Tango Awareness [Paperback]

Mauricio Castro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

Learning to dance tango.
Looking and feeling great is only the beginning.
Find out how some dancers learn faster and better than others.

Understanding the solid principals of Tango Awareness will make your mind drift away into the comfort zone. Being yourself while you learn is easy.

As you read and slowly drift, you gain the power of understanding your unconscious. Propel yourself to the future of faster learning.

It is time to change to Tango Awareness.
-Release who you are.
-Express yourself through movement.
-Open up to new possibilities.

You are in the future, looking back at yourself... Tango Awareness was the best decision you ever made.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mauricio Castro is a renowned dancer and teacher of Argentine Tango and the founder of Tango Discovery. He created and developed a personal style of dancing and teaching tango in Buenos Aires and then, through Tango Discovery, he brought it to the rest of the world.

To his solid musical education at the prestigious Berklee College of Music (Boston, USA), he added contemporary dance and movement technique studies (Laban Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals and The Skinner Releasing Technique, among others). In addition, he also studied Human Sciences in Neuro Linguistic Programming, Design Human Engineering and Human Ecology.

The joining of these disciplines and influences allowed him to create his particular and unmistakable style, systematizing it into an innovative method to accelerate the process of learning to dance.

Breaking out from rigid sequences, his focus is to develop improvisation skills through a simple and dynamic technique where students discover not only a relaxed and released style, but also a new way of expressing and communicating with their bodies.

The synthesis of his method, recognized worldwide by hundred of dancers, is available not only by attending his classes but also in his books and cutting-edge multimedia CD-ROMs, available in several languages.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Tango Discovery (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9874384573
• ISBN-13: 978-9874384577
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #731,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book in spite of some big warts, July 21, 2005

By 

Paul Cantrell (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tango Awareness (Paperback)

OK, the bad first. This book is terribly edited. It is full of typos -- egregious, conspicuous typos, like missing periods, and some really awkward phrasings. It isn't just the copy editing, though. The writing sometimes takes a sort of self-help infomercial tone that is both funny and painful: "You are in the future, looking back at yourself... Tango Awareness was the best decision you ever made." Give me a break!

That said, you should *definitely* read this book if you dance tango, no matter your level.

It's worth wading through the typos and the painful writing for the gems of insight and advice throughout the book -- advice that is spot-on. This isn't a book of steps or specific body techniques, but rather a way of thinking about dancing, about learning to dance. It nails down many things I'd half-discovered in the dance, but hadn't fully realized -- and it points out many things I'd never even thought of. His sections on the neurological basis of tango communication and on active following are each worth the price of the book alone.

I'm giving the book -1 point for the shoddy copy editing and -1 point for the occasional silliness of the writing -- but that's starting from a score of 5 for content.

So forgive the silly bits, forgive the bad editing, and read this book. It's worth it.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tango Awareness, the core philosophy of Tango Discovery, November 29, 2004

By 

Ravi T. Khalsa "Ravi Khalsa" (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tango Awareness (Paperback)

I am a Tango Discovery Teacher and had the privilege of editing this book.

If Mauricio's first two books, Tango, the Structure of the Dance, Vols. 1 & 2, are the "How" of Tango Discovery, Tango Awareness is more like the "Why."

Tango Awareness is the core philosophy that Mauricio has brought to tango with the introduction of the Tango Discovery method. The roles of leader and follower are not that one is active and the other passive, although this was certainly true in the old ways of dancing tango. One active partner and one passive partner is not the best recipe for pleasure. With the introduction of Tango Discovery, Mauricio Castro brought the roles of leader and follower up to date with modern understanding of human communication and movement technologies. Tango Awareness is the interpersonal communication aspect of Tango Discovery.

This book is a must read for Tango Discovery students. For anyone interested in tango, it is a refreshing perspective on the dance, its history and its future. Maybe the best way to summarize the book is to quote the author, "The focus of this book is the exercise of changing old beliefs as the basis for faster dance evolution."

Ravi Khalsa, Tango Discovery Certified Master Teacher, www.tangoaz.com

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating book, March 6, 2005

By 

Susan Delner "Susan" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tango Awareness (Paperback)

Extremely well written by one of my favorite tango authors.
It demystify de dance from the regular tango stereotypes and gives new depth of understanding on how to learn this beautiful dance.