few martial artists who were above-average at music – or at dance. Grounding helps dance a lot, but he seemed to feel that most martial arts instill reflexes that fight against musicality. His theory was that drilling in being unpredictable in a match, in not falling into "beats" or "patterns" when a prize is on the line, drums that out of a person. Take that as you will. The exception is apparently capoeira, which is essentially a dance first.

Of course, this guy also laughed off aikido, claiming that you should study aikijutsu or go home. Take that as you will, too. It's possible that his predilection for full-force beating people up in the name of prizes (or getting beaten up . . . he had many injuries) colored his view. Maybe more peaceful, "internal" arts and do forms are useful to dance in ways that "external" arts and jutsu forms are not.
 
Yes. All the people I talked to who practiced aikido agreed that as a practical skill in a street fight, aikido has low value. But it helps develop body awareness that could be beneficial for tango.
I'm going to go tell my colleague how tango could help him in a street fight. ;) Hey, Bruce Lee had the same idea about ballet! :D
 
...Maybe more peaceful, "internal" arts and..
(Sorry, I know, its off topic)
internal MA are in no way more peaceful than external MA. The difference is the origin of energy. Internal MA generate energy in the dantian, while external (as the word implies) in the muscular system. But both hit the same hard.
 

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