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

Tue Aug 15 17:56:46 EDT 2006

Chris, UK wrote:
> 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.
Except, most professional teachers and dancers nedd a day job to eat.
>> 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.
>   
True that experience does not correlate with the
ability to move properly. Let's say, that a woman
with "negative technique" as Tom Stermitz would
put it, can make the best dancer look like an ass, as
well as take all the fun out of it for him.

There are some women who come into the scene without
negative technique, but far more who do. How they get from
being lusy to being good, is a matter of instruction, whether
formal, semiformal or casual.

Christopher
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> -------- 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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