[Tango-L] Who v. What

[Huck Kennedy]

Jake (spatz at tangoDC.com) writes:
> Hi Manuel,
> 
> I'm not willing to discount someone's opinion here on the grounds that 
> they're not a great or even good dancer. It's the argument that I attend 
> to, not the person who puts it forward.

     [ etc.] 

     It seems to me you're missing two things here, Jake:

  1.  You're quite right, of course, that a critic need not
      be proficient in the art that he's criticizing, so if
      a person who dances poorly has, nevertheless, seen
      many great dance performances, he is well worth listening
      to with regard to a critique of a current performance
      running in the theater or out on the milonga floor.
      But that's not really the situation we're dealing with
      in this instance.  There is a big difference between
      offering critical review of art and offering technical
      advice on how to do art.

      If this same person cannot dance, how on Earth can he
      offer practically anything to advance the technique of
      someone who can? (other than by saying, why can't you
      dance like Naveira, you dummy?  :)  If the best I can
      manage is a stick-figure drawing, why should a capable
      artist pay attention to anything I say by way of
      technical advice with regard to how to physically paint?

  2.  You say you consider an idea on its merits.  Well that's
      fine for you if you have a lot of technique mastered
      yourself, thus giving you an internal database to which
      you can refer to make some kind of educated judgment,
      but how is a beginning dancer supposed to consider an
      idea on its merits if he himself doesn't have the
      slightest idea yet what a merit is in the dancing world
      in the first place?  It seems to me that his only logical
      choice would be to seek out the advice of someone with
      proven credentials (we can quibble over what "proven"
      means, but you get the idea).

> That's my stance on the postings here, anyway. I'll consider any 
> argument on its merits. A beginner might dream of something that I can 
> use; or I might dream of something a more advanced dancer than myself 
> might use. What others say here I can test against my own experience, or 
> re-test with experiment. Anyone else possessed of a questing spirit will 
> probably do likewise.

     I agree to a great extent, and I worship the open mind, but
there are some limiting factors, to say the least.

Huck