We love watching performances because they are inspiring, funny, and touching. We discover new favorites and marvel at what can be done with a song we’ve danced to many times.
And let’s be honest, at least once, we’ve all daydreamed about what it would be like to dance that way and have the audience go wild with applause.
Yes… but watching performances isn’t just good for jaw-dropping moments 🙂 After the initial awe, if we rewatch the videos more consciously, we can learn a lot from them and pick up a few good ideas for practice. To help with this, we’ve compiled a few YouTube channels worth watching and some tips on what to pay attention to. Let’s dive in!
Mariela Sametband & Guillermo “El peque” Barrionuevo, source: Facebook
Where to Find Them
First, let’s go over where to find good performance videos! YouTube is an inexhaustible source, and here we list only the biggest channels where tons of videos are available. Festivals usually have their own channels, so it’s worth checking them out too.
Jonas is a great friend of ours and one of the most sought-after guys when it comes to capturing tango performances. On his channel, you’ll find countless performances from local milongas in Berlin to the biggest international tango festivals.
One of the largest, and most likely the most fun, summer tango festivals in Porec, on the Croatian coast. It’s famous not only for its poolside afternoon milongas but also for its world-class teacher and performer pairs.
The channel of the Tango Natural school, which organizes Belgrade milonga weekends, the New Year’s marathon, and the May Encuentro, which attracts over 1,000 dancers each year. They also have a ton of videos from all their events and occasionally from some of their classes.
Videos of tango events in Russia.
A great example of a festival channel, the Sultans festival in Istanbul features excellent dancers year after year.
And, to mention some local flavor, you can find videos from the two most important international festivals in Hungary here:
Now that we have plenty of ammo, let’s see what’s worth paying attention to while “watching”!
Figures
Perhaps the first thing everyone thinks of is the amazing figures they can pick up from the performing dancers. But let’s be very careful for several reasons:
● A figure danced in a performance might not work as well in a milonga; consider how much space it requires and in which direction it moves.
● Try to be realistic about your own abilities, and remember that learning from a video without explanations or teacher guidance is not easy—don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to discourage experimentation, but don’t be disheartened if something doesn’t work out this way.
● It’s also important to remember that some of these performances are partially or entirely choreographed—this means that the movements are created and practiced for that specific piece of music and its rhythm. Even if a performance is 100% improvised, there’s a lot of practice, brainstorming, and experimentation behind it—dancers prepare seriously for performances; they don’t just pop into the spotlight and start dancing.
Getting inspired is great, and we encourage you to do so. Copying is the first step in this process: understanding and reproducing the movement. But what’s much more important is that when you’ve mastered it, the story doesn’t end there. Try to move beyond this level: experiment further with the figure, incorporate it into your dance, and tailor it to yourself—it might really “click” with a little modification, an extra step, or one less. Step by step, this is also how you’ll find your own style. We’ve already written about how to practice; you can read it here.
Walking
While it might not be as spectacular as a gancho on the back (we could argue with that), it’s worth paying attention to the performers’ walking. You’ve heard us say countless times in class that walking is the foundation of tango—well, we can’t say anything different now 😉 But seriously, watch as many performances as you like, and you’ll see that the vast majority start with a beautiful walk! And what is there to watch?
Primarily, observe how the dancers express the music with this single structure:
● Rhythm: Do they walk evenly to the basic pulse of the music, or do they play with the rhythm? Notice the relationship between these rhythmic variations and the specific musical section!
● Step length: Can you detect any correlation between the character of the music and the length of the steps?
● Dynamics: Perhaps they’re “just” walking to the beat, but how? What’s the character of the walk, and how does it connect to the music? Is it soft and leisurely? Military, sharp? Does it exude deeply gathered restrained energy, creating dramatic tension? Think about it and try to express these feelings through your own walk!
Music and Musicality
I’ve already quoted this Balanchine saying here on the blog: “See the music, hear the dance!” I love it 🙂 It expresses something incredibly important: the inseparable intertwining of dance and music. Have you ever had the feeling while listening to music that a movement, a dance, almost came to life before your eyes? It exists, I swear! And you don’t even need to drink alcohol to experience it—though if you feel a glass of wine helps, cheers to you 😉 The bottom line is, as dancers, we have countless tools to express what’s happening in the music, what we hear. What should you pay attention to?
● Accents: How do the dancers show the musical accents, and with what movements? And what about when there’s no accent, but the music transitions? Do the dancers ever magnify a tiny musical accent with a big and flashy movement, something you might not even notice just by listening to the music?
● The nature of the movements and dance: Do they use straight or circular movements? What feeling does the dance evoke in you? Flowing, lightly fluttering, airy? Sharp, angular? Pure romance or high drama? How do these feelings connect with the figures used? How does all this relate to the music?
● And last but absolutely not least: PAUSES! When, how, and why right there? We can’t emphasize enough that it’s okay to stop in tango, in fact, it’s very beneficial! Pauses can structure the dance, allow it to breathe. The whole thing becomes more lively, understandable, and relatable.
Watch a few performances, and you’ll see they’re not about racing through the piece with the figure counter going off the charts. And notice that a pause doesn’t mean emptiness—oh no, far from it! Just as a pause is part of the music, so it’s part of the dance. The intensity of connection and presence never disappears during these moments.
So grab some popcorn and a notebook, and dive into YouTube! Of course, it’s not a crime to watch videos just for the fun of it, but sometimes, when you have a little time (like now), it’s worth delving into a couple of performances more thoroughly 🙂
We’ll return to the topic of performances in a future post, so stay tuned!
