Probably somewhere in the region of 40+ years of age, and maybe then some, athough your love of tango and the desire to improve may remain the same, whatever your age.

Being a mature tango dancer doesn’t prevent you from becoming a beautiful dancer.

As we get older we face different challenges, whether through illness, medication, joint fatigue or replacements, or simply the limiting capacity of our memory.

It’s how you adapt to keep improving that matters. We’ve had to devise ways of continuing to dance with all our medical and physical issues. I pass this on willingly to anyone who wants advice and coaching to keep dancing, in ways that are not stressing our bodies or overloading our brain.  If you feel we can help you, contact me – here

With the exception of a few dancers, many could improve significantly, if only they believed they could, thought it was worthwhile, or could even be bothered.

You may be at a stage where you’re happy with what you do. It is very easy to allow our technique to degrade through lack of good basic practice. Bad habits then tend to start creeping in.

Often it’s Followers who are more strongly motivated to keep evolving and practicing.

Leaders – how nice it would be to complement and delight your followers with your own significantly improved skills.

Problems in your dance can only be corrected by finding the root cause, not the isolated symptom. It can be difficult to analyse this for yourself, so a good place to work together and practise is at proper Práctica or better still a Guided Práctica, where you can get skilled coaching. More about this – here

For Leaders especially – we need to work smarter rather than harder. Younger  people tend to learn quickly and easily.  As mature dancers we must work more intelligently.  Aim for quality rather than quantity.  Specifically, avoid the temptation to collect a greater repertoire of steps – that will simply encourage more mechanical dancing.  Instead work at using your current repertoire creatively and more innovatively in your dance, and breaking out of just repeating set routines.  Then adding something different will become easier to assimilate into your dance.

For example – if you look at your own repertoire, see how many variations you do where your follower ends in a simple cross? One or two?

I expect the first cross you were taught was stepping outside being part of the ‘basic 8’ or ‘salida’ routine.  Don’t get trapped into just doing this one sequence.  There are lots more interesting possibilities.

How about entries into the Ocho Cortado?  This movement is the ‘bread and butter’ of tango, often taught as one sequence. Do you vary it and the entries?

All sequences are made up of individual elements linked together.  Again, it’s how they’re taught defines whether you get stuck into only ever doing it one way.

The key element in making any changes like this to your dance, is to give yourself more time to think.  So the first vital step is to slow down and introduce more pauses.

Pausing or Stopping – what is the difference? How do you do it?

You don’t want your partner to feel that you’ve stopped dancing.  How do you do pause rather than just stopping? You turn it into a ‘Magic Moment’.

Years ago, we devised this element as an expression to differentiate between pausing and stopping. The magic in the moment is within the pause; the expression of the dance where you both feel united; full of expectation but without any specific movement.  It’s a lovely time to re-engage your connection with each other.  This is something you can play with and start practising straight away.  It isn’t difficult and can be easily taught.

Brain dead – it’s inevitable that leaders, of any age, can experience this in their dance at some time – where you just cannot think of what to do next – perhaps the floor is crowded, or someone has danced into your space and messed up what you were going to do next.  In order that your partner doesn’t feel you’ve just stopped dancing and disengaged, turn it into a magic moment.

Slowing down – I’ve talked about this a lot in other articles and we have encouraged this in the way we coach for years.

When we slow down our dance, and use the music to add variety, it’s then not just a relentless and breathless collection of moves.

Its other benefit gives your follower her time to take a breath, recover and perhaps add her own decorations.

Special events – classes / workshops with the beautiful visiting “Gods of Tango”.  If the workshop has a multi-step routine, perhaps even spread over two back-to-back classes, by the time you get the second class, your brain may well be overloaded, in a fog, and you cannot remember any of it.

It’s happened to us all.  Slow down, breathe deeply.  Take the pressure off by telling yourself it’s ‘work in progress’ and don’t expect immediate perfection.

Dealing with overload is a key learning skill for mature dancers, and one that visiting teachers, often younger than ourselves, don’t always realise and certainly haven’t the time.

Take a video at the end of the session.  These events are  expensive, and you want to take something away from it. You then get the help you need to reverse engineer the movement back to its basic component parts.  Separate the whole thing into manageable chunks, working on one part at a time.  Then rebuild it piece by piece so you can convert it into something that works for you.

At the end of day – mature dancers may find their mental powers are at their lowest. Think about doing some practice work during the day instead, while you’re fresh and alert. Perhaps hire a local hall, invite someone who can give you good coaching and take your ‘shopping list’ of things you find difficult or would like to improve. If we can help contact me – here

Good teachers – need to be skilful coaches, adapting to the way you move, your learning process, and your capacity for concentration. More about this – here

Everyone is different, your progress can be very different from others in your class. Find what works for you and protect it.

Be safe and dance beautifully