Welcome to Tango CLT!
About Tango CLT
Tango CLT is the brainchild of Matthew Seneca, a tanguero (dancer of Argentine tango) based in Charlotte, NC. Its mission is to offer high-quality beginner/intermediate instruction in Argentine tango, to host informal, fun dances, and to invite outstanding guest instructors to teach Argentine tango in the Charlotte/Lake Norman region.
About Argentine Tango
Martha Graham has called Argentine tango "The fabulous dance of the past hundred years, and the most beautiful." Argentine tango is a social dance that originated in Buenos Aires and Uruguay over a century ago. It contains musical and cultural elements from many diverse places including South America, Africa, and Europe. Today it is danced all over the world. You can find tango communities in almost every major city from Seoul to Seattle. Tango, both the dance and the musical genre, has been evolving for many decades and continues to do so today. It is passionate yet meditative, and unlike many other dances it can express the full range of human emotion. And it is surprisingly easy to learn! You do not need to be a ballerina or athlete to dance tango. Anyone of any age or ability can learn this amazing dance.
About Matthew
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Matthew Joseph Seneca began dancing in Philadelphia in 1998 during the neo-swing revival of the late nineties / early 2000s. Upon moving to Charlotte in 2007, he discovered Argentine tango and has never looked back. Matthew has danced tango for twelve years, studying with many instructors and attending festivals and workshops locally and internationally. He recently returned from Buenos Aires, where he trained with Patricie Porakova and Javier Antar at La Maleva, and today he studies with Karen Jaffe in Asheville, NC, and with Tate DiChiazza, currently based in Argentina. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and former teacher of the Alexander Technique, Matthew has a diverse academic background in theatre, classical singing, philosophy, and movement, all of which informs his approach to tango. By day he is a high school English teacher at Lake Norman Charter School. Matthew values a strong foundation in fundamentals and the ability to listen deeply to one's partner, the music, and oneself. He is thrilled to extend his teaching practice to include his passion: Argentine tango.
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Dance Philosophy
There are many, many ways to dance tango. None of them are "wrong," and none of them are "right." You have to follow what speaks to you. Over the past few years, I have become inspired to study more deeply a particular way of dancing tango that I learned at La Maleva in Buenos Aires under the instruction of Patricie Porakova and Javier Antar. In North Carolina, Karen Jaffe and Tate DiChiazza are professional dancers who dance in this way, and so I study with them. Not everyone dances like they do. Not everyone wants to dance like they do. There are plenty of great tango dancers who don't dance like them. But a great many people do dance like them, too. This style, if you can call it that, is certainly not unique to Karen, Tate, Patricie, and Javier. In fact, nothing about how they dance is new. According to Tate, there have always been dancers in Buenos Aires and elsewhere who have danced like this, and today many of the best tango dancers in B.A. are going even further in this direction than ever before. This way of dancing tango gives extraordinary freedom to both leads and follows, and once one has experienced that freedom, it's hard to go back.
What is this style called? It doesn't really have a name like "milonguero," "salon," or "nuevo," the way other styles of tango do. It isn't really even a "style" at all. Rather it is a way of approaching all of the steps, postures, and embraces in tango that allows both partners maximum freedom and expressive ability. The text below, originally written by Karen Jaffe and adapted by me, describes the foundational concepts of this approach to tango.
"Co-Creativity"
Karen and Tate are "co-creative" dancers. Co-creative dancers are simultaneously independent and yet connected; they create the dance together. Leaders and followers have distinct roles, yet they share many aspects of fundamental technique. They collaborate and negotiate from moment to moment, reading each other, redirecting the flow of energy between them, understanding the perfectly imperfect nature of the dance. In order to achieve this ideal, Karen and Tate rely especially on three concepts: active following, tension & release, and dynamic embrace.
Active following is essential to a co-creative dance. An active follower interprets the music through their body, at times independently from the leader. The follow is not passively submitting to the lead's "will." Nor is the follow necessarily trying to be as "light" as possible, though they do support themeselves on their own axis, which can feel "light" to the lead at times. Rather, within a solid base of structure, technique, and timing, the energy flows freely through the couple, generating comfort, connection, and clarity. The follow actively supports themself on their axis and possesses just as much agency as the lead in creating the dance. (Note: My use of non-gender pronouns in this paragraph is intentional, since today dancers are trying to divorce gender from the lead and follow roles.)
