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Stepping in Style offers the highest quality, hand crafted, limited edition leather shoes at competitive prices. Although designed for tango, these sexy, elegant shoes can take you from the office to the dance floor. Click on the CATALOG links on the left to explore our inventory, and don't forget to sign up for inventory updates. Enjoy!! |
Everyone's talking about tango shoes!
Posted By Stepping In Style on January 2, 2012
Wine/Beer Bar on Site
Snacks Provided
Cost $10
Metropolitan Ballroom
2935 Providence Rd. Suite 200
Charlotte, NC 28211
(704) 364-1871
Posted By Stepping In Style on November 9, 2011
Contact marcia@stepping-in-style.com with any questions.
Posted By Stepping In Style on October 11, 2011
Daniel and Kasia from Charlotte were interviewed on WCNC Charlotte Today – Check out the video interview:
Posted By Stepping In Style on August 14, 2011
Friday Classes: “Fundamentals of Tango Argentino”
Monthly (4 week) course on the “Fundamentals of Tango Argentino”, suitable for Beginners & Intermediates. Content of classes is specially designed to develop and improve your skills on the dance floor so you can enjoy social dancing at your best.Since each week will build on the previous week’s lesson, it is important to attend classes starting at the beginning of the month.
Passion For Tango’s Friday night class series on the “Fundamentals of Tango Argentino” is going to be held at the Metropolitan Ballroom. Metropolitan Ballroom, located in the heart of Charlotte, North Carolina, offers an elegant yet relaxed social atmosphere on a 3,000 square foot Danish maple dance floor.
Monthly Cycle Syllabus:
In the First class of the month cover the concepts around walking, embrace, and connection which are the essential elements of Argentine Tango.
In the Second class of the month introduces the pivot which will be an important building block for changes of front and the famous ocho figure. Ocho in Spanish means “eight” and this figure takes that name because the movements of the feet resemble the drawing of an 8 on the floor.
The Third class covers concepts used in previous classes to introduce simple turns or giros which will use the basic elements learned in previous classes. Simple turns are fundamental elements for a good navigation on a dance floor, especially when it is crowded. Giros are generally performed by the follower stepping around the leader, who pivots or walks in the center.
Subsequent weeks will review all the concepts covered during the month, alternate ways to perform them, and put them together to play with them in different combinations.
Preregistration is encouraged since we want to maintain gender balance as much as possible.
For preregistration you may call 704-575-4278 or email us at PassionForTango@yahoo.com
Registration is also welcome at the door.
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
No partner needed!
Metropolitan Ballroom
2935Providence Road – Suite 200
Charlotte, NC 28211
(704)364-1871
Parking is FREE!
Posted By Stepping In Style on June 20, 2011
For ladies looking to enhance your tango skills, here’s some video footage from Daniela Arcuri’s website:
Posted By LaurenB on April 24, 2011
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/04/24/2240508/learning-argentine-style-tango.html
Upon meeting William Temples, you may think he is from Latin America.
He is fluent in Spanish and calls himself Guillermo. He shops at the Spanish grocery store on South Boulevard and listens almost exclusively to Spanish music. His home is covered with paintings and photos from Buenos Aires and he often wears a wooden necklace resembling a rosary around his neck. To a non-Spanish speaking person, even his accent seems to hint at a foreign birth.
Temples, 42, is from southern Georgia. But he might not admit it.
Twelve years ago Temples was just coming out of a divorce when he decided to learn Spanish. To make himself more fluent, he visited Buenos Aires, Argentina, because he was told it was beautiful.
Before he reached the hotel there, Temples was stopped by a sight that would forever change his life.
All around him an accordion’s bittersweet melody filled the air. Couple’s torsos and cheeks pressed together as they floated to the music in a dance he had never seen before, and never forget.
That dance was the Argentine tango.
For the next two weeks, Temples forgot his pursuit of Spanish and learned to tango. He visited a different tango school every day. His instructors taught him as much as one can learn in two weeks.
Upon returning to his south Charlotte home, Temples went to dance studios seeking to continue his education. But he kept running into the same problem – the only tango taught in Charlotte was ballroom tango – an entirely different dance.
One day he met a man also looking for an Argentine tango class. Originally from Argentina, Daniel Arredondo knew significantly more tango than Temples. Temples begged Arredondo to start a beginner’s class in Charlotte and Temples, who worked at the former Tower Club in uptown, was able to borrow studio space.
Arredondo came up with the name Passion for Tango for his newfound school, and Temples, who had a degree from Savannah College of Art and Design, drew the logo, a couple dancing, inspired by what he saw in Argentina.
