What is Contact Milonguero?

Unlike Argentine tango, Contact Milonguero tango is neither visual aesthetic entertainment, touristic cultural experience, nor therapeutic practice. Instead, its goal is an aesthetic musical and social dancing experience, that is, it is the enjoyment of quality traditional Golden Era tango music and of movement with a partner to this music in a convivial ambience. The consequence of this alternative perspective is that instead of workshops, mirrors, cameras, tango dress, trips to Buenos Aires or to tango festivals, or victimhood studies indoctrination university courses, you will do much better to invest your time and money in getting a collection of high quality transfers of Golden Era tango music, an audiophile grade DAC (digital-to-analogue converter), quality sound system setup, some acoustic treatment for your listening and dancing space, and a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement course. I explain all of these concepts in detail in the articles and videos on this website.

The standard group dancing lesson has no purpose other than the lesson itself. It certainly is not intended to teach you how to dance. If it does have a further goal it is to make you better at taking more such lessons until you get bored and move on to something else. Because if people actually learned how to dance they would want to dance, and that is not available.

Contact Milonguero

Welcome

If like me you’re a contrarian thinker, like traditional tango milonguero, and find this content useful and interesting please subscribe for regular articles, podcasts and videos on movement technique, audio technology, music interpretation and anti-wokeism. Also, I would appreciate you liking my videos on Youtube. Youtube doesn’t count views from embedded videos so it would help if you click on the Youtube icon and watch the Contact Milonguero channel videos on Youtube.

Contents

New on ContactMilongueroTV

New articles & podcasts

Podcasts

Instructional Videos

FOCUSED CONNECTED TANGO MOVEMENT: ABCD METHOD

BUENOS AIRES TANGO MILONGUERO

CONTACT MILONGUERO VS. ARGENTINE TANGO

Three approaches to tango teaching and practice: visual, cultural and experiential

The one tango philosophy: can tango milonguero co-exist with Argentine tango (and what is it anyway?)

Why I no longer do Argentine tango

Connecting movement to music: rhythm vs. melodic phrasing

LEARNING TANGO MILONGUERO

Why inefficiency and obsolescence is not a bug but a feature of Argentine tango teaching

The importance of not seeing in learning tango milonguero

Giving weight: the basic concept of tango milonguero

Tango milonguero embrace: cultural plasticity and anatomical universals

Getting dances: the practice milonga, distance invite and musical chairs

The relationship between training and performance

What are the goals of tango milonguero education?

Alternative strategies for tango milonguero education

What’s more important, music selection or sound quality? Why selection is the last and the easiest task of the tango DJ

Related articles: Tango as musical experience, Economic incentives in tango

DUMB AND VACUOUS PEOPLE IN ARGENTINE TANGO

Tango idiocracy: forums, mp3s, consumer democracy, bad education, latino teachers and Marxist women

Fakebook tango and aesthetic truth: a historical journey

Motivation in social dancing: goals, novelty and sexual marketplace dynamics

Why leave Fakebook: leftist aesthetics, cognitive dissonance, emotional capital and evolved practices

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Book Contents

I. Music

History and Theory

  1. Tango music in historical context
  2. Tracing the origins of tango music to contradanza and habaneira
  3. Authenticity: why dance only to Epoca de Oro music
  4. Beauty and interpretation: canonical tango recordings
  5. Feeling: understanding music as movement and expression

Audio Technology

  1. Salon Canning vs the tango organiser (aka Fakebook tango): why there are no good tango DJs
  2. The Mp3: an impoverished musical experience
  3. The Great 78 Project: listen to ÉdO records as they originally sounded
  4. Why I bought a $1700 Chord DAC: noise shaping and perception of space in music
  5. My new audiophile rig, why you should consider a Chord DAC, and why you should care about room acoustics
  6. Cable upgrades, gear tweaks and a mobile milonga experiment with a guitar amp
  7. Towards a music-focused tango: the audiophile milonga
  8. Giving Epoca de Oro music room to breathe

Ear Training

  1. A progressive ear training course for tango milonguero dancing

II. Technique

Introduction to technique

Foundational practice: Focused Connected Tango Movement

  1. The importance of slow focused practice
  2. Focused Connected Tango Movement
  3. The ABCD Method
  4. Video: ABCD Method foundational practice
  5. Mental imagery and partnering technique: push-pull vs long spine
  6. Video analysis of inefficient and efficient movement in Tango Milonguero

Basic position: posture, alignment & embrace

  1. Posture and the head-neck relation
  2. Alignment: the bow practice
  3. Floating elbows practice
  4. Embrace: the essence of tango

Basic movement: walking and turning

  1. Walking: The basic movement
  2. Feet: economy, function and aesthetics
  3. Walking and the principle of reversibility
  4. Turning without swivelling

Movement technique: culture, aesthetics and efficiency

  1. Technique and culture
  2. What is essential in tango: connection
  3. Improvisation: freedom or constraint
  4. Choreography vs. emergent movement
  5. Aesthetics and efficiency of movement
  6. Naturalness in dancing
  7. Adornments and women’s technique: why they are a really bad idea
  8. Kinesphere, spatiotemporal efficiency and aesthetic effect
  9. Music and movement: why dancing lessons don’t work

III. Teaching

Teaching system

  1. Rationale
  2. Needs analysis
  3. Error analysis
  4. Training vs demonstration of skill

Teaching strategies

  1. Systems vs goals
  2. Teaching skills
  3. Culture and learning: acculturation vs enculturation
  4. Mental imagery in movement learning
  5. Tango as conversation
  6. Motivation
  7. Micro-skill stack
  8. Base: true and false beginners
  9. Videos: how to use them

Milonga

  1. The big small: courtesy
  2. Minding the red flags: The setup for milonga success
  3. A fundamental problem of global tango: too much floor space
  4. Slow tango: rules for organising a traditional milonga
  5. Semiogogue on procession: a possible explanation of the psychology behind moving in the line of dance?
  6. Getting dances: the practice milonga, distance invite and musical chairs
  7. Artists vs the milongueros: the spatial organisation of the milonga
  8. What are you looking at? Why musicians rather than dancing teachers should be in charge of milongas

IV. Mindset: Culture and Politics

Introduction to politics

Styles

  1. One dance or many: the styles of tango
  2. Tradition and evolution: the influence of street latin
  3. Conservatism and progressivism in tango: real and faux
  4. Proposal for an alternative tango nomenclature: tango dramático, tango romántico and tango expresivo
  5. The parasitic relationship of performing artists to social tango
  6. What is a “thing” in dancing? The construction of the discourse of Argentine tango vs. tango milonguero

Criticism and postmodernism

  1. Postmodernism and consumerism
  2. Tango as culture: anthropology vs criticism
  3. Beauty or kitsch: making aesthetic judgements about tango dancing
  4. Sacred and profane values in the postmodern world
  5. Postmodernism: the hollowing out effect of ironic word salad in tango discourse

Tango in the crosshairs of the Culture War

  1. Sex roles: Is tango compatible with women’s empowerment
  2. The dystopian future: hipster tango
  3. Female hypergamy and its effect on the milonga scene
  4. The pandemic: Left totalitarianism and acceleration
  5. Why leftism is an illiberal winner takes all system
  6. Marxist destruction of Argentine tango: why I’m getting out
  7. Why tango is not an afro dance stolen by evil whites

Reading

  1. Reading recommendations