Interview with Jak Karako
By CJ Puotinen

Q: Where are you from, and how long have you been dancing?
A: I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, and I lived there until I was
23. That’s when I moved to the United States and attended graduate school at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. I got a Masters Degree in Business Administration. In 1991, I moved to Baltimore and worked at a mortgage company.
    How I got involved with dancing isn’t a romantic story , at least not initially. I had a lot of debt and I was looking for a bartending job or even work as a busboy when I saw an ad in the paper for ballroom dance instructors. You didn’t need ballroom experience and it didn’t cost anything to show up, so I went. That’s when I realized that if I worked for the dance studio, they wouldn’t pay me anything for a very long time, and even if I passed their exam, my salary would be only $4.40 an hour. There was no way I could afford to work there.

Still, it looked interesting, and the lessons were at night after work, so they didn’t conflict with anything else I was doing. I decided to stay. By the second week, I was in love with dancing. I didn’t have a favorite dance; I liked them all. I completed the curriculum in about two months and then started teaching. It was a nice change of pace from being a bridge instructor.

Q: Two months is fast!
A: Well, of the group of twelve who started out, I was the only one who
graduated. In addition to the training the studio gave me, I learned a lot
from their collection of videotapes, and I had some dancing in my background because I grew up doing folk dancing in Turkey. I enjoy sports like basketball, tennis, and archery, so I have good coordination. All of those things helped me learn to dance. I’m too short for basketball but not for dancing, and I’m very huggable.
    I stayed with the dance studio in Baltimore for three years, and then, in 1994, I moved to New York City and became an independent instructor.

Q: Were you involved with Argentine tango at that time?
A: No. One night at the studio where I was teaching, the owner needed
someone to man the door at a tango dance, and I just happened to be there. After I danced an American ballroom tango with an older lady, one of the guys invited me to an Argentine tango workshop. That was my introduction to the dance. Then one of my students dragged me to some lessons. But my real falling in love with Argentine tango occurred the night I saw my current teacher, Metin Yazir, dance for the first time. To my untrained eye it seemed that he didn’t repeat a single step, and it was like watching a river run, entirely natural flowing with unpredictable beauty. I thought, Wow! This is what I want to do.
    Like me, he’s from Turkey. For him, the movie "Scent of a Woman" was the turning point that got him interested in Argentine tango. Metin Yazir became my coach, and about a year later, we became business partners. I consider him one of the top teachers in the world. His analysis of this dance is amazingly thorough. One can only appreciate his genius through the dance level of his students, who are especially concentrated in Turkey. In fact, every August we organize a tango tour to Istanbul, which probably has the fastest-growing tango community in the world. For information about the tour, see our website, www.bailatango.com/tour.

 
Q: Do you have your own tango salon?
A:  We built on the BailaTango schools that Metin founded back in Germany, and BailaTango is now a franchise of 11 tango schools throughout the world. Our philosophy is that the tango is a dance for all people, all ages, all shapes and sizes, and all cultural backgrounds. We believe that if you don’t have a problem walking, you won’t have a problem dancing. I’ve been to Argentina to visit and dance, though not to study, and what we teach is tango as it is danced in Buenos Aires. Metin and I have analyzed and refined our teaching methods in order to make the tango easier to learn, and the simplicity of our teaching is, I think, what sets us apart.

Q: What would you define as the main problem of most teaching methods?
A: Over-analysis. A lot of instructors spend a great deal of time analyzing
and pointing out what the body already does, taking the focus away from the student’s effort to learn something new. If you don’t instruct the body to do something else, the body will do certain things correctly. Pointing out something that the body is already doing does not help; it distracts the student. That’s what we try to avoid. We also emphasize being natural. Tango is a people’s dance, not just a dance for dancers.

Q: How many students do you teach in a typical BailaTango workshop?
A: That depends on where and what type of activity it is. If you’re talking about New York City, the number for weekly classes is usually 10 to 15 or 20.

These numbers go up a bit when we have workshops or intensive lessons taught by a visiting instructor. It’s usually a mixed class of singles, couples, men, and women. Most of my classes are gender-balanced. These are four-week sessions, and whenever there’s a gender imbalance, I recruit other dancers to correct it by the second week.

