After hesitating for a long time, you’ve finally decided to learn tango, and there the question arise: who is the right tango teacher for me?
Many times we just enter the first dance studio or tango lesson that we come across in the most naive and trustful way we are capable of adopting.

All right, despite what we might think at first, choosing a good tango teacher is not an easy task, specially if we are in a country like Argentina, or Uruguay where "tango teachers" appear everywhere and with the most varied background.

That is the reason why your friends of Tango club come to the rescue and offer a series of guides to make your first steps in the world of tango the most satisfying experience possible.
So, first of all, when choosing a tango teacher we need to take into account three main factors: the student, the teacher, and the course.

The Student

Essential part of the educative equation: even more important than choosing a good tango teacher is to choose a tango teacher that is suitable for my interest and needs. What does this mean? Simply that many times the objectives of a very good class might be worlds apart from ours, therefore we won’t be able to benefit from the class as much as we could.
What follows is a really simple example: I’m a man 40 something years old and after working for 12 hours in an office, I rush to take my first tango lesson, relax and leave the stress of the day behind.
So, I arrive to the class, only to find out that instead of embracing a 21 year old Swedish tourist girl, and that my biggest worry be not drooling too much, I have to focus on that the chest has to be certain way, the head has to do that, feet have to move in a way, but hips in another, not to mention parts of the body I didn’t even knew I had, and over which I have cero control.

Leaving apart exaggerations, many times what we look for when we take a tango lesson is not to become great dancers, but rather to have fun and do something to leave the office behind. In this case we will probably feel more comfortable in a large class, where the requirements are low and the environment is informal.
On the other hand if I want to Learn to dance "seriously", there I have to start worrying about the technical expertise and pedagogical capacity of the teacher, as well as his/her way of dancing

The Teacher

Where can we find a good tango teacher? The simple answer to this question is: the MILONGA.

Whenever possible, the best way to choose teacher is to see him/her ”,good horses are seen in the race track “ is an old saying of the river plate, and tango teachers are no exception.
Many times a great curriculum is no guarantee of good dance, there are cases of teachers that in their web pages they are virtually the best dancers in the whole world, but that in the real-world their skills remain to be "virtual.”
Then, it would seem that everything we have to do to find a good teacher of tango is to go to a milonga, see someone that we like the way he/she dances and ask him/her if he/she teaches (if you're in Uruguay or Argentina chances are the answer will be yes), and if he /she doesn’t ask him/her with whom he/she has taken lessons.
But this is not as simple: being a good dancer does not mean being a good teacher, by rule most of the times a good teacher is also a good dancer, but the reverse equation is not necessarily true.

To teach, it is not enough to have the knowledge and the techniques of the dance, a teacher also needs to know how to transmit this information, and to do so the teacher needs to have certain knowledge about pedagogy and methodology at the time of giving a class.
A good teacher must be able to recognize the mistakes students are making, and he/she has to know what degree of explanation is the right one for the level of the students in question. He/ she also needs patience to accompany the students in their learning process without wanting to kill them, and imagination to make his/her lessons interesting and motivating.

Something very important in selecting the person with whom we will take classes is to find out if he/she gives classes alone or with a couple. In the case that the possible teacher gives classes all by him/herself, it is better if the person is the same gender we are. Because of the importance of the visual and imitative aspects of learning, it is really important to have someone of your same gender demonstrating the steps you will have to learn and perform later.

In generally a teacher can know in theory the two roles of the dance but have real experience in only one of them. Even if he/she teaches with a couple, it is convenient to find out whether the other person really has an active role at the time of giving explanation, or if he/she are there only to assist in the step/sequence demonstration.

The Class

At the time of selecting a teacher we must also take into account the modality (individual / group) of class this person can offer me.
Not all teachers give both types of class, and certainly both have their advantages and disadvantages.

1) Group classes

Rather than anything if the class is a group one we have to make sure that the level is the right one for us. If there are multiple levels in the class, it might happened that the class will be split in different groups, or that the level of requirements increases as the class progresses so that not all will be able to do all the steps, in any way the teacher must have a way to organize the class and to enable all students to take advantage of it according to their possibilities.
The more obvious advantage of a group class is precisely that, they are taken in a group, therefore I will be able to dance with different people and try the steps with different colleagues, and this is highly recommended especially when we are beginners and we don’t want to get used to dance always with the same person as that will hinder our capacity to lead or follow different partners.

The disadvantages of this type of class are: the teacher will not be able to pay the same attention as he/she will do in a private lesson, therefore the pace of the class will be the pace of the group not ours. Another important disadvantage may be the composition of the group. Many times, especially in courses for beginners, we are going to see classes in which there are many more women than men, which means if we are women that a great deal of the class I am not going to be dancing. And if I ´m a man, that I am not going to be able to rest for a minute throughout the whole class. It is also probable that a group with much difference in the number of men and women will split up or have a lot rotation of students might stagnate our learning process.

2) Individual Classes

In this type of class we must see if we are going to have a single teacher or a couple, if you take the class with only one teacher in general it is better one of our gender, not only because he/she will be familiar with the role we want to learn, but also because of the visual and imitative element of learning: beyond technique itself, and men and women communicate different messages and images when dancing, and our teachers are the most important reference when creating an image of what does dancing tango look like.

The advantage of the private lesson is that we have the teacher with us all the time, correcting and helping us constantly what makes the learning process faster.
The main disadvantage (other than the economic one) is that we are going to be dancing with a single person throughout the lesson, and a fundamental part of learning tango is dancing with different people, so that we develop the ability to lead or follow anybody. This of course can solved by going to “milonguear” frequently!
We hope that this brief guide can be helpful when Choosing a tango teacher, and at the same time remind you that it is not enough to take lessons to become a good dancer, we learn to dance by dancing, so we hope to see you soon at the milonga..