Having been put online by a friend, the logo started showing up at the top of Google image searches and Temples was contacted by people from all over the world, wanting to know if they could use his image for their tango school or music artwork.
Temples found that he couldn’t stop drawing tango dancers and scenes from Argentina. The dance that was becoming more and more a part of his life was spilling onto his canvases.
It also was spilling into the Charlotte community. Soon the class moved to various sites, including Bistro 100, RiRa’s, Patou Bistro, Morehead Street Tavern and now, Lynn’s Dance Club.
“We basically go where we can practice without having to pay a large fee,” Temples said. “Tango is an art and unfortunately, Charlotte isn’t really known for being an art town.”
Arredondo, who went to Argentina every year, made friends with Facundo Posadas, one of the most revered tango instructors in the world. Posadas came to Charlotte several times where he gave workshops and made a big impact on the novice tango community.
Arredondo and Temples also visited Atlanta and New York to learn as many new steps and techniques as possible.
After a few years, Temples also started instructing in Charlotte. Now, Passion for Tango offers classes at various locations four days a week and usually at least one milonga (tango dance) per week.
“It’s become a very diverse group,” Temples said. “It’s all nationalities and ages, from grandfathers to teenagers.”
Temples has frequently visited Argentina where he met his current wife Mariana. Thanks to her, he says his connection to Argentina is stronger than ever and he is becoming more inspired with his art.
“I can’t imagine a life without tango,” Temples said as he swept a piece of charcoal down canvas to outline a woman’s leg in the midst of dancing.
With tango music filling his studio, tango paintings all around him and tango shoes on his feet, it would be hard for anyone to imagine Temples without tango.
Lauren Bailey is a freelance writer. Email her at lbailey.charlotteobserver@gmail.com.
Posted By Stepping In Style on April 24, 2011
A journey down the Leheigh river and into the world of tango.
Love tango? You may be interested in reading ‘River Tango’.
“River Tango” is a short novel by Perri Iezzoni: a tango dancer in the Charlotte tango community, and whitewater river guide. Here ‘Deliverance’ meets ‘Dancing with the Stars’.
Perri Iezzoni’s novel takes us down the Lehigh River on an unforgettable trip and into the world of Argentine Tango. For some it is a trip of no return. For Odie Larson, the lead character, it is a story of awakening. Iezzoni combines his knowledge of the natural world and the world of tango, revealing an original sensibility.
“ His writing is often beautiful; sometimes surprising, in what he is able to “pull off,” and always engaging in the twists and turns of this adventurous tale. A ‘River Tango’ is thought provoking and evocative.”
If you are interested in purchasing the book, you can find it on Amazon.
Posted By LaFlaquita on April 24, 2011
This is a repost of a 4/9 article from LaFlaquita (http://tangophilo.blogspot.com/2011/04/modification.html)
I was hoping to find a cobbler skilled enough to remedy this. A cosmetic surgeon for my shoes, if you will. I visited two yesterday and both said they couldn’t change anything about the shoe. One woman said the shoes were just too beautiful and well-made, and that it would just be easier to add inserts to them.
I took that home with me. The shoe is already perfect in its own right; it is made of superior quality materials, and “putting it under the knife” to try to modify it would compromise its integrity (not to mention scratching up the patent leather piping and potentially adding on sub-par materials). Fortunately for the shoes both cobblers were wise enough to tell me there was nothing they could do. I’m going to have to relent and add insoles. I’m not completely happy with this (I still long for a perfect fit, but I can’t exactly buy another expensive pair of shoes at the moment). In the same way, going under the knife to change some thing about someone’s physical makeup could needlessly alter who that person is. Mind you, different people have different reasons for cosmetic surgery, but in my case I feel that changing anything the easy way would detract from what I am supposed to learn here on earth. I’m already crafted perfectly to whatever purpose is mine. Perhaps frustration with how clothes fit me is a cross I am meant to bear, to teach me patience or to give me just enough push to learn how to make my own clothing. As with the shoes, the easiest thing is to just add padding and dance like nobody knows.
There is much more to be said about the relationship between a dancer and her shoes. In the case above I am comparing the shoes to the dancer, but more can be said when we compare her shoes to her partners. That is a topic for a later post.
It’s amazing how relevant this illustration was to me; the whole past week I had been struggling with my own issues, and realizing that cutting up the shoes would make them less beautiful was like being told, “you are perfect the way you are.” This is how tango speaks to me.
Posted By LaFlaquita on April 10, 2011
An article on tango from another member of our talented community. For the original article, please go to the website http://www.tangophilo.blogspot.com/
16 March 2011
beginnings
In the beginning was the year that was 2001. And was that ever a year.
