There is a particular model of tango festival workshop that often leaves me a little frustrated. You might call it the Here's a Figure - Hope You Learn Something model. Sometimes there's a deeper lesson that is best taught through the dynamics of a particular figure, such as when Jaimes Friedgen or Homer Ladas teach methods of opening and closing the embrace. But sometimes, it's just a figure that the teacher thought might be fun.

There were a lot of these types of workshops in the intermediate track of the recent Seattle TangoMagic gathering. At first, I felt my dissappointment growing, even as I committed myself to learning everything I could from them anyway. Then a certain coincidence began to take shape. Nearly half of the workshops in that track - and almost all of the figure based workshops - were in some way working with the corrida or the rhythm of the corrida.

Ed Loomis' Tango Terminology has a pretty standard definition of the corrida: "(also: corridita, a little run) from correr: to run. A short sequence of running steps." But obviously, there is a lot more to it than that. Rick McGarrey says: "Using corriditas with various combinations of cadences is the core of tango. All the good dancers build their tango around it—and the only way to use them in a milonga is to be able to start and stop and change directions quickly! And if you want to do your runs when the available space closes up, you'll have to curve them. The smaller the space, the more you curve them... and eventually they will curve in on themselves, and spiral down to a single spot. Your corrida will evolve into a giro."

Right from the start, Rachel Greenburg's relatively simple musicality workshop laid a groundwork. Later, Diego and Negracha Lanau taught a figure that incorporated the corrida (or the corrida rhythm) in three ways. They emphasized floorcraft by using a figure that ended with non-traveling steps, recognizing that on a crowded dance floor, you're not likely to have much room in front of you after a corrida. Obviously, there were quick-quick-slow rhythms in the simple turns workshop that Robin Thomas and Marika Landry taught on the second day. Sergio Natario and Alejandra Arrue taught a very challenging linear figure that I won't endeavor to describe, which also incorporated the corrida in various ways. (I'm finding that this is a figure that stuck with me as a learning tool more than many others, for some reason.) Finally, on the last day, Alex Krebs' tango rhythms workshop explored the corrida in a very pure way, dispensing with figures and music entirely. It would have been interesting to start with that one.

The only workshops that were completely unrelated to the corrida were the two taught by Homer and Cristina Ladas. The first was entitled "Intentions and Invitations" but practically speaking was focused on walking in tight circles on the inside and outside. The second was on transitions of axis. Neither were figure based and both were excellent.

I would enjoy more experiences like this, where several instructors teach an aspect of a single minute element of the dance. There is such richness to be found in the counterpoints, the parallax views, and the contradictions. Somewhere in all that, we make our own synthesis and find our own dance. Or so I would like to believe.

Posted by Michael on 8/18/07; 4:44:56 PM