Blog - Tangosynthesis

Classes are Back!

23 Jul 2021 - by Graham

This is the first week that we have been able to run classes in forever, and it was a great feeling to get back into our venues. Well, one of our old venues and one new one... but more about that later. It was great to see so many familiar faces there - as well as some new people who somehow heard about us during the down-time - and you are all very very welcome. It is strange that in some ways it feels like we have hardly been away, and yet in others it's almost impossible to remember what classes were like in the BC era*. Coming back was something that was very familiar, and yet getting ready on Wednesday afternoon for that first evening class in South Norwood was almost as stressful as getting ready for my first ever class in Bletchingley all those years ago. I [read more...]

Back to the Floor

27 May 2021 - by Graham

A year of no social interaction... a year of no dancing or physical contact of any kind. The arguments will run and run as to whether this approach was the best way to go or if it caused more harm than it prevented, but whatever the outcome of these debates might be, we are finally in sight of the end. And that means that real in-person dancing is back on the calendar. If you have been listening to The Dance Show on Jivebeat Radio then you will know that more and more dance organisers have begun to release re-opening dates and announce that classes and events are coming back to life. Some places have re-opened already with a few restrictions in place to comply with the current regulations, and many more are planning a grand re-opening on the week of the 21st June. We are delighted to be [read more...]

2020 - A Year in Review

04 Jan 2021 - by Graham

Well, that was a year. Normally in the first newsletter or blog post after Christmas I would write about all the things that have happened over the last twelve months. I would talk about the festivals we have attended, the concerts we have put on, the achievements and high spots of the year, and what we had planned for the future. But this has been 2020, and as we all know there has been nothing happening anywhere since March. It was the year that dancing stopped. This shutdown has hit the dance and events sectors particularly hard. They are arts industries, and so they are seen as â€˜less importantâ€™ than other areas by some people and have received very little support. But for many of us our art is not just something we do, it is what we are, and to have that taken away from us by [read more...]

Jivebeat Radio

26 Aug 2020 - by Graham

One of the projects that I started during lockdown was to set up a small internet radio station to keep people connected to the music and to their dance classes. This was initially just aimed at the people who already danced with us at Tangosynthesis, and I would play the music that they knew from our XTango events and from our earlier LeRoc freestyles. I was not expecting big audiences, but if it could help a few people who were stuck at home missing the dancing then I would be more than happy to call that a success. When I started the radio station I assumed that it would only last as long as lockdown, and then as restrictions ended and things began to return to normal I would slowly start to phase it out. But the shows have proven to be surprisingly popular, especially considering that I have [read more...]

Twenty-Twenty Vision

11 Aug 2020 - by Graham

Well that didnâ€™t go quite according to plan. Iâ€™ve not written any blog posts or published much anywhere this year because honestly, what was the point? There was nothing to talk about and no real clue when things might change, so I just kept quiet and got on with the projects that have been accumulating in my workshop. And anyway, with no tango and no events happening anywhere I was not really in the mood to be talking about that sort of thing. But at long last it seems that life is starting to move again, so itâ€™s time for me to start talking about what Iâ€™ve been up to during lockdown and what we can look forward to over the next year. For the last few years the mainstay of our business has been from dance events, tango festivals, local music festivals, vintage fairs, and other [read more...]

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