It happens almost all the time… After a few months of dancing tango, one of our students sit next to us and sighs… “I wish I had a partner to practice with…” and here we are, trying to find who might be the best match.
It’s true, it’s great to have someone to dance with regularly. For starters, it makes going to milongas and practicas very enjoyable and simpler. You don’t have to worry about finding people you’ll like dancing with. It also means that you can work in depth on things you want to practice: change your posture, change it back again, without worrying that the connection with the person you’re dancing with is lost (“We’re in this for the long-term, babe”) And last but not least, it is much cheaper to take private lessons when you’re sharing the price with someone…
Yet there are lots of cons in dancing with one person only. The main one would be that you get so used to an embrace that it’s weird when you start dancing with someone else – and it’s easy to slip into bad habits because you’re adapting to your partner’s bad habits… But also, it takes one of the great joys of tango away: learning a silent, complex language then using it to communicate with the world, all of the world…