[Tango-L] Everyone's "one of the most respected and well-knowndancers in Buenos Aires"

[Lois Donnay]

As one of my favorite politicians once said "If you can't vote for
yourself, why would anyone else vote for you?"

This is a tough line to walk. People often ask me who the best teachers
in town are. It is important to me that students take from good
teachers. When I get a student who has been taking from a marginal
teacher for awhile, he or she will arrive with such bad habits it is
almost impossible to fix their dance. Then they get frustrated and leave
the community, or continue to dance badly making others want to leave
the community. So even though I may want to say "Just come to me", I
repeat the things I believe. Look at how their students dance (not how
they dance). Are they supporting the community and can they dance
successfully in Buenos Aires.

Why do I tell them to pick a teacher who goes to BsAs? If you can dance
in BsAs, you are dancing true tango. It isn't a requirement, but it
weeds out the pretenders. My boyfriend was in New Jersey recently and
went to a local studio because he saw that they taught Argentine tango.
He went see the teacher who was teaching the "masters class", but found
that she had such terrible technique he could barely dance with her.
(She was an "ocho machine" among other sins). I looked her up on the
internet, and found a quote from her - she likes to teach her students
ballroom tango first because it is a great foundation for Argentine
tango. This is an example of a person I would like to see have limited
students.

Lois Donnay
Minneapolis, MN 


-----Original Message-----
From: Caroline Polack [mailto:runcarolinerun at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 10:19 AM
To: tango-l at mit.edu
Subject: [Tango-L] Everyone's "one of the most respected and
well-knowndancers in Buenos Aires"

I've been doing a lot of browsing on the internet, of various tango
schools 
and teachers, in North America, and of course Argentina. Is it just me
or is 
every single teacher "one of the most respected and well-known tango
dancers 
in Buenos Aires"?

Says who? It's not possible for every single one of them to be "one of
the 
best" or there wouldn't any "best" at all. I would like to know who sets
the 
standards and who exactly is considering those teachers to be "one of
the 
best" or is there alot of self-proclamation going on?

I see it here too, braggadacio. I was at a Milonga hosted by my tango
school 
where I was approached by an older man who tried to persuade me to stop 
taking lessons at that school and instead learn with him because he is
one 
of the "best" and had been travelling to Buenos Aires every year for the

last 20 years. Well, so did my tango teachers. I find that to be very
bad 
manners, to be approached by someone who is trying to convince others
not to 
take lessons from the teachers hosting the milonga. Competiton can
sometimes 
be a little too backstabbing for my liking.

So, I am thinking, how does making annual pilgrimages to Argentina 
automatically make you the best?

What makes me laugh is when I come across a website that features just
one 
teacher and they write about themselves in the third person, with all
those 
effusive reviews of how they are one of the "best in Buenos Aires".

One thing I can say for sure is that generally speaking, most tango
teachers 
have no lack of self-confidence.

_________________________________________________________________
Play Q6 for your chance to WIN great prizes.  
http://q6trivia.imagine-live.com/enca/landing

_______________________________________________
Tango-L mailing list
Tango-L at mit.edu
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l