[Tango-L] Brian and Jake Directional Notation Analysis

[Brian Dunn]

Hola Manuel!

You wrote:
>>>
I must congratulate you on your incredible results.
<<<
Aw, shucks - it's not that we're tall, it's that we stand on the shoulders
of giants! ;> ;>

>>>>
I have not heard those kinds of results with total beginners since the
earlier days of the apilado style miracle system (-;
<<<<
Whoa! No point getting carried away.  We're talking about *graceful and
productive introductions* here, not mastery.

>>>
My experience is that there is no short cut, miracle teaching system that
gets total beginners dancing tango in one or two lessons.
<<< 
Agreed, of course.  We're not aiming so much in the first lesson or two to
give people tango as a completed product they can safely put on the shelf,
sitting next to "driving a jeep" and "swimming the butterfly stroke" - we're
trying to invite them to join us in a process of collaborative mastery.
Martial Arts analogies are often close in flavor.  

Our goal in these beginner classes is to give people a foundation that will
make them reasonably safe and fun to be around in the milonga right away,
will give them things to think about and chew on productively when they come
to their first practica, will let them discuss with us what they are doing
in mutually meaningful terms, will give them a doorway into the music, and
will also not trap them in a simple pattern right away just to give them a
step or two.  We want to give them enough of a feeling of success to
persuade them to start their first steps on the long road to tango
mastery...and in our experience, these concepts we're discussing *are*
valuable tools to share in the first two lessons.

I'm a big fan of a certain very successful and influential author of
philosophical and psychological works.  Reading his stuff, I'd find myself
thinking, "I'd love to teach this guy to tango!"  As fate would have it, in
2003 we got a chance to meet him on several occasions, and discuss in some
depth our interest in sharing the passion of tango with people.  At one
point the magic question pops from his mouth: "OK, so how long would it take
for someone to get good enough to have some of these powerful experiences
you're talking about?"  Well, OK, put up or shut up.  At that time we'd been
teaching as well we knew how for a few years already, but...my mind raced
back to my own initial learning experiences some six years before, and I
remembered when the first feeling of real social tango confidence took hold
of me at a practica, and the first time I felt the tinges of "tango
trance"..."Ummm, maybe four months??"

The light in his eyes shuttered closed. I think I heard him say to himself,
"I don't have that kind of time."  Ouch.

Ever since, we've been on something of a full-time mission, driven to come
up with, not just a "workable" way to "teach tango", but the absolute
*fastest* way to do so.  If we've managed some progress toward this
(admittedly, quixotically ambitious) goal, we're grateful to all our
teachers first and foremost, since they are the ones who inspire us...who
knows, we may yet be able to persuade that author to give us another shot
;>.

All the best,
Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
Boulder, Colorado USA
www.danceoftheheart.com
"Building a Better World, One Tango at a Time"