Sometime in the fall, after September, but still warm enough for me to be sitting outside the Mechanical Engineering building at the University of Illinois waiting for an astronomy class to begin, through tears in my eyes I see a green flier taped to the door, the number pull-off tabs waving at me like twenty arms reaching down to grab me. LEARN ARGENTINE TANGO! it said. Thirty bucks for a semester’s worth of weekly classes. I was in. Not because of the programmed dreams of passionate leg kicks and roses in lovers’ mouths or the opportunity to meet people, but because I had fallen in love with Argentine tango the semester before (thanks to The Tango Lesson, directed by Sally Potter, and Paper Tangos, by Julie Taylor), fallen in love in and with Argentina the summer before, and fallen hard to the bottom of a depression fed by evaporated illusions and the effects of five calculus-based courses with no outlet for my right brain. Not to mention the overall climate in the culture at large shortly after September 11th.
I show up to the first class, black suede-bottomed ballroom shoes (to which I have been extremely faithful, despite their low heel and worn away parts of the sole, they fit me perfectly and I still dance in them) in hand, not a word leaves my mouth and I am addressed by an Argentine woman: Sos la esposa de Mariano? she says, coincidentally asking (assuming I am Argentine or at least fluent in Spanish) if I am Mariano’s wife; Mariano, the name of evaporated Argentine illusions. This question was the first yellow arrow on the camino that would become the dance of my life: a synchronicity that told me, before I had the vocabulary or the capacity to understand its meaning, that I was on a path that would lead somewhere towards that place underground where my heart was buried.
The classes came and went. I learned the salida, ochos, ganchos, had my big toe bloodied by a clodding moron in work boots, and went to two milongas. It was only the beginning. My legs learned how to move, my muscles memorized the steps, but I failed to learn how to really dance. Argentine tango has a lead and a follow, and they must maintain a connection between themselves so that she can feel and respond appropriately to his every move (or invitation). I was still stuck in ballroom-dance mentality, believing that tango had a count to be kept in one’s head, that every dance always started with the same move, that every move was programmed and set in stone. I had no concept of the subtle, wordless communication between partners that makes the entire dance worthwhile. I was twenty and had a lot of growing up to do before I could understand it.
The next year I spent in Buenos Aires. As part of a study-abroad group of thirty or so students, we were encouraged to attend cultural affairs. I took a tango class at the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas taught by Domingo Pugliese, but all the more experienced male dancers continually lost patience with me and my anticipation of their dance moves. I lasted a month. Being a 21-year old in a city known for its night life, I soon lost interest in tango and traded it for nightclubs (boliches). Consider it a cultural study of a different kind.
After that year I came back to university, but tango lay dormant. Then came graduation and the beginning of “real-world” life, and tango got stuffed in the decorated shoe box filled with my memories. I took it out and looked at it several times, once on a return visit to Buenos Aires in 2004, dancing with a partner who was telling me how beautiful physics was, and twice while I was coupled with a non-dancer in Charlotte in 2007 and 2008. It wasn’t until I was alone with very few friends in Charlotte that I decided to take up tango seriously, take it out of the shoe box and prominently display it on the mantle piece. In May of 2009 I started dancing with a wonderful group of people, taking beginner classes on Monday nights and learning everything else by dancing with more experienced dancers. The first lesson I learned from tango was that it is essential to dance with the better dancers if you are to improve your dancing, even if you are intimidated by them. As in life we grow by learning from souls greater than our own despite our fears.
When anyone asks how long I’ve been dancing tango, I tell them it’s a complicated story. I learned it ten years ago, but have really only been dancing it for almost two years now. I didn’t understand it when I first learned it, but now it makes sense to me.
Tango was reaching out to me. The classes I took in 2001 were the fling whose flame was soon outshone by the numbers of young Argentine men continually complimenting my blue eyes and calling out piropos in the street (which, unlike in the USA, are actually flattering). Tango called me every once in a while and we went out on a few dates, but, comfortable where I was, I stopped returning its calls. But tango waited patiently and, alone and without a path to follow, I came back to it and it opened my own world to me. I will be dancing as long as I am able.
Posted By Stepping In Style on February 13, 2011
We have a lot of talented folks in our Charlotte Tango community, and I would like to showcase them, and their work over the coming year. Below is a blog article that was recently posted by Lauren, who freelances for the Charlotte Observer. I think you will enjoy reading this. Original article was posted at http://heartfortravel.blogspot.com/2011/02/love-that-will-never-leave-me.html
A Love That Will Never Leave Me
It was a summer of firsts: my first trip to England, the first summer home after a year of college, my first boyfriend, and in a sense, my first love.
