But MICROYOU is more than yoga – have you ever thought about what tango can do for you? Or rather can tango be part of changing the world? Well in a MICRO LIFE perspective I would argue YES. David Pinto has extraordinary skills in not only tango, but in MICRO LIFE too. David is essentially  nomadic and lives with using very little at all and one of his dearest and most important (almost only) earthly possessions are his tango dancing shoes together with his computer where he writes exciting novels and stories about how we can make peace on the planet – among other ways, through tango. I have invited David to come here and work with me and a group of “you” to experiment with how we can develop MICROYOU and MICRO LIFE in general using tango as one of the components. So if you see this as an opportunity to experience how micro and macro relate; please feel free to sign up.

provisional programme

9-11 principles and practice

12-13 lunch

13-17 microliving activities

19-20 games to improve body awareness, leading/following, musicality

20 meditation

21 microtalks

The week consists of two courses, attending to the "high" and "low" approaches to achieving tango. Students can follow both. The two types have different sets of posture, contract of engagement, and musical form, as well as tending towards different body forms, mentality, bodily capacity. The "low" tango is technically demanding, requiring reasonable body awareness; experience of some kind of body practice is recommended, eg tai-chi, yoga, other dance forms. A milonga, or social dance, will conclude the week's experience.

micro-biography - David Pinto (aka happyseaurchin)

Accepted to do pure maths at Oxford, I instead chose to broaden my academic horizons by studying Social Anthropology. I spent some time writing before learning I had some aptitude at teaching, so I got a teaching qualification and began a career teaching mathematics. Although hired to teach maths, my focus was primary on how consciousness develops in adolescence, the blooming of awareness, the rapid rise in self-reflection, and how this effects psycho-social dynamics in a class. I developed techniques for students to make their learning experience self-organised, and helped generate a self-discipline system. I have written up my ideas in various booklets, and am currently translating the lessons I learned in my lessons with kids, to the adult world.

My experience of tango has been unconventional. Whereas most students of tango in the west take classes for months before testing themselves on the milonga dance floor, I had fun persuading women to fall into my arms in my first year (2002) of searching for tango. I was lucky enough to get an insight into tango within three "lessons" by a tanguero named Steve Mackay, after which I learned directly from my experience in the arms of women. By 2005, I thought it was time to learn where my feet were. I read a rare publication by Rudolfo Dinzel and merged the almost mathematical description to the subtle form of the man behind the Edinburgh tango scene, a man I call Master Toby. In the phase-space of dance forms, most are simple, repetitive, predictable, having simple orbits, whereas tango has at least two strange attractors, the "high" and the "low" which correspond to the two ways I have been lucky enough to have found to date, giving rise to the unpredictable, and endlessly fascinating depth, to argentine tango. I believe it is possible to impart insights into either, within three "lessons", after which the journey is one of discovery.