[Tango-L] What Does It Take to Dance Tango?

[Chris, UK]

WBSmith wrote:

> How many professional tango students have you seen?  You know the 
> ones, who are in every class, every workshop, but are almost never
> seen at a milonga. What is going on with those people?

The professional students are the ones training to be professional 
teachers. 

> Hasn’t anyone ever told them that they will never learn all there 
> is about tango, they will never learn all of the steps

Yup. And they've seen how lucrative that makes class tango teaching.

> There is also a lot of talk about wanting/needing to dance with 
> someone of your “level.”  Personally, just give me a woman who can
> follow,

Me too. "Level" is simply a fabrication of teaching, required for 
marketing classes and workshops. In the real world it is meaningless. 
There's no such thing as a girl of insufficient "level" for a good guy.

Chris





















-------- Original Message --------

*Subject:* [Tango-L] What Does It Take to Dance Tango?
*From:* "tangosmith at cox.net" <tangosmith at cox.net>
*To:* tango-l at mit.edu
*Date:* Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:21:04 -0400

I'm curious, are there a lot of people (outside of BsAs) whose only real
dance experience is tango?    

To the instructors out there, how many beginner students do you get who 
are
new to dancing?  From my limited observation, it seems fairly common. 
Sometimes there even seems to be bias against people who have experience 
in
other dance, particularly ballroom.  It would seem difficult to me to try
to take someone who has no concept of dancing and begin teaching them
Argentine Tango, a dance full of subtleties, one that is very demanding of
the elements of embrace, lead, and follow and relies heavily on a sense of
musicality.  It seems to me a little like trying to learn to drive a car 
in
a Formula 1 racer.   

How much time is spent just teaching beginners how to dance before they 
can
start tango?  Has anyone ever seen beginner AT for non-dancers offered
separately from AT for dancers?  

I am continually amused and amazed at the number of tango steps being
taught.  Expert instructors offer classes in steps that no one has ever
heard of (I sometimes suspect because they just made them up).  I know a
couple of very honest swing instructors who tell students that as long as
the students have money, they have steps.  

How many steps do you really need to know for a nice tango?  From my
limited personal observation of those superb old milongueros in BsAs, I
would guess each one uses maybe 10 (+/-) fairly simple steps, that they
have made distinctly their own, with a few variations and a surprise 
thrown
in every now and then.  And then they use those few steps with 
unparalleled
grace and musicality.  From the ladies who have danced with them, am I far
off?  Sometimes I think we tourists go to BsAs and see 50 milongueros each
dancing their 10 steps and surmise we need to learn 500 steps before we 
can
dance like them.  
    
The same honest swing instructors I know tell students that they don’t
learn to dance in class, they learn on the floor.  In every class they 
tell
students where upcoming dances are in the area.  They tell them that after
8 weeks of classes that they will be better than most other dancers on the
floor (and they are about right), to just go out and dance.  Yes, I
understand swing is considerably different than tango, but how many tango
teachers have you heard telling students anything close, that they didn’t
need any more lessons to have a good time, that what they really need is 
to
just go out and dance?     

How many professional tango students have you seen?  You know the ones, 
who
are in every class, every workshop, but are almost never seen at a 
milonga.
What is going on with those people?  Hasn’t anyone ever told them that 
they
will never learn all there is about tango, they will never learn all of 
the
steps, that tango is not an academic exercise but rather its’ about
enjoying a magical dance around the floor?  It’s not about the quantity of
steps anyone knows but about the quality of the ones you do know, and that
only comes from doing them about 500 times (as a start).    

There is also a lot of talk about wanting/needing to dance with someone of
your “level.”  Personally, just give me a woman who can follow, walk, 
has a
concept of the cross and ocho, and can manage basic turns to the right and
left.  But mostly, mostly, mostly, just give me a woman who is simply
interested in enjoying three minutes of the closeness, passion, and
sensuality of a tango.    

WBSmith


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