Royce’s Tango Thoughts

“In tango, the first thing you learn is how to walk. And learning to walk is a never ending story. Even after 5 or 6 years of dancing, you still have to work on your walk.” Everytime I said that to somebody who just starts dancing tango, either he/she thinks I’m kidding or cheating him/her, or he/she has a difficult time to understand what I mean. So to make it easy, let see my “walking path” as a follower:

I spent my 1st three months to make myself feel comfortable about walking backward (Come on, how many times you walk backward on the street in your life!?);

Spent 1 year to walk “ok” – was able to balance and other people can dance with me without big difficulties;

Then spent 1 year to make myself walk properly (push with the supporting leg) and I didn’t need to consciously thinking about that;

After that, I spent another 1 year to achieve the minium requirement of footwork – always keep my knees & ankles close together;

Then I moved to a second stage – to improve and perfect my walk.

First target was to have my free leg really extended and straight, it took me few months to achieve that;

Second target was to make myself always landing on the inner side of the feet, that took me around half year;

Third thing I did was to explore how I could deal with the heels. That took me more than a year to study different styles and to try them out myself.

This year in Buenos Aires, I learnt from Cacho Dante and Rosana Devesa a new way (for me) of walking, I’m still practicing and experimenting it.

Last month in Hong Kong, Julio Balmaceda and Corina de la Rosa taught me how to stretch my body and relax my joints when I’m walking. Took me 2 weeks to do that and feel how good it can be. Now I’m trying to make it as a habit.

So what’s next? I don’t know, but I’m sure there’re always rooms for improvements!