[Tango-L] Technical vs Sensual - Where are the Engineers from?

[TangoDC.com]

>  From my observation, many people (not usually me btw!) learn best from 
> imagery - it has exactly the desired effect, of them embodying a 
> particular kind of movement.  This is why many teachers have such a 
> rich vocabulary of imagery, to get across the bodily ideas to a wide 
> range of people.
>   
It's worth noting that poetic imagery (or prosaic, for that matter) is 
to some degree inevitable when discussing movement and bodily alignment, 
since our languages tend to lack a precise vocabulary for describing 
kinesthetic and organic sensation. Those two kinds of perception-- 
kinesthetic (awareness of the body in action, e.g., through space) and 
organic (awareness of the body as an entity, including balance, muscle 
tension, posture)-- are really our 6th and 7th senses.

Physics, to some degree, supplies us with usable terms: but these were 
Already taken from classical languages in a vaguely metaphorical way 
("energy," for instance, ultimately deriving from a Greek word for 
"work"), before they acquired their more technical meanings in their new 
context.

If we look to other disciplines like physics for our terms, we might 
also do well to keep the tradition alive, coining our own vaguely 
metaphorical terms and using imagery where it works.

That said...

I sincerely doubt that any stable vocabulary will ever emerge for tango 
dancers anyway, since there is so little agreement about how to dance 
nicely in the first place. In the end, having explained things a few 
different ways-- and in terms both planetary and poetical-- I often find 
myself pointing to the damn speaker and going: "That-- do that! 'Voom'..."

And do we really have to form a consensus about what "Voom" means?

Jake Spatz
http://tangoDC.com