[Tango-L] cortinas & stuff

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

Hi all,

I am finally catching up on Tango-L for the past few weeks,
but here are a few thoughts:

On Private Lessons (Caroline)
- If you have a particular skill, try offering an exchange
of lessons (or work) for private lessons.  It might be for
computer work, photography, body work, or something that
might help the teacher promote his/her tango.

On Group Lessons
- It sounds like there may be some confusion between class
structure and teaching skill.  Caroline’s comment about
feeling the leader’s shoulder pushing her could have been
observed by someone with a skilled eye.  What I think works
best in group classes is when a teacher work with a student
on an individual thing but can bring it up as a group topic
(other people are probably having the same problem). 
Rather than generalizing about class format, I suggest
looking for the specific strengths and weaknesses of the
teacher.  Make decisions based on that rather than the
class format.

On Cortinas:
- Nina makes some good points.  Again, it’s all about
context.

- It is the teacher’s job to educate the dancers about the
function of the cortinas, not the DJ.  If the organizer is
going to be picky about what the dancers do, then it is the
organizer’s job to educate the dancers.

- Thank goodness the BsAs deejay we had here only used a
short cortina at our medium-sized milonga instead of the 1
minute plus cortina he uses at El Beso.  Otherwise, he
would have killed the milonga.

- I can always depend on the deejays from Ann Arbor to do a
terrific job when they deejay at my milongas, including
using cortinas appropriately in our environment.  

- I guess I am just a tramp for sometimes staying in my
partner’s embrace (not my husband!) during cortinas because
it feels nice.  But isn’t that what tango is about?

I have been hearing more and more lately from residents in
Buenos Aires about how some BsAs deejays (and perhaps Neil)
can learn a few things from the U.S. deejays – namely how
to respond to the crowd and not being high on cocaine while
they deejay.  

I am sure BsAs has its share of good and bad deejays, just
like the rest of the world.

Trini de Pittsburgh


PATangoS - Pittsburgh Argentine Tango Society 
Our Mission: To make Argentine Tango Pittsburgh's most popular social dance. 
http://www.pitt.edu/~mcph/PATangoWeb.htm


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