“Chad” and I started dating the day I arrived home from UNC that summer. He was tall, blond, handsome, smart, and absolutely adored me. How could a girl ask for more? The first half of the summer went by in a hazy bliss and I didn’t know enough to wonder if I was missing something. Together, we envisioned wedding bells and happily-ever-afters. Then one day, my mother handed me a newspaper clipping. It advertised an Argentine tango class that took place every Monday night at Patou Bistro near uptown with dancing afterward. “I thought maybe this would interest you,” she said, “since you seem to enjoy salsa so much at school.”
Freshman year had indeed been eye-opening where my dancing was concerned. I went from a world of tap, jazz, and ballet and found myself involved in ballroom with salsa on the side. I loved the energy in partner dancing, the feeling of togetherness that you cannot find in the solitary dances I grew up with. I’d never heard of Argentine tango, but I knew I enjoyed ballroom tango, so I figured we could try it out.
Tango Art by Guillermo (Bill) Temples (templesart.com)
When Chad and I opened the door to Patou’s that night, it was like stepping into a different world. I stood fascinated as I watched couples floating by me in a dreamlike trance. Their torsos and cheeks were pressed together, their legs moved in synchronization – they even breathed as one. I watched as the women’s legs seemed to stretch for miles behind their hips, balancing only on their toes and leaving three-inch heels hovering above the ground – complete faith that the men they were leaning into would not drop them.
The place was warm and musky; smoke hung above the nearby bar and the orangey lighting kept the atmosphere close, and embracing. The music was in a plane of its own. The melancholy and enticing whine of the accordion accompanied by the bitter-sweet sounds of the Spanish guitar tore a person between the desire to fall in love, or to cry. In that moment, I chose love.
I believed Chad to be as spellbound as I was. After several minutes, the class began, and the music was turned down for the instructor to assemble everyone into lines. In that first 50 minute class, we learned how to walk. Yes, walk. Walking, evenly and with the music, is the basic principle for Argentine tango – but I wanted more. I wanted to do what I had just witnessed. To find oneness and sexiness that transcends vulgar and escalates to a heavenly beauty. This beginner’s class was not either of those things. I became even more frustrated when I realized Chad was struggling – with walking! I tried to correct, and he felt ashamed (though I did not realize it at the time), so after the class was over he sat at the bar and I tried out my newfound walking skills with old-timers. I sucked up every morsel of new knowledge they shared with me like a sponge.
Dancing came easily to me – it was hard then to realize how fortunate I was, and how difficult it was for someone like Chad who had never danced before. Every couple songs I’d ask Chard to dance, but in his embarrassment he turned me down and pretended it was no big deal. He told me he didn’t mind, and I willingly believed him. Finally, I stopped asking.
I danced with many different men, making new friends left and right, learning new techniques, and every once in a while, reaching the outer fringe of the oneness I sought.
It was when I danced with Guillermo that I felt my world truly shift. He led me with power and gentleness combined. My feet were taking directions my head had not given them. My body felt light and graceful, and then all was silent except for the music. Each heartbeat was a step, and with our chests pressed together, I wasn’t sure anymore where my heartbeat began, and his left off. My nerves started to ebb. A long whine on the accordion would indicate a long sweep of my back leg, though I’m not sure how it knew to do that. But a good tango lead can make your body do things without your permission. Trust is formed in the span of one dance. The bond a good leader and follower create together cannot be broken – for the length of that song, you are in love. And you truly are – with the dance.
Tango is not a dance to be taken lightly. It is not a casual pastime. It is a life; a life of commitment, love, passion, and soul. That first night, I could not put that concept into words. I did not know what I had just stumbled into, but I felt a change. My heart swelled and seemed to overflow. When I realized it was time to go home, I had to fight tears. Looking at Chad, anger and jealousy raging behind his blue eyes, I realized what our relationship did not have. I was not in love with Chad, for in the span of three hours, I had fallen in love with tango, and that felt ten times stronger than the last month and a half spent with my first boyfriend.
Driving home that night, I was sad. The elation I felt on the dance floor only heightened the pain I felt now. Chad was terribly jealous; he didn’t want to dance anymore and he didn’t want me to dance with other men like that ever again. I knew that was a promise I could not make, and thus I saw the future of our relationship ending – over one night of Argentine tango.
Five years later, my first true love has still not left me wanting. I can always find the oneness now, thanks to Guillermo’s teaching. I feel the music in my core; I can anticipate my partner’s next move before he makes it. I can mold my body into another’s without feeling awkward and self-conscious and my feet do things I never thought they could do (though I’m still not consciously controlling them).
I have been in love since Chad (with actual men, not dances) but it was the tango that really taught me how that felt – it was easier to find after that. But love with men comes and goes: the love of tango will never leave me.
Posted by laurenb at 12:18 PM