Mistakes, the Mind and the Milonga - An Interview with Leonel Hung-Yut Chen

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Seven years ago, Hung-Yut (Leonel) left his Tango community in San Francisco to join Hwayi (Florencia), who he had met at a milonga in Seoul. Together, they have established a very special Tango school in Seoul, a city that has an exceptionally high level of dancing. I interviewed Hung-Yut as a way to introduce him to the LA community, where we have invited him and Hwayi to teach their first weekend workshop program in North America. Read this thoughts on learning and teaching, campeonato, mistakes, and the milonga.
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Contradiction Q & A

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by Sharna Fabiano

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” -Albert Einstein

Photo By Kenneth Wei http://www.kenweiphotography.com/As students of tango, it’s common to feel confused and even frustrated by contradictory information. Toe first or heel first? Independent axis or shared axis? We are accustomed to things making rational sense, to there being one correct answer. Against the truth of empirical data, the truth of mystery may seem rather suspicious.

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Six Reasons Why You Should Try Tango

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by Mitra Martin

“There are two secrets to being a great tango dancer. The first is having a hole in yourself that you cannot fill, and the second is the luck to fall upon tango as the thing you try to fill it with.”
- Jaimes Friedgen

We know you've always wanted to try Tango, THE most beautiful and profound dance in the history of the universe. Here are the reasons WHY you've always wanted to try it. Just FYI.

Reason #1. Beautiful People. I guess this is the biggie. The incredible, beautiful, artistic, sweet, caring, hot, glamorous, patient, kindhearted, accomplished, successful, well-connected, cute, intriguing people you get to meet, hold in your arms...AND DANCE WITH -- and in many cases form lifelong friendships with.

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Bad Times? Watch your Tango Tilt…

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by Mitra Martin

During bad times, we get unhappy. Let’s say we wanted to be less unhappy during bad times. We could train ourselves to do it, if we were to use our bad times as opportunities to practice getting better at getting over bad times. The ideal arrangement would be if we had lots of bad times to practice on, so that we could get better even faster. 

So, to help us accelerate the process of learning how to handle bad times, we decide to invent a new game. We call it: Bad Times. The purpose of Bad Times is to cause bad times for everyone.  The more the better, and the worse the better.

We’d want our game to unleash waves of agony and anger, again and again, on every player. We wo  uld call our game a success if it cause depression, opperssion, beguilement, defilement. Bad Times would follow us around and cause us grief, by  souring our relationships, our disposition, and our grapes. We would design and refine our game to be seductive, and addictive, in multiple ways, so that its snares snag many and often.

- Tommy Angelo, A Rubber Band Story

Does the above make you  think of your first Tango class ? Or your first milonga ? Or maybe your first festival, or your second or tenth one ? If not, maybe your first trip to Buenos Aires ! Or the time you endeavored to establish a supremely idealistic Tango School Center to serve humanity, but messed up so many times because of your not-yet-reliable technique ? Any Bad Times at all in there ?

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