Author Archive
Coming soon: guest blogger on tango classes
We are pretty excited about the guest post that Sorin will write in the next few days about his opinion on Excellent Teachers.
Sorin is based in Boston area, but is currently studying and dancing tango in Buenos Aires. He’ll help us compare teaching styles between the US and BsAs.
Excellence: Tango classes and tango technique
Posted by Henry in Excellence series, Tango on June 9th, 2009
Clay from Portland, famous for organizing the single largest tango festival in the US, has some informative surveys on his site.
Survey #1 deals specifically with teaching to beginners, and the most improtant qualities (in order of importance) identified for beginners teachers are:
- Understood mechanics of tango.
- Good communication skills.
- Encouraging.
- Patience.
- Good dancer.
- Empathetic.
- Methodical and organized.
- Non-judgemental.
- Flexible and creative in classroom.
- Danced with you during the class.
- Explained the “culture” of tango.
- Funny and entertaining.
- Knew your name.
Are there different qualities that are important for teachers working with intermediate or advanced dancers? What other skills become relevant at higher levels? Can an excellent teacher for beginners be a mediocre teacher for other levels? If so, are there any teachers that are good for any and every level, and always have something to offer?
If there exists a teacher or teaching couple that always has something constructive to offer at every level for every type of learner, then I would venture forth that they are truly excellent. Then again, do these types of teachers even exist …?
Excellence, pt. 1: Argentine tango classes and teachers
Posted by Henry in Excellence series, Tango on June 8th, 2009
What makes dancing fun? What makes dancing tango fun?
A good community will have, at least in part, good dancers taught by good teachers.
We start our excellence series by asking a very simple question: what makes a teacher excellent? Put another way, what distinguishes excellent teachers from mediocre or even good teachers? Here is a distillation of some early responses:
- Passion & enthusiasm
- Knowledge of tango music, Argentine culture, and Spanish
- Vast experience, careful preparation, and good communication
- Humility, sense of humor, and respect for your students
From my personal perspective (disclaimer: distinct from that of the company), good teachers know a lot about the music and the dance, have a wealth of experience, and an undying passion that they convey to their students. But building on the last point, truly excellent teachers connect with and inspire their students by capturing their imagination.
So how to connect and inspire? That’s for your comments and maybe the subject of another Excellence Series post … 
What do you think? What is missing from this list or if nothing’s missing, what’s the most important? Think back to your favorite two or three teachers — what made them so incredible and so unique? What qualities makes a teacher excellent?
Happy dancing,
-Henry
Excellence in tango classes, teachers, milongas, and resources
Posted by Henry in Excellence series on June 6th, 2009
The purpose of this blog is to reach out to our community and receive candid feedback. This time, we are asking a rather difficult question:
What defines excellence for you?
- What makes a great tango class so enjoyable?
- What distinguishes the amazing tango teacher from the mediocre?
- What transforms a milonga from an event into an experience?
- What do you wish you could do online easier in the global or your local tango community?
Answer just one or all of the questions but if anything answer this: How would the perfect tango community look and feel?
A bit of a vague question, but we know individual answers will be enlightening for all …
Sneak peak and feedback
For those users interested in offering feedback on our future direction, we’ve created sneakpeak.knowtango.com.
Take a look at the embed feature, the calendar feature, and the new design — what do you think?
In the meantime, here’s just a taste of your feedback:
“Nice work. Nice widget :)”
“What a good idea! Many thanks to everyone who have helped in updating Tango Map.”
“This is really superb!!! I feel like becoming a Tango globetrotter.”
“una gran idea …”
“the map ~ that’s really cool!”
If you have any ideas or suggestions, never hestitate to sent them to suggestions@knowtango.com
-Henry
New look, new features. Check out the list!
Posted by Henry in New Features, News, Tango on April 22nd, 2009
After a few months of your great feedback, here is what we fixed or changed in our most recent version:
- Fixed toggling events/day to change results on the map and in the headers
- Fixed monthly repeats function to be more intuitive
- Fixed date on headers to show soonest upcoming event date
- Fixed headers to be sortable within each category
- Changed event toggles and counters to hide-able map overlays
- Changed search results to display only the events visible on the map (up to 50)
- Added day toggle (works kind of like a map-based calendar)
- Added the event types Workshops and Shows
- Added a notification when you save a broken address
- Added a “Request delete” button
- Added option to upload a flier for an event (PDF, JPEG, GIF, or PNG)
- Added Orchestra field to Festival
Keep the suggestions coming! How else could we make our site better?
KnowTango goes international
We are truly excited to say that our idea has been catching on around the global tango community. We have gotten a great show of support on our facebook fan page (check the wall fan posts), and in emails from organizers, teachers, DJs, and dancers in more countries than I can name.
But nothing speaks as clearly as numbers: since our launch on Feb 24th, we have had 4,107 visits from 766 cities in 64 countries. That means a set of eyeballs checks out our site once every 7 minutes — that’s pretty cool!!
I’ve also attached a map of where our users come from, thanks to Google Analytics. If you know someone who would like the site, make sure to tell them about it so we can have 1 comprehensive and complete global tango resource. 
Users from around the world
Coming soon: Salsa
Posted by Henry in New Features, News on March 10th, 2009
Hey everyone,
We’ve got some pretty exciting news: we are going to create a similar wiki-map for the Salsa community.
To help manage that front, we’ve invited Sarah Jacob to join our “Team Awesome”. She’ll be posting her introduction shortly, but I just wanted to get you excited for our next version of the site.
In the meantime, we are working on translating KnowTango to Spanish and redesigning the entire layout. Much is on the horizon!
Dancing is fun, so why do anything else?
-Henry
Facebook fans, unite!
Hey Facebook tangueros and tangueras,
Thanks to all of you who have been pinging and emailing us with your support. It’s great to hear so much positive feedback after all our hard work …
If you like us enough, you can become a fan on our KnowTango facebook page.
Or even better, every time you sneak a peak at our site you’ll update your status (even if it’s only for 30 sec!) so you can let everyone else know. The sooner we get the word out, the sooner this becomes a complete and comprehensive resource for our worldwide community.
More on the way later!
Let’s get this party started!
I like tango. A lot. I’m guessing you probably do too … so go contribute at our brand spanking new KnowTango.com!
Anyone can find, add or edit events quickly and efficiently — it automatically updates the second you hit save. We aren’t saying anything yet, but we are working on many more cool free functions on top of what already exists. If you’re interested in helping out, check out our contact page for more information.
There is much more to be said and done but in lieu of an introduction check out some of my favorite dancers: Federico & Ines to Biagi
-Henry