Also essential to this philosophy is the concept of tension & release. When dancers incorporate tension & release into their technique, kinetic energy ebbs and flows organically between them, allowing the dance to come from a very quiet place and yet explode at moments, always returning to an attentive, subtle baseline. Even the basic tango walk has tension and release. With tension and release, the simplest tango movements come alive with vigor and expressive possibility.
Perhaps most important is the concept of a dynamic embrace. A dynamic embrace is when two dancers allow their embrace to shift and adapt constantly to the music, the steps they are dancing, and their personal comfort. A dynamic embrace does not constrain either partner. It goes far beyond the basic concepts of "close" and "open embrace." There is no set, "correct" position for the partners' arms or torsos. Rather, it is a quality of the embrace. It is a feeling of possibility and intimacy. Each dancer allows their partner to remain fully on their axis. Rather than choosing an embrace at the beginning of the song (usually "close" or "open"), both dancers adapt their embrace to every moment of the dance.
Once students grasp the mechanics of a given movement, they focus on how the movement is executed, the quality of the connection and communication, the clarity of the movement, and most importantly how they and their partners experience the movement. In the end, this is a social dance, so having a good experience is paramount no matter what movement dancers create together.
This approach is modern, complex, and evolving, but it has deep roots in traditional tango. Tango is by its nature "imperfect," and this quality is not to be fought against, but embraced and even celebrated.
What is this style called? It doesn't really have a name like "milonguero," "salon," or "nuevo," the way other styles of tango do. It isn't really even a "style" at all. Rather it is a way of approaching all of the steps, postures, and embraces in tango that allows both partners maximum freedom and expressive ability. The text below, originally written by Karen Jaffe and adapted by me, describes the foundational concepts of this approach to tango.
"Co-Creativity"
Karen and Tate are "co-creative" dancers. Co-creative dancers are simultaneously independent and yet connected; they create the dance together. Leaders and followers have distinct roles, yet they share many aspects of fundamental technique. They collaborate and negotiate from moment to moment, reading each other, redirecting the flow of energy between them, understanding the perfectly imperfect nature of the dance. In order to achieve this ideal, Karen and Tate rely especially on three concepts: active following, tension & release, and dynamic embrace.
Active following is essential to a co-creative dance. An active follower interprets the music through their body, at times independently from the leader. The follow is not passively submitting to the lead's "will." Nor is the follow necessarily trying to be as "light" as possible, though they do support themeselves on their own axis, which can feel "light" to the lead at times. Rather, within a solid base of structure, technique, and timing, the energy flows freely through the couple, generating comfort, connection, and clarity. The follow actively supports themself on their axis and possesses just as much agency as the lead in creating the dance. (Note: My use of non-gender pronouns in this paragraph is intentional, since today dancers are trying to divorce gender from the lead and follow roles.)
Also essential to this philosophy is the concept of tension & release. When dancers incorporate tension & release into their technique, kinetic energy ebbs and flows organically between them, allowing the dance to come from a very quiet place and yet explode at moments, always returning to an attentive, subtle baseline. Even the basic tango walk has tension and release. With tension and release, the simplest tango movements come alive with vigor and expressive possibility.
Perhaps most important is the concept of a dynamic embrace. A dynamic embrace is when two dancers allow their embrace to shift and adapt constantly to the music, the steps they are dancing, and their personal comfort. A dynamic embrace does not constrain either partner. It goes far beyond the basic concepts of "close" and "open embrace." There is no set, "correct" position for the partners' arms or torsos. Rather, it is a quality of the embrace. It is a feeling of possibility and intimacy. Each dancer allows their partner to remain fully on their axis. Rather than choosing an embrace at the beginning of the song (usually "close" or "open"), both dancers adapt their embrace to every moment of the dance.
Once students grasp the mechanics of a given movement, they focus on how the movement is executed, the quality of the connection and communication, the clarity of the movement, and most importantly how they and their partners experience the movement. In the end, this is a social dance, so having a good experience is paramount no matter what movement dancers create together.
This approach is modern, complex, and evolving, but it has deep roots in traditional tango. Tango is by its nature "imperfect," and this quality is not to be fought against, but embraced and even celebrated.