We don’t want our students to be limited to one version or style of tango. We would like them to experience dancing in different embraces and different styles, and find what suits them. The aim is to stay true to the spirit of tango, and to dance with elegance and connection, but without cramping development, innovation and individuality. We love to look out on the dance floor and see real variety amongst our students.

Our goal is to teach salon-style, social tango dancing, and we have developed our teaching style in order to do this. We have enjoyed dancing at milongas in many places, including Buenos Aires. We want our students to be able to go to a milonga anywhere and feel able to dance freely – and we would like this to happen as soon as possible in the learning process.

We aim to synthesise feeling and technique. Our teaching style emphasises technique because we believe that good tango dancing cannot happen without a sound grounding in the fundamental principles of the dance. However, we also try to encourage students to ‘feel’ the dance - the music, the connection with their partner, the variations in pace, mood and style that make each dance unique. Becoming an accomplished tango dancer is dependent upon technique, but dancing tango without a feeling for and appreciation of the unique qualities of this beautiful dance risks being soulless and inauthentic.

We don't teach the 'salida'/basic eight

You may have come across a sequence called the ‘salida’ or (to use its more accurate name) the ‘basic eight’ in instructional videos or other tango classes. Sometimes described as the ‘basic sequence’ in tango, this is a pattern composed of back, side and forward steps for the man, and forward, side and back steps, with a cross, for the woman.

The salida is not an internationally-agreed set of steps. Where it is taught in Argentina, the steps are not exactly the same as those you will find taught in England and Europe. It is rumoured that the salida was originally invented in order to teach tango to Europeans or stage dancers, as it was believed that they prefer a more structured, less improvised system of dancing.

Many teachers find it easier to teach in the ‘salida system’, beginning by teaching this basic sequence and then adding new steps over time. Any good teacher who employs the salida uses it as a teaching tool for beginners, and after several months they will encourage you to leave it behind, and lose it from your dancing, in order to progress to more authentic tango. But, as we can testify for ourselves, it is difficult to ‘forget’ something you have learned and practised and it is very hard to break the habit of doing salida after salida around the floor. Indeed, salidas are entirely unsuitable if not impossible to perform on a crowded dancefloor. Another common problem is that it can be too easy for the follower to ‘do’ her steps for herself rather than following a lead, and for both dancers thus to switch to autopilot.

For these and other reasons, there is an ongoing and passionate debate about the usefulness of this so-called ‘basic sequence’, and increasing numbers of teachers, including us, have realised the limitations of this system and are choosing to teach using a more improvisational approach.

An innovative approach to teaching the tango

Jon taught the salida for several years, but in 2004 we decided to try teaching without it, and since then, we have not taught in the salida system. In our classes, we do not teach a ‘basic step’ but instead offer a range of short sequences and movements. Students need not memorise all the sequences per se: they are designed to include the fundamental movements of the dance, increasing dancers’ skills and confidence, and providing the building blocks for improvisation. This method gives you freedom to choose, practise, master and adapt the elements of tango that you most enjoy.

We found that it didn’t take us long to start creating our own movements, steps and variations, and now we dance and teach many sequences that we created when ‘playing around’ with something we had been taught. Tango encourages inventiveness and improvisation – ours and yours!

The results of switching to this method of teaching have been fascinating. Generally, the students who have learned tango in this way have progressed more quickly, are better at leading and following, more confident in their dancing, and much better at improvising.

Initially our students might have to work harder. However, after a few months they are able to push ahead much more quickly because there is nothing to ‘unlearn’. And right from the start, our students learn to lead and follow, because the follower does not know what the leader will choose to do.

Moreover, we aim to help you to dance at milongas and social occasions as quickly and easily as possible. If you go to a crowded milonga, you will soon see that trying to dance in rigid structures is impossible. Instead, you will see dancers improvising steps and movements that are appropriate to a crowded dance floor (this is especially true in Buenos Aires). The salida structure is absent from their dancing.

If you choose to buy an instructional video or attend additional classes with teachers who teach in the salida system, please be very careful not to make it an integral part of your dancing or fall into the salida habit. We would anyway strongly recommend that you do not mix the two systems (salida/improvisational) until you have done 6-12 months of tango.

Our teaching methods and 'tango nuevo'

Our teaching methodology is constantly developing as we deepen our understanding of the conceptual aspects of the dance. We design our classes so that you will try out, practise and hone the key concepts which enable tango to 'work' as a unique partner dance. These concepts relate to the individual bodies of each dancer (their poise, balance, states of tension and relaxation in different parts of the body, how they move, pivot, and express themselves to their partner) and to the relationship between partners (how they 'connect' - physically and sensually, through the embrace, the music, their respective axes, and so on).

Teaching from concepts like this places us within the (recent) traditions of tango nuevo - a new way of understanding and teaching tango which was pioneered and elaborated by Gustavo Naveira and Fabian Salas, amongst others. We believe this is the best way to share tango with our students.

We do not teach 'tango nuevo' as a dance style (except for in specialist courses), but we use the teaching methods which were created and are still used by these great maestros of modern tango.