[Tango-L] Who v. What

[WHITE 95 R]

Huck,

Thanks you for the wonderful explication of my brief post. I was about to 
answer Jake myself, but you've done a great job of it. Jake, there is one 
thing that needs clearing up a little bit. I don't discount a persons 
opinion on the grounds that he or she is not a good dancer. I do however 
question their credentials as tango dance instructors.

Anyway, my main point is that it is good to get to know the people who opine 
so freely and with such authority so you can make an educated decision to 
accept their expertise or not. This is not something only applicable or 
unique to the TANGO-L. It's very common to read some very forceful and 
compelling opinions and advise about things such as how to build up your car 
for top performance from people who do not even own a high performance car, 
have never worked on one and have no empirical knowledge or hands on 
experience at all. They might sound terrifically wise, educated and expert, 
but in reality they are just dilettantes who are parroting a mish mash of 
opinions and words they've read from other people who probably read them in 
some forum which way back was written by some would be expert....

No the results of taking such advise seriously can be disastrous. You'll end 
up wasting tons of money and time just screw up a perfectly good car... In 
tango it's not quite so bad, but you can indeed end up wasting a lot of 
time, money, effort and emotions and not learning to dance tango... My 
advise for what it's worth is "let the listeros beware".... Words in the 
computer screen can be totally unconnected to reality.....

Sincerely,

Manuel

visit our webpage
www.tango-rio.com




>From: Huck Kennedy <huck at eninet.eas.asu.edu>
>To: tango-l at mit.edu
>Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Who v. What
>Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:22:49 -0700 (MST)
>
>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
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