Q: What do your students learn in the first session of a beginner class?
A: I teach them how to stop. Not how to move, but how to stop. They already know how to move in a basic sense, but stopping is more of a challenge. Tango dancers usually don’t know how to stop, so that’s something new for them. On a crowded dance floor, you should be able to stop and continue dancing in that stopped position. I show them how to walk with the rhythm of the music. I teach them how to hold each other, leader and follower, in open and closed dance position. They also learn how to progress around the room. By the end of the first lesson, they know enough to survive on the dance floor without interrupting the flow of the dance. We are teaching social dancing, not training dancers for the stage. That is a whole different approach. Everything we do applies to the social dance floor, which means that our students can maneuver around a crowded floor, respond to the music, and enjoy themselves while being aware of the space around them and respecting the space of the people around them. What we do differently from others is to teach an integrated system of movement in which tango becomes sophisticated, comfortable, and natural.

Q: Can you sum up your philosophy of dance or your attitude about tango?
A: Tango is a human passion, and to some it’s a lifestyle. It does not come with a passport. Tango is an easy dance, no matter how complicated people try to make it. There are lots of components, of course, and some of it comes with experience. You can’t bypass the need to practice or the achievement that comes with experience. But as a physical motion, to learn the moves, or just to be with a partner, learning tango is a simple process. Now, applying it to music in a crowd with different partners, that’s more of a challenge. That’s dancing at another level. But that’s not complicated, either. Again, it’s a matter of practice and experience. In our classes, we have people change partners a lot unless they prefer to dance only with each other. Some couples would rather stay together, and that’s fine with us, too. I think that changing partners is a good learning tool, but I don’t force it.

Q: Do you follow as well as lead?
A: Yes, of course. I’m a cute follower.

Q: Where are BailaTango’s studios?
A: They’re in 11 cities in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Turkey, and Slovenia.
    To me, and to all BailaTango instructors, tango is more than a dance. It’s a lifestyle. Our instructors are all highly successful professionals in
various fields, but when it comes to tango, our shared goal is to see our
students on the dance floor as soon as possible – dancing to the music, with feeling, courteously, and most importantly, with a partner. Our approach is straightforward, natural, and comfortable. Our vision is inclusive. Everyone can dance tango, regardless of age, background, or body type. Tango is our passion, and we bring a lot of energy and enthusiasm as well as a sense of humor to the teaching. Our instructors excel in their dancing, and we explore all aspects of tango. We organize special events and bring the world’s top teachers to the communities we serve. Around the world, our instructors have created tango communities that have played a leading role in the development of tango.

Q: In addition to your regular work, you’ve been teaching for several  weeks at Firehouse Milonga. How would you describe this experience?
A: The people who come to the firehouse are very upbeat. I love their
enthusiasm. They enjoy each other’s company, which is something we don’t see as much of in New York City. In the city, there are lots of instructors and lots of tango venues, so there’s a little saturation. There isn’t the sense of freshness or newness or discovery that people are still experiencing here in the suburbs. Here everyone cooperates to make the events happen, while in New York, people are more likely to be fighting with each other. I think there’s a natural progression that dancers go through when they discover tango. Here at the firehouse, people are still in the early stages of their infatuation with the dance. They haven’t seen everything, done everything, and gotten bored. It’s very nice to see everyone supporting each other. In addition, the milonga is so well run that I expect tango dancers from New York City to start showing up. The quality of the dancing, the convivial atmosphere, and the firehouse itself
all make it an attractive alternative to the usual Thursday night tango
scene. It’s definitely worth the effort to get here, and word is starting to
spread.
    I would also like to thank Fran Chesleigh and the other instructors who have done such an excellent job of training many of the milonga regulars. It’s a pleasure to teach here.

Q: What is your favorite tango music for listening? For dancing?

A: That’s a hard question. I like Darienzo for dancing, and Hugo Diz for listening and dancing.

Q: Do you prefer dancing to live or recorded music?

A: They both have their respective places. Live music is very inspiring when played the right way.

Q: Do you have a regular dance partner?

A: Recently I started to work more frequently with Karina Romero, a lovely person and great dancer.

Q: Do you still dance ballroom? Or are you strictly a tango dancer now?

A: I don’t dance ballroom any more. On occasion, I dance swing or salsa, but my heart has been stolen by the tango.

But I don’t devote 100 percent of my time to the tango. I have some outside interests that I’d like to mention. I’m a politician and twice I ran for city council. I will run again in two years. My main concern is to repeal New York City’s cabaret laws, which require bar and restaurant owners to obtain a license before allowing their patrons to dance. This archaic Prohibition-era law has caused much suffering and loss of venue for many dancers. People always laugh when they see signs that say, "No Dancing Allowed." I’d like to get rid of those signs.

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Jak Karako can be reached at BailaTango, www.bailatango.com/ny/, phone 212-314-5640, email jak@bailatango.com.